Goa-based hip-hop talent Tsumyoki—aka Nathan Joseph Mendes—has seen his star rise since 2019 as he’s continuously honed a catchy, heartfelt sound via albums, EPs and singles that have earned him a sizeable following in the western Indian state and far beyond. The artist, who started out making music as a teenager before joining the Goa Trap Culture crew, signed to the influential Gully Gang Records label in 2021, becoming the first Goan on its roster. Tsumyoki’s star rises further with A Message from the Moon. His trademark soulful melodies stretch out across the record but there’s a lot more going on too. The rapper, singer-songwriter and producer layers heartbreak into his lyrics as well as introspective moments about everything from relationships to life itself. Across 13 tracks, Tsumyoki—pronounced “sue-ma-yoki”—effortlessly flits between confessional bedroom-pop ballads, breezy escapist anthems, hip-hop foot-tappers and even rock-leaning bangers. After at least four years of developing his musical sensibilities, Tsumyoki knew he had to make a major impression with AMFTM. K-pop was one of his inspirations when it came to the overall sound of the album. In fact, he tells Apple Music that he calls this record “I-pop”. “I’m like, you know, India can do it as well,” he says. “We can do this thing and we’re gonna make it our own.” From dance-floor-friendly cuts such as “Perfect Life” to lyrically brooding numbers like “Fonkey Monkey”, AMFTM is a thoroughly varied offering. Some three years in the making, the album is sure to resonate widely as it runs the gamut of emotions—light and dark, heartfelt and raw—while maintaining the artist’s distinctively melodic sound throughout. Below, Tsumyoki takes Apple Music through his most cohesive work yet, track by track. “The Message” “I don’t like to over-explain this track because I want people to draw their own meanings from it. In this album, I’m the moon and I’m sending a message to the sun. The moon obviously has no light in itself, so a lot of people see me and they see the light from the moon and they’re like, ‘Wow, the moon is so beautiful’, which is all this online presence that I have as Tsumyoki—but they don’t know that it’s the sun that fuels Tsumyoki. This whole album is me telling the sun [about] all my insecurities and problems. It’s my therapy. It helps me get better, just talking to the sun. I want every fan to look at this and then also be able to relate to it in a way where they can call themselves the moon and [then] the sun can be whatever person [they choose] in their life. It could be their mom, dad, sister, brother, girlfriend, boyfriend—whoever. I did have an older intro with an older background sound but one day I suddenly came up with this piano melody and it perfectly fitted with the words I spoke. I was like, ‘This is a sign!’” “Falling Down” “This is one of the oldest tracks on the album. I made it when I was 18. I’m now 22. We actually remade this song about four or five times. I’m not just talking about remaking the beat—the song went up two semitones, the layers were also rerecorded and the song reached the mixing stage for one version but that version was eventually trashed. That version is never going to be heard by the world. But I came back to the original version after all because that feeling that came out of my voice only happened in that first version. There’s a reference to my mom in this [track]. She knows she’s one of the greatest, biggest things in my life. When she heard it, she wasn’t too surprised because she knows that I’ve mentioned her in a lot of my songs. But she was grateful and happy that she also gets to be a part of the album.” “It’s Aight” “This song…is basically about how you’re so sick of something and you’re in a relationship that’s so toxic that, at one point, you’re just like, ‘It’s all right—I know that you do this.’ It’s so hot and cold, to a point where you’re mentally just fried because of this relationship. You reach a point in a relationship where you want to stop solving the problems—when you want to stop but you’re still holding on because they are part of your life. I can visualise songs into colours and this has a very ‘green’ sound. It’s very jealous and toxic so I already knew the lyrics in my head and I knew exactly what to say. There’s a nice trap beat that gets the job done and hits the spot.” “Perfect Life” “It’s a song that would work commercially. We knew that when we decided to release this as the second single from the album. It’s something that people really haven’t heard from Tsumyoki before. In the music video, we go in a pop direction. I’ve not done this kind of pop before—where I’m on camera and dancing—except for in ‘Pink Blue’. I don’t think too deeply into my music, so when I feel happy, you’ll get a song like ‘Perfect Life’. If I feel pissed off, you’ll get a song like ‘Figure Out’.” “Feel Okay” “This is one of my favourite songs that I’ve produced, because of the drums. They are so raw and real and human. It’s not hard-hitting trap kicks and trap snares and stuff like that. It’s like something that you would make on your school desk. I came up with the melody; I just had this ukulele loop and went with it. I went into the studio and recorded that loop and went in this direction with the drums—I’d never [normally] do that—and everything just flowed so perfectly. The lyrics are about me getting