Rollz Radio Episode 2 | Hosted by Rollz McGuyver
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Episode Summary
In this episode of Rollz Radio, I speak with Kontext – a rapper, entrepreneur, and writer from Estonia. I first discovered his work on Nostr through Primal, where his visual identity and overall presentation immediately stood out.
We talk about his musical creative process, an excerpt from his book, A Stoic Resurrection: Notes from the Journal of a Modern Stoic, and his journey into business. We listen to one of his tracks during the episode and break down the ideas, tools, and emotions behind it.
This conversation moves between music, business, open‑protocol culture, and the creative mindset required to build things independently on the internet.
Key Topics
- Discovering Kontext on Nostr/Primal
- How visual identity shapes listener perception
- The intersection of music production and the entrepreneur mindset
- Building a cohesive creative brand as an independent artist
- Breaking down one of Kontext’s tracks
- Estonia’s influence on his artistic style
- Open protocols, online communities, and creative independence
Featured Track
This episode features the track Sakura by Kontext with production by Nomad. The track blends Kontext vocals with an ambient rhythmic beat. We listen together and discuss the song and emotional intent behind the piece.
Chapter Markers
- 00:00 — Intro & Rollz McGuyver
- 00:40 — Discovering Kontext on Nostr
- 02:00 — First impressions of his creative identity
- 03:30 — Playing the featured track
- 05:00 — Track breakdown & influences
- 10:00 — Web development + music crossover
- 14:00 — Estonia’s creative environment
- 18:00 — Independent artist mindset
- 20:00 — Closing thoughts
Links & References
- Website: Kontext Official: Instagram, X | Linktree
- Business: Satoshee – The Winners’ Club
- Music: Music | Kontext
- Featured Track: Sakura | Kontext
- Book: A Stoic Resurrection – Kontext Store of Value
More Rollz Radio Episodes
Episode Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker 1
Rolls Radio.
00:00:01 Speaker 1
All right, so I’m joined today with Context, who is from Estonia.
00:00:11 Speaker 1
I discovered Context on a on Noster on Primal, actually.
00:00:16 Speaker 1
social media app.
00:00:17 Speaker 1
And I was just saying to him before we started this recording that his style interested me because he seemed like he had everything together when it came from a presentation of his work.
00:00:31 Speaker 1
Now, it spans from music to certain web development, but a whole bunch of other things.
00:00:37 Speaker 1
But I wanted to welcome to the show my guest today, Context.
00:00:40 Speaker 1
So, Context, how’s it going, man?
00:00:43 Speaker 2
I’m good.
00:00:44 Speaker 2
Thank you.
00:00:44 Speaker 2
Thank you for having me.
00:00:45 Speaker 2
It’s a pleasure to be here.
00:00:47 Speaker 1
Absolutely.
00:00:48 Speaker 1
So as I mentioned, so this is this format is here is I like to play some of your music and then just talk a little bit about it and then we can go wherever the conversation takes us after that.
00:00:57 Speaker 1
So I’m going to just grab a track that I found that kind of I liked that I spoke to me and then and then we’ll listen to it together and then we’ll talk through.
00:01:31 Speaker 3
See the cherry tree blossom
00:01:33 Speaker 3
Sense in my nostrils I could die slowly Turn into a carcass My knife is the sharpest Ready for the harvest But I can’t believe That this beauty left me heartless No time to obsess though I put on the harness Emerge from the darkness Get ready for the carnage Picking petals from the tree You are you, but who you trying to be?
00:01:58 Speaker 3
Can’t see
00:02:00 Speaker 3
Can’t breathe.
00:02:01 Speaker 3
**** ** away like the wind does with leaves.
00:02:04 Speaker 3
Mother Nature making honey just like the bees.
00:02:07 Speaker 3
I awake as I get another sniff with the breeze.
00:02:25 Speaker 3
Sweet aromas in the air.
00:02:28 Speaker 3
I’m dead.
00:02:29 Speaker 3
But I don’t even care My love is eternal, you can see it right there But life is a ***** it will never fight fair So I’m like, yeah, see you in a light year Embrace the silence, you see I’m not a hype man, but more of a calm dude Sent here to haunt you, so this is what I’m gon’ do I thought I warned you Thought I ******* warned you.
00:03:11 Speaker 1
Yeah, right on, man.
00:03:12 Speaker 1
So tell me a little bit about that track, both the lyrical, the production, and I don’t know, your kind of, your thought process, like when you were writing that.
