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On a hulking gray building on a wide boulevard once bisected by the Berlin Wall, a silver call button grants access to an expansive, shadowy, unfurnished foyer. Ascend a winding set of stairs and open the door at the top, and you’ll find the office of the CEO: South Korea-born Peggy Gou, who has swiftly become the world’s most in-demand female DJ-producer working in dance music today.
Inside Gou HQ, the bright overhead lights contrast with the early-April rain outside. The sprawling room — which has a vibe that’s more “friend’s apartment” than sterile corporate sanctum — is outfitted with a wooden meeting table, full bookshelves and a plush green velvet couch from which Tasos Filippou, Gou’s touring manager, arises to serve Gou and me black coffee in little terra cotta mugs on peace sign-shaped coasters. Gou wears baggy jeans, a black sweater that covers her many tattoos and sunglasses with silver reflective lenses that offer only occasional glimpses of her eyes. Her hair is piled in a loose bun, her skin is flawless, and even in casual mode, she’s giving cool-girl glamour. She offers a quick handshake, closes the window to make sure the room is quiet, then sits down to attend to business.
In the last 12 days, her slick brand of house has taken her to Miami, Mexico City and Buenos Aires. Of course, it’s not unusual for DJs to party hop across continents — what’s less typical for a DJ is having an office. But Gou’s story is defined by a business acumen that could be characterized as corporate hustle if it didn’t also happen inside dark techno clubs.
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A Korean woman in a scene dominated by white men, Gou, 32, has orchestrated her own dizzying rise, immersing herself in Berlin’s electronic scene upon moving here 10 years ago, then ascending to white-hot producer/fashion tastemaker thanks to last summer’s viral single, and her first Billboard chart hit, “It Goes Like (Nanana).” This new ubiquity — ever-higher billing at the world’s major music festivals, a German Vogue cover, a 2024 BRIT Award nomination for international song of the year — has neatly teed up Gou’s debut album, I Hear You, coming June 7 through eminent indie label XL Recordings.
The rare self-managed marquee artist, Gou has achieved much of her success on her own, and the room we’re sitting in functions as an extension of the command center in her mind.
“I remember meeting managers who told me, ‘I can make your life easier,’ ” Gou recalls. “I was like, ‘How? Tell me.’ Even if you take care of all these emails, you still have to come back to me because no one can make decisions for me. Every decision has to come from me.”
Peggy Gou photographed March 26, 2024 at Maison Celeste in Mexico City. Sentimiento tracksuit, Tercer Mundo vest, Cruda shoes, AYANEGUI earrings and necklace.
Aaron Sinclair
These decisions have produced an expansive business that includes heavy touring; A-list brand deals; her label, Gudu Records; and a merchandise line, Peggy Goods. With strong fan bases across continents, Gou will next be raising her profile even more in the United States ahead of and beyond I Hear You’s release.
“Because Peggy has such an incredible touring footprint globally,” XL Recordings head of U.S. campaigns Laura Lyons says, “in the U.S., we’re in a position where, because we haven’t historically had her in the market as much, we need to build on the moments when she’s here in person and also translate the excitement of an international, globe-trotting DJ to the local market.”
One week and 6,000 miles later, the odds will look clearly in Gou’s favor.
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The first time Gou played Coachella, in 2018, the line to get into her show wrapped around the at-capacity Yuma Tent where she was performing at three in the afternoon. “Even one person not being able to see my set, that upsets me,” she says. “So I was like, ‘Maybe next time, I play a bigger stage.’ ”
On the first night of the 2024 festival, that “maybe” has become a firm “for sure.” Gou presides over the Sahara Tent — Coachella’s biggest and most established dance music mecca — from atop a towering stage as an emoji version of herself smiles at the audience from massive LED screens. With the newly expanded Sahara Tent stretching 320 feet, not including spillover — almost a football field long — it’s likely Gou’s crowd is the largest ever assembled to see a female producer in Coachella history. (After the set, she shares Instagram Stories of herself backstage hanging with J Balvin, getting chummy with Will Smith and then getting a burger from an In-N-Out somewhere in the Coachella Valley.)
In March, Gou made her debut at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, and in May, she’ll play dance mega-festival EDC Las Vegas for the first time. These shows, “from a perception point of view,” Lyons says, “are going to broaden [her] audience from this more underground electronic fan to a more mainstream kind of electronic base.”
Cueva top and skirt, Ket Void jacket, Cruda shoes. Floral Art Installation by Flores Cosmos.
Aaron Sinclair
That might be anathema to some purists, particularly those steeped in the techno-as-religion culture of Berlin. But Gou has been able to maintain her underground cred even while blowing up. The early-April screening of the music video for I Hear You’s third single, “1+1=11,” happened at a smoky Berlin club where the techno went until 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, and her friend group includes revered producers like Four Tet and Floating Points, whom she was recently hanging with in Mexico City. “I love those guys,” she says. “So nerdy. Like, ‘Guys, stop talking about how fat your drum is.’ ”
I suggest to Gou that her underground pedigree, paired with a forthcoming debut album that’s refreshingly accessible, might make her uniquely well-suited for the United States, where the so-called “underground” styles of house and techno have become the scene’s prevailing commercial forces in the live space. For her, that idea is beside the point. “Some people are like, ‘She’s really underground,’ or ‘She’s commercial,’ ” Gou says. “I don’t care. I’m just going to keep doing my thing and you can say what you want.”
Growing up in South Korea’s third-most populous city, Incheon — where she was born Kim Min-ji — Gou listened to “sh-t,” “good music” and “everything.” She lived in the shadow of her older brother, who’s “like super genius, one of the crazy Mensa IQ people.” Meanwhile, “Study wasn’t my thing. I was kind of rebel. So if you tell me to stay here, I will not stay there. If you tell me to go, I will stay. I didn’t like people telling me what to do even from when I was a kid.”
Her parents, recognizing that their 14-year-old was not “doing well” in South Korea, asked if she wanted to study English in London; she did. In the United Kingdom, Gou lived with guardians but snuck out to parties, fostering a clubbing habit that matriculated with her into the London College of Fashion. She began DJ’ing, booked her own residency at a club in Shoreditch, finished school, moved to Berlin and worked at a record store by day while she was indoctrinated into techno by night. “After one month, I’m like, ‘OK,’ ” she says flatly of her first trips to the city’s notoriously exclusive techno institution, Berghain. “Three months later” — her voice grows louder and more forceful — “ ‘OK.’ Five months later, I was like, ‘I finally get it.’ ”
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By 2016, she was making her own music, and by 2018, revered dance label Ninja Tune was releasing it. She started her own Gudu Records in 2019; that same year, she released the groovy house track “Starry Night,” which featured her singing in Korean and became a dance world hit.
All the while, she was touring. As her own manager, “I was the only person who was pushing me,” she says. “I didn’t need to be there. I didn’t have to do that. I think I got hyped. I got too excited about the shows and getting many shows.” In 2019, she played in 25 countries, including some, like Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that are far from the well-trod dance world circuit.
“Imagine a bullet train,” Gou says, speaking rapidly. “This was me in 2019. When it stopped, it didn’t stop slowly; it had to stop super fast.”
