In the heart of the musical underground, where memory meets movement and sound becomes ceremony, there’s an artist whose work pulses with the beat of ancestral love and unshakable truth, whose story runs deep.
Talon BAZILLE Ducheneaux, from the Cheyenne River Lakota and Crow Creek Dakota Nations, is a rapper, producer, sound designer, and creative force who has been shaping his path in hip hop since age 13, guided early on by his uncles and a love for storytelling. Though he paused his music to pursue a psychology degree at the University of Pennsylvania, it was there, hosting a radio show for underground artists, that he reconnected with the power of his voice and the responsibility of using it.
From his groundbreaking 51-track album Sake to launching the Wonahun Was’te’ mobile studio for his home community, BAZILLE has kept one constant: music as medicine. Whether he’s crafting futuristic soundscapes with “Traveling the Multiverse with Iktomi,” performing at We the Peoples Before, or building kinship through the Wicahpi Olowan Music Studio & Program, BAZILLE is moving with purpose and making sure others rise with him.
With his latest release, Creator Bless the Underground, he brings it all full circle: memory, movement, mourning, and momentum. Creator Bless the Underground isn’t just an album. It’s a love letter to the unseen, a symphony of grief, gratitude, and grounded resistance. In this interview, BAZILLE takes on a journey through the spirit behind the sound.
Q. As someone rooted in Crow Creek Dakota and Cheyenne River Lakota identities, how do your homelands and kinship ties inform the spirit behind your work, not just in music, but in life?
It’s a complex thing, honestly. My bloodlines are from those two places, but I’ve also spent important parts of my life in places like Saint Francis & Mission on the Rosebud reservation, Rapid City, but the feelings are the same.
On one end, I’m constantly inspired. I look back at everything I’ve experienced, even before my dad was attending college off the reservation, until I was in the 4th grade, and I try to treat it like any other movie or piece of pop culture that I might get inspired by. It’s all fresh in my brain, and even though I’m not necessarily directly referencing anyone outright, there are moments in my music where I’m trying to pay tribute to someone, something, some experience or lesson.
On the opposite end, though, lies a heavy guilt and pressure. Everything I do in my music and performance is genuinely because I envision and enjoy it to be the way it comes out. So I’d hate ever to think I’d be disgracing or dishonoring where and who I come from. Wearing face paint, for example, has its own meaning, which, to me, is me. But it’s not some exploitation thing I’m trying to do to “wow” an audience. After performing sporadically without it from 2012-2021, almost 10 years, it’s just something I genuinely saw for my art.
Q. Your work often blends Indigenous philosophy with science fiction, poetry, and hip hop. Where do those creative intersections come from for you?
Whether at my grandma’s house in Bad Nation or wherever my parents were each moving, I saw refuge in entertainment, music, and performance. Television, radio, and the internet, which I understand some people can see as harmful or addictive, and I get that, but for me in my life, those things were like hatch pods for my mind.
I’d watch and listen to rap battles, old radio horror bits from the 30s, Art Bell episodes, John Carpenter movies, interviews with artists, any music biopic or anthology about music, documentaries, etc. And with the internet, I could always deep dive into artists’ catalogs while I waited for all these things to download, upload, refresh, buffer, etc. (back then).
For some reason, staying in that mode of celebrating the things I love, I’ve always been motivated to do my own thing, make my own creation.
Q. Wonahun Was’te’ Studios carries a name that speaks to healing and good sound—what does it mean to you to create space for others to record and share their voices?
Wonahun Was’te’ was a great start for this journey that I’m still on today, thanks to the new program I’ve been a part of, Wicahpi Olowan Music Program/Recording Studio (wicahpiolowan.org), made possible via First Peoples Fund and in partnership with Playing For Change Foundation. To be able to record artists and work on different music programming events and workshops is like a dream come true for me. I’ve said before that the music fulfills me, and I’m always happy.
Getting to see or in some way/shape/form be a small smidgeon of a part of another artist’s work/growth is a privilege beyond explaining for me. I dream of seeing Native musicians everywhere from every era, past, present, and future, getting some love and shine, and documenting these historic things in every tribe/nation. So, hearing different voices in one space is such a positive feeling.
Q. Now, let’s talk about Creator Bless the Underground. How does this album reflect where you are as an artist and person?
Honestly, I’ve gone through a lot of tragedy in recent years. I try to hold it as gently and positively as possible, but in my private life, I am often hurting, and in my healing process, still.
This album signifies the completion of the mission I had as a boy with my cousins, brothers, and sisters. I’ve never rolled a project out exactly like this before, and I know the market has maybe gone past physical CDs, but as someone who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, that’s the dream. But fighting through that silly self-doubting feeling is what this project was about, to finally follow through and make the booklet, edit the documentary, and spend the years curating the sounds.
I’m so grateful for music that I couldn’t ask for anything, so this project is about accepting where I stand in my art.
