For those that don’t know me personally, I’ll let you in on a fact about myself. I am a huge fan of Herobust. That’s why when I found out he was playing at the Original Festival in Butte, Montana, I knew I had to go.
Herobust, Bear Grillz, PhaseOne, Sam Lachow, Twin Peaks, Trollphace, LAXX, and more headlined the show that went on from the 8th of September to the 9th. I got the amazing opportunity to interview Herobust at the festival before he played. Here’s what was said during the 2nd night of the festival.
Herobust Interview – OG Fest
Q: Let’s talk about your new track, Debt N Eight!
Herobust: Yeah, it’s definitely on some riddim inspired sh*t, but very much in the same metallic sound, like the “I’m Aloud” EP sort of sound pallet. You’ll hear it tonight. It’s really dope, I’m super stoked about it. When new sounds and new trends pop up, it’s fun to put your own spin on it and experiment with things. Riddim is super fun, obviously, so as a producer it’s definitely something I wanted to play with.
Q: I wanna talk about your track titles. How did the puns start?
Herobust: Well first of all the nomenclature of projects while you’re making a song, everybody does goofy stupid sh*t. A lot of times you don’t know what the song is gonna be called until the very end. So you might have a folder called “goofy bass clown track 4.8.final/ReallyReallyFinalThisTime/NewVersion. Actually, I think it was Louis the Child, they just put out a record of all songs where they clearly didn’t rename any of the songs. It was just like “stupid beat, fun song”. But What I’m saying is that everybody has some weird little naming process they do. Its just them messing around with the names. I guess for me it’s kinda cool to keep that intact, obviously. I’d make a song, where there’d be a premise, like Debt N’ Eight has “time bomb” ticking sounds and explosions and stuff like that. So I decide what that’s gonna be called, then I think “how can I phonetically say that using other words. It’s not something I really set out to do, I just did it for the first album I ever put out or whatever, and when fans really latched onto it, they were like “hey this is funny” or whatever, so I decided to just keep it going. I think it comes naturally to me because music people are into sound so when you hear words you hear it phonetically, versus what you see it as. It’s just natural for me to break it down like that.
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Q: How do you feel about the internet in the music business?
Hayden: I think the internet has obviously been awesome for independent music, it definitely tore down a lot of barriers for independent artists. It has helped me spread MY music to so many people. I’m going to play Thailand in two weeks, there wouldn’t have been any way my music could reach over there. We just did a world tour, and went all through China, India, and Australia. I never could have done that without the internet so that’s awesome. But it’s also a double edged sword. Bands back in the day, there was so much more mystique when you’d see them at the show, you’d be waiting for the show for two months, you’d just get a glimpse and then they’d be gone, and the rest’d be all up to your imagination. Nowadays you can see them every single day. As a performer, and as an artist you’re supposed to be documenting your whole life, so there’s no more of that mystique. In some ways it’s really honest, in other ways I feel like it doesn’t allow you to have as much hype. You could literally tweet your favorite or least favorite entertainer and you could say anything, so it’s good and bad.
Q: What are some rookie mistakes that you’ve seen people make when trying to pursue a career like you as a producer or as a DJ?
Hayden: The most common thing people do is that they stop. Every time you see somebody that’s successful in entertainment, even if it seems like they just blew up out of nowhere, they were grinding for a long ass time before that. Obviously, you didn’t see them, because they weren’t successful yet. It always seems like they blow up right away, but it’s very rarely the case. Flosstradamus blew up out of nowhere, they had been doing Flosstradamus for nearly 10 years, it’s crazy. To some extent, I honestly believe that you will make it 100% of the time if you just keep doing it long enough. Can you afford to continue to grind at it until you get there. Maybe, maybe not, that’s up to you. As soon as you give up there’s a 0% chance, so that’s a big one. A lot of times fan-type people who’ll be like “yo I’m trying to make it” and stuff and they’ll say “this is the reason why I’m not making it”, you can just tell that they’re already discouraged, and they’re gonna stop. they’ll quit and get another job.
The best advice I ever got in this industry was always blame yourself for everything. It’s not always true, but it’ll always behaviorally affect you in the right way. Maybe it really was a majority of somebody else’s fault, but you could have done something to help your chances. With successful people that’s just how they are. They do everything they can to put themselves in the situation to succeed. The pattern of blaming other people, in the end you’re not gonna get what you want. Just don’t stop
Q: What do you like to do outside of music that you think contributes to your creativity?
Hayden: One thing I like to do to preserve my perspective is that I don’t listen to electronic music, especially if I’m at home during writing season. I don’t go on Soundcloud, I don’t listen to other people’s music. Not because I don’t like it, but because I want my music to come out purely just me exploring new ideas. Also listening to other types of music, you can be just as inspired from that as you can listening to your own style. Most people listen to their own style, and they’d say “Oh I like that, I’m gonna incorporate it into my own music.” Well your music was already so similar to that. It’s different that listening to Coletrane or Miles Davis and being like “whoa I like how they did that, I could incorporate that into what I’m doing” and suddenly you’ve created something that wasn’t either of those things. Drawing inspiration from further away, it’s cool. I have friends that design clothes, and I’ll be around their print-making studio or screen printing studio, and I’ll be inspired to make something just based off watching them do something like that. It’s different than hearing a song that’s similar to what you do. So in a nutshell you can be inspired by anything. It doesn’t have to be music.