00:03:20 Speaker 1
And even, I’d like to know a little bit about your recording.
00:03:22 Speaker 1
Just, I don’t know, what comes to you here.
00:03:25 Speaker 2
Well, the production, the instrumental was made by Nomad.
00:03:30 Speaker 2
a guy from the States actually that we collaborated with mostly in 2018, 2019.
00:03:36 Speaker 2
We did a couple of mixtapes together.
00:03:39 Speaker 2
That was sort of my first like more serious try at becoming a professional rapper.
00:03:49 Speaker 2
At the time, we had been making music with a couple of my close friends here in Estonia by then for a couple of years.
00:03:59 Speaker 2
But
00:04:00 Speaker 2
We never took it like super seriously.
00:04:03 Speaker 2
And at least I wanted to make some, recordings that would be, I would be okay with like putting up on the internet as well and hopefully make some, do some live shows and stuff as well.
00:04:19 Speaker 2
But we just weren’t like clicking in that way.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
And I just, I think me and Nomad, we met through Reddit or something.
00:04:30 Speaker 2
And we made a couple of mixtapes together.
00:04:34 Speaker 2
Those 2 didn’t get much traction either, to be honest.
00:04:40 Speaker 2
But I really liked his, I mean, he’s a great rapper as well, but I really liked his beats and I’m a terrible beat maker myself.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
So that beat, I don’t remember when he exactly sent it to me or
00:04:56 Speaker 2
when I even wrote those lyrics.
00:04:58 Speaker 2
But I remember I recorded this song when me and my friends had already, we started traveling and like backpacking in Australia and at the end of 2019.
00:05:14 Speaker 2
And I remember I recorded this one like beginning of 2020 or something.
00:05:19 Speaker 2
And that was sort of like the last one of that sort of epoch of my
00:05:25 Speaker 2
musical output, I would say, because from 2020 on until 2022, I didn’t really make much.
00:05:33 Speaker 2
And I was just like more focused on traveling, doing some, farm work in Australia and stuff and music sort of also because those, that single or the mixtapes, they weren’t like super, like I said, they weren’t super popular or anything.
00:05:50 Speaker 2
So it didn’t really motivate either.
00:05:52 Speaker 1
Sure,
00:05:54 Speaker 1
No, did you, what did you do for recording?
00:05:56 Speaker 1
Like, do you have a rig at your house or do you go out and record?
00:05:59 Speaker 1
How does, how do you kind of approach that side of things?
00:06:04 Speaker 2
Most of the times it’s just, I have a AKG P220 condenser mic and, how do you say it?
00:06:20 Speaker 2
a sound card for the laptop and that’s pretty much it.
00:06:24 Speaker 2
A pop killer and sometimes we try to make some room treatment and stuff and but mostly it’s pretty like DIY and pretty simple.
00:06:35 Speaker 1
Yeah, and I think I read somewhere and it was in your bio or somewhere on, but you did most of the everything self-taught as far as your audio production acumen is concerned, right?
00:06:47 Speaker 1
Yeah, it sounds good, man.
00:06:50 Speaker 1
And I don’t know, it’s just, it all, it always fascinates me.
00:06:54 Speaker 1
I think that the home studio thing is so cool because it kind of just, it brought so many people into the recording realm.
00:07:02 Speaker 1
I worked, I worked for a musical instrument company for a while and I got to kind of be really like in depth with different meeting different people.
00:07:12 Speaker 1
And so this is kind of that
00:07:13 Speaker 1
I don’t know, this is my way of trying to continuation and trying to bring music back, up when so many people are creating it, right?
00:07:21 Speaker 1
And a lot of it’s not getting listened to.
00:07:24 Speaker 1
So that’s kind of one of my driving forces and just to get to talk to folks like yourself.
00:07:31 Speaker 1
So, you know, context, I’d love to get into some more of your music and maybe we can do that on a different episode.
00:07:37 Speaker 1
But I do want to talk a little bit just real quick, just because you’ve got your, you’ve written a book.
00:07:42 Speaker 1
which I ordered.
00:07:44 Speaker 1
Stoic resurrection.
00:07:45 Speaker 1
And this is notes.
00:07:45 Speaker 1
And so I’m still reading through it, but there’s so many, there are so many powerful lines in this.
00:07:51 Speaker 1
And we had a little exchange where you’re telling me kind of it was a great way to document and reference your experiences in chronological order and then by category.
00:08:02 Speaker 1
So you’ve got a handful of different chapters on love, on freedom, on creativity.