When the pandemic started, she returned to South Korea and spent three months at home — the longest amount of time she had been with her family since she was 14. She recharged even as life in South Korea — which introduced what many considered one of the world’s best COVID-19 control programs — continued without large-scale lockdowns. (“Asian culture is different because when you have a flu, you wear a mask,” she says, “so it was not that difficult for Asian people to keep the rules.”)
In Incheon, Gou had the time and head space to focus on music. She echoes a pandemic-related refrain prevalent among DJs who tour heavily: “It was a hard time for a lot of people, but for me, it was one of the best things that happened to me.”
Peggy Gou photographed March 26, 2024 at Maison Celeste in Mexico City. Sentimiento top, Tiempos pants, Tercer Mundo belt, Frank Zapata shoes, AYANEGUI necklace. Batán Chairs by Taller Batán.
Aaron Sinclair
She kept working upon her return to Berlin in mid-2020, finding that the ’90s dance music she was listening to during the pandemic had “changed my taste.” While she had been making her debut album for a while, she decided to make ’90s dance the center of the project, evident in the interplay of the bass and chimes on a track like “Lobster Telephone,” which sounds like it’s sprinkled with powdered sugar. The “It Goes Like (Nanana)” bassline is pure Jock Jams — the 1995 compilation that introduced a generation of suburban adolescents to dance music — and has helped the song aggregate 72.2 million on-demand official U.S. streams and 565.3 million on-demand official global streams to date, according to Luminate. Altogether, the album, on which she sings in both Korean and English, is dance music distilled down to its most polished essentials — and you don’t have to be a hardcore fan of the genre to get into it.
The sonic opposite of EDM maximalism, I Hear You may very well represent the future of main-stage electronic music. “In my career, I never once thought, ‘I’m on the next level now,’ ” she says. “Only when ‘Nanana’ happened did I realize that people were recognizing my song before my face. That’s when I really realized, ‘F–k, this is different.’ ”
Gou’s North American agent, Stephanie LaFera of WME (which represents her worldwide), says the song’s success has created “significant growth in her U.S. audience” that’s “only increasing the demand for her.” LaFera is focused on opportunities that serve Gou’s “super-engaged fan base that cuts across a lot of different spheres” while also introducing her to new listeners.
“For [“It Goes Like”] to become this global song of the summer and be Peggy’s first song to hit No. 1 on the U.S. dance radio charts was just such a fantastic tone-setter for this album,” Lyons adds, “and for what we believe she’s capable of achieving in the U.S.”
If you’re Peggy Gou, it’s entirely possible that the person seated across from you at Thanksgiving dinner may turn out to be Lenny Kravitz — which was exactly the case when, in 2022, she went to a friend’s house in Miami for the holiday.
“He had absolutely no idea who I was,” Gou recalls. “The only thing I could mention was that I did [two songs] for [his daughter] Zoë’s movie [The Batman].” It was a solid in. The pair talked over turkey, and her friend told Kravitz to check out Gou’s music. Not long after, Kravitz asked if she wanted to collaborate.
She sent Kravitz a track — a song that she had struggled to find a singer for after artists including The Weeknd and Giveon turned it down — and heard nothing back. “So I decided to go to the Bahamas,” where Kravitz lives, she says. “My friend was like, ‘You want to have Lenny Kravitz on your album? F–king book your flight, go there and get it.’ ” There was, Gou says, some “opinion clash” during the recording process, as “I’m a perfectionist and he’s perfectionist.” She adds with a smile, however, that Kravitz did ultimately tell her she was right about a part of the song they had disagreed on. Their slinky “I Believe in Love Again,” the second I Hear You single, arrived in November.
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Gou’s single-minded professional chess moves manifested her deal with XL in the first place, years after she reached out to the label about an internship back when she was a student in London. XL didn’t respond then, but it got in touch after the success of her 2018 single “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane).” “I did make a joke,” she says of her first meeting with XL, “like, ‘Check your inbox.’ ”
Gou acknowledges that working with her can be “very difficult because I push the team always harder… If you have so many opinions and you’re a woman, people call you a b–ch, but [XL] doesn’t see it that way. They think it’s a pleasure to work with someone who has a clear vision.”
XL also most likely enjoys working with a talent who’s changing the face of electronic music simply by being one of the most popular artists making it. “As incredible as it is to see a Korean woman occupy this space in dance music culture,” says Lyons, who herself is Asian American, “it’s not the reason why I’m excited by her.”
While a new level of streaming and chart success would be a nice outcome for I Hear You, to Gou, they’re “very 1D hopes.” She’ll consider the album a success if people listen to it and — she puts a hand over her heart — “get a feeling.”
Bottega Veneta coat, AYANEGUI earrings.
Aaron Sinclair
The feelings are clearly being felt at Coachella, where people in the crowd — many of them, like Gou, also wearing sunglasses though the sun set long ago — are flailing around, arms in the air and dreamy smiles on their faces. A crew of six dancers pop and lock, vogue and gyrate onstage. Gou will take this show on the road this summer for a run that includes European festivals like Primavera Sound, Glastonbury and Creamfields. In August, she’s hosting and headlining her own one-day mini-fest at London’s Gunnersbury Park; the show’s 8,000 tickets sold out within days of going on sale.
Unlike her early years of touring alone, Gou now travels with her tour manager and a road assistant or two. She “doesn’t always fly private,” but says the primary appeal of a private jet is a preference for efficiency that she says is part of her heritage: “I’m someone who [doesn’t] like wasting my time. I’m very efficient. I think that’s from Korean culture. Efficiencies are very important in Korea.”
A private jet “saves a lot of time,” she continues, “and you can sleep half an hour or even one hour more. Also, you don’t need to worry about the baggage weight.” Perhaps most crucially, though, flying private lets her move through the world while maintaining maximum control. “Hotel lobbies and the airport,” she says, “give me so much anxiety.”
These days, Gou’s team also includes a security detail, as she has experienced stalkers and people “waiting at the hotel or waiting at the airport for 10 hours.” She “can’t go to Italy alone” and brings two security guards to Argentina where the crowd is “quite wild.” She recalls spending the entirety of a commercial flight to Ibiza facing the window after half the plane recognized her while boarding. “I was like, ‘My neck,’ ” she says with a laugh, feigning pain. “It’s nice, but sometimes it gets a lot for me.”
“She can see 100 meters ahead in the airport. She notices the colors of things, remembers what people are wearing and is just super, super sensitive,” touring manager Filippou says, “especially when there’s a lot of people around.”
But her skin has gotten thicker as her career has grown. “In the beginning, I remember [people saying], ‘You will never be bigger than this person. No one’s going to buy your record. No one knows your name.’ I heard these things so many times.”
The criticisms “used to really affect me,” Gou continues. “I used to want to scream, like, ‘That’s not f–king true.’ ” But as time went on, she realized she was the reason her feelings were getting so hurt. “I was not happy,” she says of her pre-pandemic life. “I was so focused and tunnel-visioned. My relationship with boyfriend wasn’t doing well. Friends, workwise — nothing was happy. I learned a lot about myself during the pandemic.” Learning to listen first and react later has been huge for her. It’s why she’s wearing a mirrored headpiece that reflects her ears on her album cover and why she named the project I Hear You.