out of a big hole of despair. It’s me taking a minute to appreciate the fact that I have a roof over my head. We’ve grown up privileged, some of us. The fact that I have parents who support me in my music, which is very rare in India, I was just so grateful for stuff like that. It’s one of the things that made me want to make this song.” “Run Away” “This is also one of the oldest songs I’ve made. Jaden [Maskie, fellow Goan artist] was 17 when we made this and I was 18 years old. This also went through many, many versions and it was rerecorded and everything like that, but we couldn’t match the vibe that we produced when we were young. The song is just about so much chaos and stuff going on around me. Even in the vocal delivery, you can see I’m giving it in a very lazy kind of way. Jaden came over to my place and we wrote his verse there. He [then] recorded it and his vocals are just, like, international-level pop star.” “On My Way” “This one was [written] about two years ago. Me and Elttwo [a member of Goa Trap Culture] sonically wanted to go to a place where… We saw [an Instagram] Reel about how to make a choir and that’s what we wanted to try out. And we thought we’ll do an Afrobeat and I had this hook idea. If I’m being honest, this is one of the least thought-out songs [in terms of the] lyrics. This is not a deep song, guys. This is commercial. You’re not catching me giving this song a deep meaning, but it sounds so freaking good.” “Fonkey Monkey” “This was not supposed to be on the album. It was just a song I made as a demo and it was on my laptop with a sample beat. It was not even fully made and just had a hook. I sent that hook to Elttwo ages ago and then for two years I didn’t work on the song. Elttwo told me, ‘Work on this song, bro. It’s gonna be great.’ He kept being persistent with it. I was, like, ‘Okay, you know what, I’ll make the song.’ And then I made it. And then I was, like, ‘Oh my God, why didn’t I listen to him earlier? This is insane.’ The title refers to the toy monkey figure [where] you twist the key to [make it work] and it goes clapping. So [it refers to] someone who thinks they can play you like that and you’re under their control. So I’m saying, ‘I’m not going to be your Fonkey Monkey.’ I knew that I needed someone to match the absolute crazy energy of this beat. And I knew that the only person who’s able to do that, personality wise, was Kidd Mange [also of Goa Trap Culture]. He absolutely killed it.” “Figure Out” “This is another track where you can hear I’m pissed. I was pissed off that day and I was, like, ‘Just get me in the studio right now. I need to record this.’ It was, like, this person has really screwed me over so bad that I just need to, like, take a step back and figure out what exactly I’m gonna do. But before taking a step back, I need to record the song. You can see that, genre-wise, I’m going into the rock kind of scene. That’s a little bit of homage to my dad. He used to play me so much rock music when I was a kid. I know a lot of songs but I don’t know the bands that made them. I thought that with the amount of genres I’m experimenting with [on the album], I’ll experiment with this one as well.” “Hard Enough” “It’s about my relationship with God, my relationship with religion, my relationship with my ex and my relationship with my life in general. It’s just me speaking about every single hardship I’ve felt, and the way that I have reacted to some of these hardships has made me feel like a monster. It has made me feel like part of that toxic system. This song made me realise, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been doing so many things wrong.’ I know life has done me wrong but that doesn’t justify me being a bad person.” “Baphomet” “This is about the scare of falling in love again. It’s telling me I’m falling in love. So, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening again.’ So I ask my Baphomet—they’re the devils behind me—would you chase me if I run? I feel like asking, ‘If I fall in love again, is the same thing going to happen?’ Like the last time that I fell in love, are my devils gonna chase me again?” “Blazing Over” “This is actually the oldest one on the whole project. We rerecorded the vocals, though, and didn’t need to go back to the original. This is about the kind of feeling you get when life is so overwhelming to you. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the [Japanese animated film] Your Name? It’s got that one shot where a meteor is kind of going through the sky. That exact shot made me use the phrase ‘blazing over’. It doesn’t make sense exactly, but it is about that moment when you’re just looking at a star and everything in life just feels explained. It feels like everything makes sense.” “Chicken Wings” “A long time ago, I told my ex, ‘If I ever make another song about you, it’s because of how many chicken wings we used to eat together.’ We always used to order KFC chicken wings. It’s about all the stuff that she put me through as well, but I call it ‘Chicken Wings’ because that was the most quality time that we used to spend together, eating chicken wings. It’s almost like a bonus track but it’s something I’ve gone through and a huge part of my life. For some reason, I just felt like that [this track] has to be there on the album and it has to be the last track. It was just a gut feeling and that’s why I went for it.”