Buppy on Coming Up In Music Today, “hot B!” & More
Images via Benton Walter
modrNation: Where are you originally from?
Buppy.: I’m from Park City, Utah, but now I’m staying in Los Angeles.
modrNation: How do you feel growing up there led to you wanting to make music?
Buppy.: Park City didn’t have much of a music scene at all, there were a few kids in high school that rapped and stuff but that was it. We did have a library that had a studio in it that was just public access. It had a scarlett interface and stuff, I think it was more for podcasting but I would just go in there and make music all day. That helped me get access to equipment that I didn’t have at home, but besides that there wasn’t much of a music scene in Utah. I got to see a lot of bands that would perform in Salt Lake, so I would drive like 40 minutes to Salt Lake where I’d see shows and go to other studios. There was this band called The Backseat Lovers that I grew up watching play around Salt Lake all the time. When you start playing music in Utah you realize everyone’s playing the same venues so it was cool seeing people come through and sell out these three to four-hundred cap rooms. That was really it, just the studio and the live music made me want to play a lot of shows and perform with a band.
modrNation: How do you think your approach to music has changed during your time in LA?
Buppy.: My approach in general just shifted from me wanting to make rap music like Odd Future and Mac Miller, since I’ve been here I shifted gears and found this passion for more melodic alternative type of music. That shift is what took me from 200 listeners in 2021 to where I’m at now.
modrNation: And you’re dropping your newest single December 1st?
Buppy.: Yeah it’s coming on December 1st and it’s called “hot B!”, it’s a mix between a lot of genres… anti-pop and alternative to name a few. It also has my girlfriend's voice on it and she wrote some of it which is cool, my best friend, DXCKLIN, produced it with me so I’m really excited for it.
modrNation: What was the creative process like while making that one?
Buppy.: Honestly we were just messing around for a few hours, my homie came over to my place and we were working out of my room. Usually we work out of nicer studios but this time we were just at my bedroom studio with myself, him and my girlfriend. We wrote most of the song before the production was done, and we knew we wanted to do this idea with Gretta’s voice, it was originally my voice but we thought it’d be sick if she sang it instead. We made it in like two hours, sent it to mastering and were ready to drop it.
modrNation: You and your girlfriend work together on a lot of your tracks, what’s the work flow like when making music with her?
Buppy.: It’s just fun, she’s really talented with guitar and a lot of other stuff even more so than I, but she isn’t fully aware of the studio recording process so it’s been cool getting to teach her on that front and watching her do the same shit I did four years ago when I first stepped into that library booth. It’s a cool process, especially getting to do it with my friends, everything’s fun and it’s always relaxed.
modrNation: How do you feel being so young has affected the way you release and promote your music? Do you see it as coming with challenges or more so of a leg up?
Buppy.: I think it has its benefits in the way that I have some sort of shelf life, I’ve got time. There’s definitely cons too, the internet will always clown on young kids and you’ll always get more hate being young, which you’ll also get being super old.I try to cater to people my age or younger, in the way that I understand the struggle of the first years of adulthood, that’s what a lot of my writing is about.
modrNation: What is the intention behind your music?
Buppy.: There’s a lot of intentions, but mainly just to make people feel shit and do something different. I want to give people something new that they’ve never heard before. I play around with a lot of genres and different types of music, and I just want to give people something new and unique, sophisticated but also fun. That’s my main goal, just to make people feel something.
modrNation: What would you say is the importance of finding your own identity and individuality as an artist and a person in a time where so many people are making music?
Buppy.: I struggle with that every day, wondering if I’m individual enough. After you’ve had three or four viral moments, that's when I feel like people are really being let into your world and they’re receiving it well. If they’re taking multiple songs of yours and blowing them out of the water they have to like you as a human being at that point. It’s important to not only find individuality, but share your world. Share your quirky weird shit, take the video in your room when you think your room is ugly because maybe somebody wants to see your room, if you’re not this dude outside with a ton of money, then don’t be that guy online, don’t be some shit you’re not. I’m just an eighteen year old living in Los Angeles, I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary. I pick up the phone and film at my job or at home and I think that’s what people enjoy. That’s why I have this community where people come and talk to me online because they see I’m just a regular person.
modrNation: Where do you see yourself five years from now?
Buppy.: Damn I don’t know, somewhere hopefully. Shit will pan out pretty well I think, I think I’ll just be happy. I think I’ll financially rely on music a lot more, my two goals with this are to live off of it and be able to hire someone to follow me around with a camera because I love the visual side of it as well. I want to produce for other artists as well. Mainly though I just want to be enjoying what I’m doing.