Sentimiento tracksuit, Tercer Mundo vest, AYANEGUI earrings and necklace.
Aaron Sinclair
One of the biggest early critiques Gou experienced side-eyed her interest in fashion, which made her fear “that people would never take me seriously.” So during her early years in Berlin, she sported the de facto DJ uniform of black (and sometimes, maybe, white) T-shirts — a fit that never felt authentic. Around this time, a mentor told her to turn her perceived weaknesses into strengths, so she ditched the tees for couture.
Dressing in brightly colored, flowing sets and racing gear helped her catch the attention of top fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, with which she has had two partnerships. She was good friends with late DJ-designer Virgil Abloh; after his 2021 death, she posted on Instagram that “I will forever be grateful that in the infancy of my career, Virgil showed support at a time when not many others would.” Her own Peggy Goods line creates custom merch for each of her shows; at the “1+1=11” music video screening party, more than one person wears a bomber jacket with the song’s title embroidered on the back.
Gou documents the fabulousness of it all on her Instagram, which has 4.1 million followers and which — yes — she runs herself. To her, the account is a natural evolution of her old Tumblr, where she would post photos of her outfits, meals and outings. She uses the same approach now on Instagram — except the outfits are by Ferragamo, the meals are on a beach in Ibiza and the outings are playing for tens of thousands of people screaming her name. Her glamorous aesthetic, and the size of her audience, has yielded deals with brands including Don Julio, Coca-Cola and Maybelline.
Now other DJs ask her how they can expand their own brands into the fashion world. It’s speculative, but the most obvious answer seems to be to work as hard as she has. “People see that I’m riding in a Rolls-Royce now, but I used to take a f–king bus,” she says. “I did an interview in Korea recently, and the first [comment] was, ‘I smell old money.’ No. My dad was poor. My mom was average. I’m not from a rich family. I worked hard to have a glamorous life.”
Like most anyone who has achieved major success and its attendant visibility, people still give Gou sh-t. But in a true boss move, she has come to enjoy it.
“Now when I hear criticism, it means I’m doing super well,” she says. “So go ahead: Say my name.”
This story will appear in the April 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2004 Week continues here as we check in with one of the artists who defined mainstream country music 20 years ago: Gretchen Wilson, whose smash hit “Redneck Woman” and subsequent best-selling Here for the Party album made her the freshest and most exciting new artist in Nashville.
Two decades have elapsed since Gretchen Wilson set fire to country music’s staid mainstream landscape in 2004 with her debut single, “Redneck Woman.”
The song’s lyrics — highlighting women who prefer beer to champagne, and who leave Christmas lights hanging year-round — vividly detailed a lifestyle familiar to millions of female country music fans. It was also a lifestyle that Wilson didn’t see or hear depicted among the female artists on country radio and in music videos in the early ’00s. So, Wilson teamed with Big & Rich singer-songwriter John Rich to craft a song that celebrated anti-“Barbie doll type” women.
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“I remember sitting down and saying, ‘I can’t really relate to what I’m seeing on CMT, GAC, all the popular music video channels, and this is not real life,’” Wilson recalls to Billboard. “That’s kind of the mindset we had that day. It was like, ‘If I’m not that, then what am I?’ And the best thing I could come up with was, ‘I’m just a regular ole redneck woman.’ That’s a really pivotal moment, just writing that song that I knew was uniquely me. But I also knew, from a songwriter’s standpoint, it was about as honest as I could get. I knew at the same time that it was going to speak to so many women that were feeling frustrated just like I was.”
“Redneck Woman” was a true slice-of-life for Wilson, who was born to a teenage mother and grew up in Pocahontas, Illinois, a town with a population of less than 1,000 people. Wilson grew up in trailer parks, and was working in local bars as a cook by age 14. She moved to Nashville in 1996 and spent much of her 20s singing on songwriters’ demos and performing in local bars. By the time she signed with Epic Records in 2003 and earned her breakout hit with “Redneck Woman,” Wilson was in her 30s and raising her own daughter.
Music fans instantly connected with “Redneck Woman,” calling radio stations and demanding that it be played. “Redneck Woman” was released in March 2004; by May, it had reached the penthouse of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart (then-called Hot Country Singles & Tracks) and stayed there for five weeks. It proved a counterpoint to the smash pop crossovers of country artists like Shania Twain and Faith Hill, whose most commercially dominant years were already solidly in the rearview by the time Wilson’s breakthrough came around.
“I felt validated, but mostly with the fans, because radio put up quite a fight,” Wilson says of “Redneck Woman”’s success. “Radio was like, ‘Who is this white trash hillbilly chick coming at us with 13 cuss words in the first song?’ My argument at the time—and I had a valid argument, even though it was 20 years ago, before a lot of feminine movements had happened—my argument was, ‘I’m on the same record label as Montgomery Gentry, who just had a hit with ‘Hell Yeah’ [in 2003]. So, is this just because I’m a female and I can’t say ‘Hell Yeah’ in my song? So that kind of got ‘em, and they shut up real quick about that. But it was really the fans who called their local radio stations. They called and basically said ‘You will play this song or I’ll be switching to the other guy’s station.’”
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Those fans didn’t just call radio stations — they attended Wilson’s concerts in droves, holding up signs of support and telling Wilson how they identified with her no-frills, rough-around-the-edges persona. “A lot of ‘em would bring up Faith Hill rolling around in satin sheets in the [2000] video ‘Breathe,’” Wilson says of the contemporary country image that was prominent at the time, which some fans found difficult to relate to. “It’s a great song, no doubt. They were like, ‘I just don’t think I could stomach any more of that because who wakes up looking like that in the morning?’ People were so enthusiastic [about feeling represented by my music] that they would show up and they would have homemade t-shirts that said, ‘Redneck Girl,’ ‘Redneck Woman’ and ‘Redneck Grandma’ on them — representing three generations, sometimes four. It did feel very validating.”
In 2004, Wilson earned the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award (later renamed new artist of the year), and the following year, female vocalist of the year. “Redneck Woman” won Wilson a Grammy for best female country vocal performance, while Wilson’s debut album Here For the Party bowed at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart and was certified five-times Platinum by the RIAA. Three more singles from the album, “Here For the Party,” “When I Think About Cheatin’,” and “Homewrecker,” reached the top 5 on Hot Country Songs.
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Wilson’s success also helped elevate the MuzikMafia, an eclectic collective of artists (including Wilson) founded in 2001, whichwas known for holding court with free-wheeling, hours-long shows at Nashville’s Pub of Love — all driven by creating an atmosphere of acceptance and support across a spectrum of sounds. Alongside Wilson and Big & Rich’s Rich and William “Big Kenny” Alphin, the group included ‘00s country fixtures like Cowboy Troy, James Otto, Shannon Lawson and Jon Nicholson.