Herobust and I at Original Festival 2017
Q: Where is the music industry right now and where is it going?
Hayden: The music industry is just post- this awesome window when independent music was just crushing it. Record sales and labels’ revenue streams were crushed when everybody started sharing torrents through Napster and all that, then iTunes happened, and so they [the labels] were out of a ton of money. Then comes stuff like Soundcloud where you’re taking radio out of the picture. The radio had a monopoly on people in terms of exposure. They’ll show you what you like and then you choose out of those very limited options, on what you are gonna like and support. On the radio it’s Pay-To-Play so people are paying money to get on the radio, and then in turn, their record sells. Then you have this period where Soundcloud and other sites like Bandcamp were blowing up, and radio was losing listeners. Nobody listens to the radio now. You could have people like me or LAXX or even $uicideboy$, and all those people, we never could have blown up before. We don’t have the money to put songs on the radio and sh*t like that. Now what you’re seeing is Soundcloud falling off as Spotify is coming into power, so the major labels are making their record sales money back in terms of streaming revenue. Power is returning back to the larger entities. Not only that, they’re getting to control it like they used to. It’s not using radio anymore, now it’s using massive Spotify playlists. I’m not gonna say it’s Pay-To-Play on those things but it very well could be just the same way the radio was. It’s all still good, Spotify is awesome, as a person who listens to music, but the opportunity that independent artists had was so much greater when radio was dead and Soundcloud was killing it, because so many artists blew up out of that era.
Q: Okay here are a few non-serious questions. Do you prefer sweet or savory food?
Hayden: Definitely savory.
Q: Do you have a favorite food?
Hayden: Not really, I don’t really discriminate. I will say this though. During the tour in China, I loved that food. It’s nothing like American-Chinese food at all, but it was so good, and you felt really good because it was healthy.
Q: Are there any rappers right now that you’d like to collaborate with?
Hayden: Oh of course. I wanna work with Travis Scott, Denzel Currey, I wanna work with Wintertime, Lil’ Yachty. Three Stacks is the best rapper alive in my opinion.
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One of Travis Scott’s most popular tracks
Q: What music gets you inspired?
Hayden: I love listening to rap music, and electronica. Not EDM, but electronica. That’s the music that got me into electronic music in the first place. I didn’t go to a rave, with progressive house or stuff like that. I was listening to Aphex Twin when I was 10. If you’re making music with a computer there are so many things that you can do with it, as opposed to just the 4 or 5 genres that are poppin with EDM.
Q: Who have you run into that you would never expected to because of your musical career.
Hayden: There are a lot. First of all, all of these people. I didn’t expect to be doing this in the first place. GZA was crazy to run into, because I’m a big hip-hop person. Then we were doing this tour with Troy [Datsik], and he had GZA doing the whole Liquid Sword album. That was awesome. Nas was dope. One of the weirder ones was Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters. It was at Voodoo. I was standing on the mainstage, and I could just feel him looking at me in my peripheral. They were about to play, I had already played that day, and I just wanted to see them, because they’re f**king awesome. I could just feel him just looking at me, like “who’s this guy? He shouldn’t be here”. So I’m just waiting, playing it cool. I know he’s either gonna send somebody or come over. He walks over and he’s like “What’s up?” and I say “What’s up, man”, and I know he’s about to ask me to leave, and he looks at my lanyard, and asks “you’re an artist?” and I say “Kind of”. He says “I knew it!!” I say “I’m a DJ”, and we both laughed, and I was trying to compliment live music. He let me stay, and I watched them, that was really cool. Another sick one was actually my old guitar teacher. He ended up becoming really successful in a band called The Wood Brothers. Its a folk/blues duo. It’s him and his brother. They’re massive in that world. Obviously I don’t see him at EDM festivals, but at regular ones like Lollapalooza and stuff like that, I’ll see “Wood Brothers” on the lineup. One time, I ran into him at the festival, and he barely recognized me. He asked who I was, and I said “it’s Hayden, you taught me the guitar like 15 years ago” or whatever, and he’s like “holy sh*t.” It was so funny though, like, I think he felt proud that I was a musician that was successful, but when he found out that I wasn’t playing in a band, it was so funny. You could tell that it was a bittersweet thing. That was probably the craziest one though.
Q: Anything else you wanna say?
Hayden: I’m moving back to Atlanta from New York, so expect some more hip-hop and rap music and stuff. I don’t know if that means me producing for rappers to be radio hit type music right away, or if that means I’ll be getting more rappers on my sh*t. Either way, I know nobody can affect what influences or inspires them. It just happens to you. You can count on my music getting more back to dirty south trap and sh*t like that.
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