00:08:08 Speaker 1
And, you know, obviously,
00:08:10 Speaker 1
I jumped right to on economics and entrepreneurship because it was the one that kind of, as I was reading through, and I think is relevant to the hustle of being a musician trying to get your work out there.
00:08:24 Speaker 1
And I’m going to read one quote here, and just to kind of get your reaction to talk through something, but it’s from that entrepreneurship and finances chapter, and it says, a business plan as a concept is redundant.
00:08:38 Speaker 1
There’s the business idea and the
00:08:40 Speaker 1
execution of the idea, both of which require a certain degree of elasticity, to be able to adapt to the constantly changing market conditions, aka reality.
00:08:50 Speaker 1
plan must change and evolve in tandem with the market.
00:08:53 Speaker 1
And that was May 14th of 2023 that you wrote that one.
00:08:58 Speaker 1
What was your, what’s your thought process in writing and do, does your, does your mindset, are you on one topic for a while or do you bounce back and forth?
00:09:08 Speaker 1
And then specifically, what was your thought process when writing this one particular, this quote?
00:09:18 Speaker 2
That’s a lot.
00:09:19 Speaker 2
That’s a lot to answer.
00:09:21 Speaker 2
Well, first of all, my thought process in general is it’s pretty random.
00:09:29 Speaker 2
I mean, a lot of the times I feel like, you know, I just recently posted something on Noster where I’m like, you know, I’m looking for a job because I’ve been working on my own business, which that passage was related to, because I was coming up with this idea and stuff.
00:09:48 Speaker 2
And I was like, I felt the need to make financial, what do you call them?
00:10:01 Speaker 2
Not predictions, but financial planning pretty much and stuff.
00:10:13 Speaker 2
And to
00:10:16 Speaker 2
try to evaluate how much of a market there is and how much you’re going to grow at these numbers or those numbers and whatever.
00:10:26 Speaker 2
And it’s like, well, I don’t even know what I’m really doing.
00:10:29 Speaker 2
So first of all, I’m going to try and see if it works at all at any scale.
00:10:35 Speaker 2
And then I can sort of like start, you know, extrapolating from that data.
00:10:41 Speaker 2
But especially if you’re doing something completely new, it’s like,
00:10:45 Speaker 2
You can’t plan for anything.
00:10:48 Speaker 2
And that’s, I think, one of the big like life lessons in general, because yeah, it’s like you can plan all you want, but at the end, like it’s your fate may have something completely different in store and you can’t really do much about it anyway.
00:11:05 Speaker 1
So it’s a trap.
00:11:06 Speaker 1
Planning is a trap.
00:11:09 Speaker 1
I always find myself getting anxiety when I make plans.
00:11:12 Speaker 1
My wife and I are funny like that, too.
00:11:14 Speaker 1
It’s like, we want there to be no plans at all.
00:11:17 Speaker 1
Get invited to something.
00:11:18 Speaker 1
It’s like, I don’t even want to be a part of this.
00:11:20 Speaker 1
Like, I’m cool just like being.
00:11:23 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:11:24 Speaker 1
So, all right, man, well.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
It’s hard not to have any plans as well, because like, yeah.
00:11:29 Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:31 Speaker 2
You have to think about tomorrow, That’s true.
00:11:33 Speaker 1
That’s true.
00:11:33 Speaker 1
Well, yeah, there’s different types of planning, right?
00:11:36 Speaker 1
It’s the unnecessary stuff that I got to get out of my life.
00:11:40 Speaker 1
But at any rate, so I want to, we’ll close with kind of you telling us where to find you, where folks can find you, but any closing thoughts just on your music or on your book or on your business before we give, we share your links.
00:11:59 Speaker 2
I would say that it’s all of life is a lesson.
00:12:07 Speaker 2
First of all, I mean, it sounds cliche and sounds, I don’t know, cheesy probably, but that’s how I’ve been taking it lately.
00:12:15 Speaker 2
And yeah, staying, staying humble is a real thing because, you know, even, even just planning too much or hoping too much about certain things or putting too much
00:12:28 Speaker 2
of your hope and too much of your well-being into things that you can’t really control that much is futile in the end.
00:12:37 Speaker 2
So yeah, for the book especially, I wrote that as coaching myself basically, because like, I’ve been sort of like, I failed at my music sort of career or dreams.
00:12:56 Speaker 2
at least making them a reality as quickly as I wanted to and finding an audience and stuff.