“At the same time that we were being crazy, wild and having a party, the other stipulation was, ‘You got to be good,’” Wilson notes. “One of our mottos was that it doesn’t matter what you play. As long as you can play it well and hold an audience, we’re not going to tell you that you’re not country enough, or not rock n’ roll enough. You just got to be good. That’s why the shows would go on for six or seven hours, just one person after another getting up there, because we were a group of talented friends coming to these parties. When you get 13, 14, 15 artists all wanting to play five or six songs apiece, that’s a long night of music.”
In 2004, as Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” dominated, other MuzikMafia artists also mounted breakthroughs. Big & Rich’s “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” rose to No. 11 on the Country Airplay chart. Otto released his debut album Days of Our Lives in 2004, while the following year, Cowboy Troy released the single “I Play Chicken with the Train” and his album Loco Motive. Together, the group broke through the polished, often pop-oriented sounds emanating from Nashville’s Music Row.
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After the blazing-hot popularity of Wilson and Big & Rich in 2004, the MuzikMafia’s rising tide slowly began to level out. Big & Rich earned a No. 1 on Hot Country Songs with “Lost in This Moment” in 2007, then went on hiatus as a duo in 2009 and each released solo projects (they reunited in 2011). Wilson’s sophomore album, 2005’s All Jacked Up, didn’t quite reach the same sales heights as her debut album, while the songs found more moderate success on radio (though the album, and 2007’s One of the Boys, both reached the pinnacle of Billboard’s top country albums chart). Meanwhile, a new crop of female artists began making their own country chart strides in the mid-2000s, including Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler (all of whom offered up polished, sparkly personas and pop-country sounds). Wilson’s own songs also helped pave the way for the independent-minded singer-songwriter Miranda Lambert, who earned her first top 10 hit on Hot Country Songs in 2008.
Scanning today’s country music landscape, however, Wilson doesn’t really see a modern-day parallel to what the MuzikMafia set out to do. “I would say the MuzikMafia was reminiscent of the early Outlaws, in a sense. I don’t think there’s been [anything like it since] — not to say that there won’t be, it could happen again — but it was definitely a movement and each one of us had our own position. I think maybe what made it successful is it didn’t get too big; it always stayed just a handful of us. It was a brotherhood and sisterhood, and we’re all just real close; it’s definitely a family.”
Earlier this year, Wilson teamed with Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy to launch their 20th anniversary celebration tour.
“It’s like walking right back out onto a stage that I never left,” she says of the shows. “Every time I look over at John, he’s grinning from ear to ear. Every time I look at Kenny, he’s being Kenny, which is crazy, throwing his arms up in the air — anytime you look at Kenny, you just got to be ready for anything that might be coming at you. But it’s been a lot of fun.”
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In addition to the current tour, Wilson shares that there is new music on the way: “I’ve got a song that I’m going to try to finish up by the end of this month, and I’m hoping to have it circulating at least by the first couple of weeks in May. I can tell you that it’s kind of like [Wilson’s 2005-released single] ‘Homewrecker’ part two. It’s kind of a follow up on that kind of vibe.”
Wilson says she’s always thoughtful about releasing songs that showcase different facets of her artistry, while maintaining the rowdy songs fans have come to expect.
“There are songs I’ve written that are very personal, more ballady with a softer edge. When people go look me up and find songs from me, they are looking for the hard edge. They’re looking for that girl on a four-wheeler that’s guzzling Jack Daniels barefooted,” she says. “But definitely, there are different shades to my personality and songwriting and it’s pretty complex.”
Still, there’s a reason that Wilson felt “Redneck Woman” was true to who she is. “There’s always going to be that layer of me that is that girl that they expect to see,” she explains. “And I’m barefooted, right now, sitting outside on the back porch watching the train go by in the distance. So, after all these years, I haven’t really changed too much.”
On the scale of regular to rock star, being stuck in traffic leans hard into the mundane. And yet on a humid March afternoon in Texas, this is where I find Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay — the French electronic music legends better known as Justice.
Augé (44, bearded, tall, taciturn) is in the back seat of an air-conditioned Uber, texting. De Rosnay (41, clean-shaven, shorter, chatty) sits beside him, playing the trivia game on the tablet hanging from the back of the passenger seat, pressing answers with long, skinny fingers as the SUV lurches through the streets of Austin, gridlocked amid South by Southwest. (He gets most of them right — but asks for help when asked to identify New York state by its shape.) The pair arrived here yesterday from Paris, and de Rosnay’s luggage still hasn’t shown up. Last night he went on his first-ever Target run, to procure fresh underwear.
It’s cliché to assume that famous musicians exist in a fantasy bubble of perpetual ease, but you’d be forgiven for being somewhat perplexed by the idea of one-half of the revered duo buying a pack of Hanes at the self-checkout. Still, de Rosnay and his Justice collaborateur Augé look the part: the latter in a brown suit, a vintage ’80s T-shirt and a big belt buckle of gold metal forming the words “Beach Boys,” de Rosnay in dirty white Chucks, skinny black jeans and a black leather jacket strung with fake pearls. Streaks of silver run through his otherwise black hair, and the diamond stud in his left ear appears real. Both indoors and after dark, they keep their sunglasses on.
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But despite looking like ’70s prog-rockers, in the Uber, they’re amiable, relaxed, funny. De Rosnay recounts the time France’s American Film Festival asked them to present a list of their favorite films but cut them from the program seemingly because their choices were too lowbrow. (“But Die Hard is a masterpiece of action film, you know?” he declares.) At this story’s photo shoot, they pull a plastic skeleton lurking in the studio into the frame between them, de Rosnay pouring it a fake cocktail of Diet Coke and Augé inserting a prop cigarette between its jaw bones. And while they partake in their bony friend’s faux cigs for the shoot, they don’t smoke, instead pulling on the little black vapes they intermittently produce from their jackets.
As Justice, Augé and de Rosnay are two of the most respected figures of the last 20 years of electronic music. Their 2007 debut, Cross, brought a fresh, swaggering, hard-edged rock aesthetic — “like the Led Zeppelin of the electronic scene,” says their longtime manager, Pedro Winter — to their native France and the world beyond, and it arrived just as blogs and file-sharing platforms fundamentally shifted how audiences access music. Beyond Daft Punk, they are arguably the best-known French electronic artists of all time, entering the public consciousness alongside a gang of Ed Banger labelmates who felt like the coolest guys at any given art school.
“I guess the U.S. electronic scene was not dormant, but focused on house, and we just entered like punks,” Augé says of the bold and pioneering rock-disco-electronic hybrid they stormed the scene with. Two lauded albums followed — 2011’s Audio, Video, Disco. and 2016’s Woman — and in 2019, Justice won the best dance/electronic album Grammy Award for the live set Woman Worldwide.
Joel Barhamand
Now, the guys are in Texas for 36 hours as they prepare to release Hyperdrama, the first Justice studio album in eight years. Upon its announcement, the news rippled across the electronic music world like the second coming of Christ. But here over dinner — Augé has shrimp cocktail, tuna crudo and a margarita, de Rosnay steak frites and sparkling water — they seem sincerely unsure about who, if anyone, might listen to it.
“Because the album cycle is so long every time, we’re both like, ‘OK, is there going to be anybody that’s still interested?’” Augé says with a laugh.