Q. How did the Creator Bless the Underground concept first come to you, and did it shift during the creative process?
I knew I wanted to do this project before I knew the name. I’ve been itching to pull the trigger on an album effort like this one, but I constantly second-guess it and would revert to a different project. Initially, I wanted to make official plans for 2020, but ultimately, I waited.
One day, I uncovered an old hard drive of mine, and in it were all of these songs by Native artists from the mid-2000s and underground rappers’ songs that I had collected over the years. I sat there listening to them, reminiscing and remembering things long forgotten, “Man… thank God for the underground because that’s crazy,” I laughed…. “Yeah, actually… Creator, bless the underground….”.
That motivated me not to second-guess this time.
Q. You’ve included a range of collaborators, from vocalists to visual artists to producers. How did you choose who to work with for this album?
It kind of just all depends on timing. I don’t like to force anything, and collaborating is one of those things that I get shy about asking about. So when I muster up the courage, I try to ensure that things make sense for everyone. How can I bring on an artist I like a lot, but in a way where they can naturally shine in their truth and who they are? There will often be themes or attitudes in my music, and I can hear right away who would fit each bill.
What’s cool about this is that these artists will thus connect to it in ways I never anticipated! Production-wise, each featured producer that isn’t me is Lakota. Particularly, it was exciting to have Klair RedDog (Kari) produce a beat, a young relative of mine from Eagle Butte, and then Franc Castle (aka Genocide) produce a track on the same project. Franc is a legend and someone I’ve looked up to since middle school. He consistently produces these beats that, to me, sound like the soundtracks to our rez there. And then folks like Maiki with the visual art. We met at the Oglala Lakota Artspace, where I work, and she had all these beautiful pieces that blended similar things to my music, especially in this album. I’m so happy and grateful to her and all the other contributors.
I usually guilt-trip myself into solo-works, so I didn’t take their offerings lightly.
Q. You mention that making your own 38 +2 song, “Like 38”, was a particularly happy moment for you. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind that track?
Yes! As some may know, the Dakota 38+2 still stands as the largest mass execution in US History, signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862. I have cousins who participate in the memorial ride each year with their horses, and I’ve always been inspired by that and the history they’ve acknowledged.
In my reflections as I’ve learned this history, I feel some parallels. The scarcity that many of our people and communities still live in, and the types of things that can result from it. Moreover, I felt strongly about how it was reported when the 38 Dakota Men had to approach death and wanted to express that, too. So, while it’s not necessarily a “happy” history, I feel happy that I finally put my song/tribute together after some years of attempts.
Q. You’ve called this album a “symphony of rap, philosophy and love for hip hop and the art.” What do you hope listeners, especially Indigenous youth, take away from it?
My sincere hope is that anyone who listens to my music feels validated within themselves. I’m a Nobody, Taku Sni, and I’m proud of that. I’m proud to be overlooked by many of my peers, and in a sense, I’m proud of feeling like this hidden thing in this “Indigenous Music” world. It means I can speak to those who also feel the same.
That’s what this album is about.
It’s about being truthfully yourself, because not only will you need it, but the universe needs it. We’re in a very serious time right now. Lies and deception rule the industry in a way that the game feels devoid of principle on so many levels. The more we are honest with ourselves and in our extensions/connections to the universe, the more we will all find the good things we are looking for.
Q. After completing Creator Blessed the Underground and pouring so much of yourself and your passion into this album, what lessons are you taking away from the whole process and experience? What comes next?
From this album, I’ve learned the very thing I set out to achieve: acceptance of whatever I am and how it is accepted or rejected in the world. I’m very aware that I’m not an adored artist here.
I don’t feel like many like me, or if they did, that I must’ve done something along the way to ruin the reputation they once saw in me. Not gonna lie, that hurts.
But this project taught me to keep going. Maybe there’s a planet that understands me better, or some place on this one, some community or stage, even if just for the night. I’ll never know them, and they’ll never know me, if I don’t do this. So I am in a committed relationship when it comes to the music I make and the dance I dance.
Next? After this, I just want to continue. I’ll never stop, for better or worse, but I feel that this project is kind of “it” for me. So who knows if there’ll ever be a proper promo rollout and everything like this again, but I’ll keep creating. I feel like something bad will happen if I don’t.
In a time when trends fade fast and realness is rare, BAZILLE shows us what it means to create from the marrow, to build spaces where Native voices are heard and honored. He builds universes where Native brilliance is standard, not an exception. Whether mentoring youth or curating soundscapes, Bazille moves with a purpose rooted in healing and memory.
He knows what it is to be overlooked and what it means to keep going anyway. BAZILLE offers something rare: sincerity, sovereignty, and soul in an industry often fueled by noise and ego. His work reminds us that the underground has always been sacred ground, and those who move through it with intention are not just artists, but healers.
Whatever comes next for Bazille, one thing is clear: he won’t stop. Not because he’s chasing fame, but because creation is ceremony, and the beat is the blessing.