00:13:05 Speaker 2
So moving from that to new horizons and stuff, I felt like I needed some guidance, but there wasn’t really anyone that I could turn to that had like a similar experience and I never had like a mentor or anything.
00:13:22 Speaker 2
I mean, I have my father and I have my family and stuff, but
00:13:26 Speaker 2
they live quite a different life than I live and want to live.
00:13:29 Speaker 2
So it’s, you can’t really, ask, ask about jujitsu from, a chef or something, basically.
00:13:42 Speaker 2
So, the book is basically me coaching myself through life.
00:13:48 Speaker 2
But I still also make music.
00:13:50 Speaker 2
And I have the business running, although it’s not profitable and I will get another job as well, but I’m not I’m not shutting it down either.
00:13:58 Speaker 2
It’s like these things, the music especially, and it’s something that I need to do.
00:14:05 Speaker 2
I like I don’t need to do, but I love to do.
00:14:09 Speaker 2
Writing is more something that I at times I feel like I need to do because like I said earlier, I don’t usually like just
00:14:18 Speaker 2
Like I don’t sit down and I’ll be like, okay, now I’m going to write for two hours or now I’m going to write for 30 minutes or something.
00:14:24 Speaker 2
I write when something comes into my mind and I feel like, oh, it’s like **** like that’s pretty, that’s pretty insightful.
00:14:31 Speaker 2
That’s pretty interesting.
00:14:32 Speaker 2
I should write this down.
00:14:33 Speaker 2
And then yeah, sometimes it evolves into something larger.
00:14:37 Speaker 2
Sometimes it’s just one or two sentences of some random thought and that’s how it is.
00:14:44 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:14:44 Speaker 1
Yeah, and it’s funny about writing, music I found as I took, a little break when my kids were born, just because that was all my focus, I found just something to be missing in my life.
00:14:57 Speaker 1
So I needed to find a way to get that back and I’m connecting and this is how I can do that, right?
00:15:01 Speaker 1
I can really be in touch with musicians and music through this podcast.
00:15:05 Speaker 1
But the other things that I always come back to and
00:15:12 Speaker 1
I read the book Atomic Habits.
00:15:14 Speaker 1
I think it’s James Clear.
00:15:15 Speaker 1
And it’s basically the two things I always come back to, my atomic habits are journaling and meditation.
00:15:21 Speaker 1
If I can come back to those two things, if I just write one sentence, or if I just do, you know, sit quietly with myself for 60 seconds, the rest of it starts to fall into place.
00:15:31 Speaker 1
It’s like my mind starts sorting itself in different ways and I get stuff out onto paper.
00:15:36 Speaker 1
So the writing process.
00:15:37 Speaker 1
And so I’m trying, I’ve tried to
00:15:40 Speaker 1
incorporate all of that into my life in the best ways I can.
00:15:43 Speaker 1
It sounds like your resonate similarly.
00:15:46 Speaker 1
So let’s end this because I think we can have certainly more of these conversations.
00:15:50 Speaker 1
But where can people find you?
00:15:52 Speaker 1
What is the best place that you’d like to send people to find your work?
00:15:57 Speaker 2
I mean, the most straightforward place to go, I think, is context.ee.
00:16:03 Speaker 2
That’s context with a K.
00:16:06 Speaker 2
There you can find all my links to
00:16:09 Speaker 2
to the book, to the music, to the business, to my photography, to my socials.
00:16:16 Speaker 2
So anything in particular that you’re interested in about me or about my work, you can find from there.
00:16:24 Speaker 2
And yeah, I’m context on Noster, on Primal.
00:16:29 Speaker 2
That’s my like main social media, although elsewhere as well.
00:16:34 Speaker 2
And the book, even you can get it on Amazon as well, even if you want to.
00:16:39 Speaker 2
But I would appreciate if anybody is there who wants the hardcover version of it.
00:16:46 Speaker 2
The PDF is available for free, by the way, because I never believed in the necessity of copyright laws even before I got into Bitcoin and like cypherpunk themes and stuff.
00:17:00 Speaker 1
Yeah, right.
00:17:02 Speaker 2
But if anybody wants the hardcover, you can get it from Amazon, but I would appreciate it if you got it directly from my store, because that leaves a little bit less, a little bit more to me, and you get it at a little bit better price as well.
00:17:14 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:17:15 Speaker 1
Very cool.
00:17:15 Speaker 1
Well, I’ll post those links when I publish the episode, and it’s great having you, Context.
00:17:21 Speaker 2
Thank you for having me.