“For real, no?” says de Rosnay. “We still feel like rookies every time.”
Given Augé and de Rosnay’s singular and perpetually evolving sound, their refusal to market themselves in inauthentic ways and the changes in the industry landscape between each of the duo’s albums, Justice has always existed on the fringes of market demand. But with Hyperdrama, there’s an ambition to “reach a wider audience,” says Winter, who has managed Justice since its formation; founded the act’s label, Ed Banger; and managed Daft Punk until it broke up in 2021.
“EDM has been so much on repeat in the U.S.,” Winter says over Zoom from his home in Paris, a tabby cat perched on his shoulder. “I think and I hope American people are ready for a new cycle and maybe a bit more ambitious music.”
Joel Barhamand
Hyperdrama originated in February 2020, when the guys — still fairly fresh off the Woman cycle — started talking about new music. Having just played live shows that “almost contractually have to be fun immediately,” says de Rosnay, they were interested in making the less straightforward and less danceable music that has characterized their studio albums.
But the pandemic started weeks later, and by December 2020 they’d stopped working on the project entirely, since they couldn’t meet in person safely. Instead, Augé made his debut solo album, 2021’s Escapades, and de Rosnay enjoyed months of uninterrupted time with his daughter, who’s now 12 and whose photo is his phone’s wallpaper image. “It had been like 15 years that I hadn’t been in the same place for more than 10 days,” he says. “Four months in one place with my daughter — it can’t be cooler than this.”
Close friends for two decades, the guys kept in almost constant contact, and as the pandemic waned, they reunited in de Rosnay’s Paris home (a converted horse stable in the city’s 18th arrondissement) and got to work. For previous albums, they’d first spend countless hours digging for granular samples to build on. This time, they made those samples themselves. The idea was to combine the aggressive, visceral energy of techno, particularly its hardcore ’90s subgenre gabber, with what Augé calls “disco sauce.” The music would be at once mechanistic and human, cold and hot, synthetic and organic. (Each Justice album cover iterates the same monolithic cross logo; Hyperdrama’s art, conceived alongside visual artist Thomas Jumin, features a transparent cross with a set of ribs and a nervous system, which de Rosnay says reflects a body of work “about confronting digital things that are perfect and clean with more organic things.”)
In de Rosnay’s living room, they could simply hang out, cook, read and then work when inspiration came. “When you’re in a commercial studio,” says de Rosnay, “you can feel there’s an atmosphere of having to deliver something, having to be productive… and the environment is always a bit sterile. Sometimes you just want to spend half an hour in the home studio, but that’s going to be a good half an hour.”
Their pace was, he says, “very slow,” but over three-and-a-half years, they found the sound they’d been searching for, knowing they’d hit particularly good material when the music inspired them to shake hands and dance. (“If the track is on the album,” Augé says, “it means we high-fived over it at some point.”) Extending the album’s organic theme, this human chemistry (“the technician is Xavier, the harmony is Gaspard,” says Winter) has always been essential to their output.
“Having this moment by yourself, then sending it over on Dropbox and saying, ‘I think it’s kind of good; have fun on the other side,’ ” de Rosnay continues, “it would be impossible [for us] to do it at a distance like that.”
Joel Barhamand
The first track to inspire such celebration was “Incognito,” a three-part opus that shifts gears between ’80s AM radio psychedelia, peak-hours techno and funk. Travis Scott’s multi-movement “SICKO MODE” made them realize that they were “still thinking about music almost in an ancient way,” de Rosnay explains. “Almost by reflex we were like, ‘OK, this song has to be a verse, a chorus, then a shorter verse, then a double chorus.’ ” Instead, they just made what “we wanted to hear, even if it doesn’t make sense in terms of music theory.”
They ultimately amassed over 200 versions of some tracks, and their only disagreement during the production process was about whether to include bongos on the song “After Image.” De Rosnay wanted them and Augé did not; the latter prevailed. (“I recorded the bongo part and it sounded perfect,” de Rosnay says. “I also knew when I was making it that he would hate it.”)
But what most listeners will notice first — maybe even before pressing play — are Hyperdrama’s featured vocalists, who make up the highest-profile collection of guests ever assembled for a Justice album. They’d had Kevin Parker in mind as a vocalist for “almost a decade,” ever since Justice was asked to remix Tame Impala’s 2012 single “Elephant.” (They turned the project down because they didn’t think they could make the original any better.) Parker sings on the album’s lush, punchy lead single, “One Night/All Night,” as well as the gliding album opener, “Never Ender.” They were already friendly with Thundercat and Miguel through Los Angeles nightlife, and they appear on the tough, cinematic album closer, “The End,” as well as the swaggering “Saturnine,” respectively.
One notable artist who doesn’t appear on the album: The Weeknd. In January, a demo of a track Justice did for him leaked online around the same time that the pop star shared several Justice-related images on his Instagram story, fueling rumors that he’d appear on Hyperdrama. The guys now say they never planned to have The Weeknd on the album and that they didn’t even hear the leaked demo before it was taken down. “Like many of those kinds of artists, The Weeknd is working with 10 different producers,” Winter says, adding that “there might be some collaboration happening” between the two acts “in the future.”
I ask Winter if working with more high-profile vocalists was an intentional move to grow Justice’s fan base. “No. No, no, no. It’s definitely not systematic,” he insists. His take is that the duo — which he calls “the boys,” of whom he is “a proud daddy” — is simply more mature, more confident in its production skills and “don’t have that much to prove anymore,” inspiring the act to partner with collaborators who felt like authentic fits.
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“Justice has been a band saying ‘no’ to everything, exactly like when I used to work with Daft Punk,” Winter says. “They really wanted to focus on their own music. Now it has been a 20-year career, so it’s time to open the door and work with other people.” He does admit that having names like Parker or Miguel on the track list can’t hurt. “Of course, a lot of [their fans] will not get the Justice sound… but out of those millions, let’s try to grab the attention and love of some of them.”
Still, de Rosnay says, he and Augé “have no idea who the average Justice fan is. We have no idea if that person likes ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ or likes ‘Stress,’” he continues, referencing two early Justice singles. “We have no idea if they like stuff like Woman. It’s impossible, so we decided not to take that into account at all.”
Regardless of who may comprise that fan base, there’s no doubt that it exists in large numbers. Like Cross, Woman reached No. 1 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart, while Audio, Video, Disco. hit No. 37 on the Billboard 200 in November 2011. Justice has singles scattered across 13 Billboard charts, and its catalog has aggregated 63.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate. This body of work has also amassed 224.2 million on demand global streams since 2020, when Billboard’s global charts were launched, a number that’s particularly significant given that the act hasn’t released a studio album during this time frame.
Of course, devotees don’t need any data beyond “new Justice album” to get hyped.
When they first got together, after meeting at a Paris house party back when they were both graphic designers, even Augé and de Rosnay weren’t sure what Justice was. They’d met Winter through visual artist So-Me, the Ed Banger art director who was also the duo’s roommate; the trio had gone to Augé’s parents’ house for raclette and “Pedro invited himself because his own home was raclette free, and he was craving for one,” de Rosnay says. Their first release, “We Are Your Friends,” a remix of Simian’s 2002 “Never Be Alone,” was released on Ed Banger in 2006 and almost immediately became the defining anthem of the indie sleaze era.
Emmanuel de Buretel, the head of Ed Banger parent label Because Music, signed Justice around the time it released that remix, having seen the global appetite for French electronic music after he signed acts like Daft Punk and Air. “We love him,” de Rosnay says, “because he’s really a believer that things don’t always produce results immediately.”
The duo’s first original production, the brash, distorted “Waters of Nazareth,” sounded nothing like “We Are Your Friends,” with the song “alienating people” immediately upon release, says de Rosnay. “Even Pedro didn’t want to release [“Waters of Nazareth”] at first.” (It was the late DJ Mehdi, he says, who convinced Winter to put it out.) Every time Justice played it live, audio techs rushed the stage to see if there was a problem with the cables. Friends suggested something might have gone wrong with the vinyl pressing.
“We thought maybe we should have done something else, but then slowly, it started to get noticed,” de Rosnay says, “and it dragged in another crowd of people that were more interested in rock. Like, if The White Stripes made an electronic track, it would sound like ‘Waters of Nazareth.’ ” The act’s second single, the giddy earworm “D.A.N.C.E.,” featured a children’s choir singing over nu-disco production and further confused things. Then, the pair’s third single, the cacophonous and aptly named “Stress,” “alienated the people who liked ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ “
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But the strength of those early singles helped Justice get booked for Coachella in 2007, appearing on the lineup’s bottom row; two months later, Cross came out, becoming a critical and commercial hit despite the fact that making it had been, as de Rosnay puts it, “a struggle at every level, because we had no idea what we were doing” (the duo had also just bought a computer for the first time two years prior). The album’s success validated the act — to an extent. In the wake of Air and Daft Punk — the latter of which wrapped its groundbreaking Alive tour in 2007 — Justice almost assumed such success was standard for a French electronic act. “When we started making music in 2003, thanks to them it was almost normal that you put out a record and everybody on the planet listened to it,” de Rosnay says.
But by the time the duo released Audio, Video, Disco. four years later, its sound had changed again (de Rosnay calls that album “inspired by our love of agricultural ’60s British rock”), along with almost everything about how music was distributed and the broader dance landscape: The EDM boom’s neon and MDMA world was the sonic and spiritual opposite of Justice’s dirty jeans and cigarettes vibe. By the time Woman arrived in 2016, the dominance of digital service providers had increased even more exponentially.
It’s fair then that, sitting here at dinner, the guys aren’t really sure who Hyperdrama is for, or how it will be discovered. They’re unlikely to seek new listeners on TikTok, a platform de Rosnay says they are not “naturally inclined to do” (and anyway, as Winter notes, the four-plus-minute-long songs on Hyperdrama aren’t exactly “TikTok- or Spotify-friendly”). Synchs have helped Justice’s exposure and revenue — the act’s music has appeared in ads for brands like Nike, Adidas and Volvo, in films like John Wick 4 and on TV shows like Netflix’s The Gentlemen — and at an album listening event for music supervisors in Los Angeles last winter, a label representative advised the group to keep Hyperdrama in mind “for your car chase and fight scenes.” The handful of DJ sets the act plays annually (mostly for friends or “events that we feel are interesting for us,” de Rosnay says) are both lucrative and no doubt a reminder to old and new fans that Justice is still a tastemaker.
Still, de Rosnay admits, “[We] have no idea how much we get paid from streams. Not that we don’t care, but we don’t really look out for that.” (With so much time between projects, he continues, “every time we finish making a record, we are, like, ruined.”
“Like, bankrupt,” Augé says.
“Like, we don’t have any money left,” de Rosnay adds. “Because every penny we make with Justice, we invest into stuff that’s not necessarily commercially viable” — like the duo’s live albums (which he calls “almost like a preplanned commercial failure”), complicated and costly concerts and performance films like 2019’s IRIS: A Space Opera by Justice.
Yet, the two agree that “as long as we are not in dire need, we don’t need to earn more money,” de Rosnay says. “We have houses. We have fun. We have food. It sounds cliché, but that’s the truth.”
Joel Barhamand
But while they say that Hyperdrama, like everything else they make, is about passion, artistic integrity and creating an enduring body of work, Winter sees more. “It has been 20 years, and of course we can say Justice had a couple of singles, but it’s not a success story yet,” he says. While massive streaming numbers are “definitely not a goal, I’ll be happy if the songs [get more than] 1 million plays on Spotify. One million plays — we are a joke compared to electronic music today. We are not chasing that, but I think they deserve it.”
And anyway, anyone who has seen the act live knows there’s no better Justice marketing tool than a Justice show — a quasi-religious experience that amalgamates the entirety of the duo’s catalog into a wall of pummeling, pristine electronic glory. The guys spent months working with a team of seven computer scientists to make their new live show, which they’ll debut April 12 at Coachella — a proving ground for ambitious dance productions dating back to Daft Punk’s historic unveiling of its pyramid in 2006. Having risen to the second-from-the-top line of the lineup in the 17 years since their first appearance, they’ll close out the festival’s second-largest venue, the Outdoor Stage.
“Coachella is the festival of all festivals,” Winter says. “To start the tour there is the best promotion you can have.” After that, Justice plays two dates in Mexico (the duo’s leading territory, according to Winter), then a flurry of European summer festivals before returning to North America for four East Coast dates and more on the other side of the country that will be announced in the coming weeks.
“There is definitely big ambition in the U.S. market,” Winter says, adding that South and Central America are also “huge.” The tour ends at Paris’ Accor Arena in December, with a second night added since the first sold out. Winter says he’s “sure they will do a live album” in conjunction with the tour, as is their tradition.
Augé takes French fries off de Rosnay’s plate without asking and recalls throwing him a 40th birthday party in the French countryside last summer, an event for which they bought out a small hotel and had their friends who run the kitchen roast several pigs. De Rosnay’s daughter is starting to understand what her dad does for work. When she heard him playing a demo of “One Night/All Night” on his phone, she told him it was “surprisingly good, for something you made.”
Xavier de Rosnay, left, and Gaspard Augé of Justice photographed on March 13, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Joel Barhamand
Twenty years into their career, de Rosnay and Augé discuss their relationship in couples therapy terms (outside of Justice, both are unmarried). The secret of their success, de Rosnay says, is “patience, good communication. We’re in a band together; we are friends on a very intimate level. It’s likely that there’s not a lot of our romantic partners who can claim to know us better than we know each other.”
They still seriously consider a backup plan if things don’t ultimately work out in music. Augé says many of their musician friends are no longer pursuing careers in the industry, given its volatility; de Rosnay is confident they could still get work as graphic designers. But he also admits that should they follow that path, it’s “not going to be as cool as being in Justice.”
And for the time being — regardless of who they think their audience is or is not — they’ve got millions of prospective new listeners and a devoted global fan base that considers them actual rock stars.
“Please don’t break the news,” de Rosnay says with a smile, “that we are not.”
On the scale of regular to rock star, being stuck in traffic leans hard into the mundane. And yet on a humid March afternoon in Texas, this is where I find Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay — the French electronic music legends better known as Justice. Augé (44, bearded, tall, taciturn) is in the […]
Source: Hip-Hop WIred / iOne Digital
The newest episode of the acclaimed I Got Questions series features the Juice Crew’s Big Daddy Kane and Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah reflecting on Hip-Hop culture and their careers.
The streets have been asking for it, so it’s only right that as Hip-Hop is enjoying 50 years of life as a culture, the pivotal interview series I Got Questions makes its return with two of the greatest MCs in Hip-Hop—Big Daddy Kane and Ghostface Killah.
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The two artists sit across from each other in a plush lounge setting, with Ghostface reminiscing on the first time he ever heard Big Daddy Kane rhyme while hustling in the projects in his Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island. “That’s what really got me into Hip-Hop, and ink and putting the pen down,” he said. For Big Daddy Kane, he recounted his first time meeting Ghostface at their show in Newark, New Jersey, and how they immediately got into a cipher. “It was me, you, Scoob Lover, RZA, and Raekwon and Shyheim,” he said. He even revealed how the iconic “Where Brooklyn At?” moment from The Notorious B.I.G. took place at one of his shows.
As the two sip wine, Big Daddy Kane reveals that he started as a DJ but a robbery at his grandmother’s home forced him to pivot to rhyming. “Dude that stole those turntables did me a big favor ‘cause I sucked at DJ’ing,” the legend said with a laugh. The conversation went deeper, as Ghostface revealed that performing his classic track with Mary J. Blige from Ironman, “All That I Got Is You” is one that he’s reluctant to perform. “It just gets me sad. I don’t really perform that because it brings me back to a place where we was going through it. That record brings pain,” he remarked.
The two artists also spoke about the relationships with other older and newer artists in rap, and how they want to be perceived by the public. “Now there’s a disconnect,” Big Daddy Kane said, “That’s what we need to bring back so we can talk to the young rappers of today and give them the game. The same way it was given to me. The same way it was given to you.”
Ghostface also spoke about how some rappers need to be more embracing of their fans by signing autographs and greeting them on the street. “I’m an MC first, but I’m grateful though, ‘cause Kane we could’ve been somewhere else,” said Tony Starks.
Check out the entire I Got Questions episode with Big Daddy Kane and Ghostface Killah above.
In the vibrant world of music, there are those who follow trends, and then there are those who carve their own path. Lila Iké belongs firmly to the latter category. Born and raised in Jamaica, her journey into music began at a young age, influenced by the soul-stirring melodies that filled her childhood home. “My mom, she’s a huge fan of music,” Iké recalls. “Growing up, my house always had music playing, different genres. It started from me just trying to connect with my mother.”
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As she grew older, her passion for music deepened, fueled by a desire to express herself authentically. Moving to Kingston provided her with the freedom to explore her musical identity further. “The breakthrough moment for me was probably moving to Kingston and doing it out of just the freedom that I had,” she reflects. “When I got to Kingston, I realized that it was just an open space… The more I did it, the more people were like, ‘Yo, this is really cool.’”
Ike’s music reflects her Jamaican roots, infused with a modern flair that sets her apart. “I try to be myself and say exactly how I feel,” she explains. “I have favorite singers and rappers… But I try not to over emulate anybody. So, for me, it’s just being yourself and honing my sound as I go along.”
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Her songs carry empowering messages, addressing social issues, and resonating deeply with listeners. “Music for my household was a huge, comforting thing,” Iké shares. “I watched her [my mother] come alive when she listened to music… For me, it was very important… that if it’s not having people react like this, then it doesn’t make any sense.”
In her creative process, the roots singer prioritizes authenticity and sincerity. “I try to not force myself to create,” she says. “Sometimes being an artist… so much is expected of you… But for me, it’s about ensuring that I really have something that, in my heart, I’m doing this because I want someone else to hear this.”
Collaborations have become an integral part of her emerging journey, allowing her to expand her horizons and connect with artists from diverse backgrounds. “Collaborations open up your sound to different markets and different people,” she emphasizes. “It’s networking.”
One of the most exciting collaborations in Lila’s career is her recent partnership with Afrobeat sensation Davido. “This is my very first time doing anything in the Afrobeat market,” she enthuses. “It’s something that I’ve actually been working towards getting into… Africa is so big, and their market is so beautiful… It’s doors opening everywhere.”
As she looks ahead to the future, the exciting singer envisions a year filled with music, growth, and new experiences. “2024 is a blessed year,” she declares with confidence. With her unwavering dedication to authenticity and her willingness to embrace new challenges, there’s no doubt that Lila Iké’s star will continue to rise, illuminating the world with her unique blend of reggae and soul.
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Exclusively for Billboard and Honda Stage, Afrobeats sensation Davido and soulful Roots crooner Lila Iké teamed up for an electrifying original track titled “Flex My Soul.” Blending Davido’s style, Afrobeats’ infectious rhythms and Iké’s soul-stirring melodies, the song promises to move audiences with its magnetic energy and uplifting vibe. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts […]
From his early years surrounded by the rhythms of entertainment to becoming one of the biggest names in Afrobeats, Davido‘s journey is nothing short of inspirational. Born David Adedeji Adeleke, Davido’s passion for music was ignited during his teenage years, a time when he found solace in the melodies and beats that filled his surroundings.
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Davido’s journey began with a love for entertainment, fostered by his upbringing in an environment rich with music and celebrations. Despite initially envisioning himself as a producer, his destiny as an artist unfolded gradually. Inspired by the desire to be a triple threat—engineer, producer, and songwriter—Davido aimed to establish his own label, following in the footsteps of his musical influences like Don Jazzy.
However, fate had different plans. Encouraged by his cousins, Davido took a leap of faith into the spotlight, transitioning from behind-the-scenes producer to an emerging artist. His move back to Nigeria from Atlanta marked the turning point, propelling him into a full-time music career that would soon capture the hearts of millions.
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Davido’s rise to stardom wasn’t overnight; it was a culmination of perseverance, talent, and an unwavering belief in the power of Afrobeats, globally. Reflecting on his journey, Davido emphasizes the importance of incremental breakthroughs and the relentless pursuit of success at every stage.
As Afrobeats gained global prominence, Davido played a pivotal role in its expansion, leveraging his roots and experiences to bridge cultures through music. He recognized early on the universal appeal of Afrobeats, advocating for its recognition on international platforms and paving the way for its widespread acceptance.
Collaboration lies at the heart of Davido’s artistic vision, serving as a catalyst for innovation and cross-cultural exchange. Whether working with established icons or emerging talents, Davido approaches each collaboration with a spirit of mutual respect and creative exploration.
Beyond personal success, Davido is committed to nurturing the next generation of artists, ensuring they receive guidance and support to navigate the complexities of the music industry. He sees collaboration not only as a means of artistic expression but also as a tool for empowerment and legacy building.
Davido’s journey from humble beginnings to global acclaim embodies the transformative power of music. Through his unwavering passion, dedication to authenticity, and commitment to collaboration, Davido continues to shape the landscape of Afrobeats music while inspiring a new generation of artists to follow their dreams. As he continues to evolve as an artist and a cultural ambassador, Davido’s influence on the world of music remains boundless, leaving an indelible mark on the global stage.
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HipHopWired got the exclusive opportunity to talk with the filmmakers behind the highly anticipated Hulu documentary, Freaknik: The Wildest Story Never Told.
Source: Hulu / hulu
For those in the know, Freaknik was not just a party that gathered nearly every Black person down in Atlanta, Georgia, every spring, but it was a veritable cultural moment. When word broke late last year that there would be a documentary about Freaknik, many immediately wondered if it would focus only on the wildness that came to be associated with the event.
But in Freaknik: The Wildest Story Never Told, we get a clear-eyed and compelling account of Freaknik in all of its aspects thanks to testimony from numerous people including Jermaine Dupri and Luther “Uncle Luke Campbell” (who are executive producers), Lil Jon, 21 Savage and more.
HipHopWired got the chance to talk with producers Jay Allen, Nikki Byles and executive producer Terry “TR” Ross about their experiences in making this documentary and their perspective on Freaknik as it makes its premiere on Hulu March 21.
HipHopWired: How did this documentary project get onto your radar, and how were you all involved?
Jay Allen: So Nikki and I were a few years younger, and we didn’t get to attend Freaknik. But we’ve always heard the stories of Freaknik from family, cousins and friends. Because we live in Atlanta, we always talk about what it would have been like to be there. And then we realized that we wanted to really tell the story. So she and I put together a pitch deck. We put together a sizzle [reel], we got all that stuff together. And then we were trying to figure out what the next steps were. The first thing that Nikki did was, she got on the phone and got Uncle Luke involved.
Nikki Byles: I just happened to reach out to someone and said, “Hey, I need Luke and please let me talk to him.” And so based on that, we ended up telling him what we wanted, and he ended up flying to Atlanta to meet with us. And after we went over everything, he was like, “Yep, I’m on board. Let’s get it.” Then, we spoke with Terry, he added JD [Jermaine Dupri]. Because you definitely need both. And he looked for the ambassador of Freaknik. And you need JD for the music.
Terry “TR” Ross: Well, not only that, but you need JD because he’s one of the most pivotal people in Atlanta right now. So we needed him for that too, not just for the music. I mean, they call him the “mayor of Atlanta.”
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Jay: Terry helped us fill in some of the gaps. So we went to LA, sat down in the studio with Terry, and just talked to him about what our vision was. And we told him we had Luke and this is what we’re trying to do. And from then, Terry jumped in and really helped us grow this thing, and also that we could start to take it to market.
Terry: So, basically they brought it to me. And I was extremely interested in it. I thought it was compelling. Because first and foremost, that was the reason why I moved to Atlanta, it was because of Freaknik. I had (Mayor) Kasim Reed – whom I went to Howard with in D.C., and I was from D.C. – Kasim Reed, he’s an Atlanta native. And he said, “You guys need to come to Atlanta for this thing called Freaknik.”
And we’d never heard of it, so we decided to go to Atlanta, and we put on this huge concert for Freaknik. And after that, it was just like, “Yo, I want to live here. I want to move here.” And so we decided to move there. This has come full circle because this is my first film project. Freaknik being the reason I moved to Atlanta, and Freaknik being the first film project I did was really amazing.
When Nikki and Jay brought it to me, I went, “This is something that needs to be told, because the story had never been told the right way.” I said that we need to get the people that have been in Atlanta that’s going to make the documentary where people are going to be authentic and really want to get into it. So me, Nikki and Jay, we met with JD, we met him at a Starbucks.
Jay: I want to highlight how we met him at the Starbucks. We met him outside of a Starbucks where Nikki sat on the ground and typed everything. Me and Terry pummeled him with questions, and it was in the middle of COVID and JD had like four masks on. (Laughs) All this happened in the middle of Atlanta in the middle of COVID.
Terry: Then we decided it would be best to, you know, get some of the tastemakers in Atlanta and start interviewing them. Who did we interview first, Chaka (Zulu)?
Jay: The first was Chaka after JD?
Nikki: Yeah, because we had to get them all in while TR was there.
Jay: Yeah, I think we had Kasim, Too Short, Kenny Burns –
Nikki: For some reason, I remember speaking to Mannie Fresh. (Laughs)
Jay: There were many people in there, yeah. (Laughs)
Terry: KP and Shanti Das, who was very instrumental in breaking OutKast because they broke in Atlanta during Freaknik. She was at LaFace [Records]. Rico Wade of Dungeon Family & Organized Noise.
Jay: You’re the only one getting this story. No one else has asked this, so just know this is an exclusive right here. (Laughs)
HipHopWired: So in terms of interviews and the experience of getting testimonials from folks that attended and those who were in opposition – what was that experience like talking to everyone and getting their recollections?
Jay: Before or after we started filming? Because that’s two different sets.
HipHopWired: After, because as you said with the teaser, there were those that were kind of wondering “Well, what’s going on? What is this going to be?”
Jay: I think when Terry talks about this – we weren’t passing out checks for people to be a part of this. Terry was really picking up the phone. Nikki was really picking up the phone. And these people were coming to sit and talk and tell us their Freaknik stories and help us piece it together. For the love. For the love of the people that have a relationship to it. And that’s how we were able to make the story come together.
Terry: Everybody’s story was different, especially Too Short’s, Lil Jon’s, and of course, JD. Because JD wasn’t even old enough to attend Freaknik, so he would just hang outside in the parking lot and just pass out his tapes. And that’s pretty much how Shanti said they broke OutKast, because they had these tapes that they were passing out, and then people were playing them in their cars. Because there was nowhere to go, you couldn’t move. (Laughs) So they would pop the tape in and they were just riding up and down the street and people were bumping OutKast.
Jay: And these are people that are legends now, like Shanti. Yeah, she’s one of the biggest women in music entertainment. Kasim Reed was just an early law student then, and Kasim is literally explaining to us how the government was working back then. One thing that didn’t make it to the documentary that was super interesting is how important Southwest Atlanta was to all of this coming together. And it was a really incredible story. Because Shanti, Kasim – there’s a group of mayors that all come from Southwest Atlanta. And they really just broke down the story. So you’re literally seeing the people that are the biggest leaders in their industries—from music to executives to politics—really be at the forefront of what Freaknik was and what it became.
HipHopWired: Building off of that, how happy are you guys with the reception that you’ve gotten so far with this documentary, showing such a cultural moment for Atlanta and the South overall?
Terry: I always say this: Atlanta wouldn’t be Atlanta without Freaknik. It would not be the same. Freaknik made Atlanta what it is today. Hands down, no doubt. Because people came from all over the country to Atlanta and then stayed. So you started getting a bunch of Black people from different parts of the country that came down and started having their own record labels. We built our record label out of Atlanta, we had a record label called Noontime.
We had Jazze Pha, Brian Michael Cox, Ciara and Latoya Luckett. All of these people came from us. And then you had the LaFace standard, and you had So So Def, and then you had Dallas Austin. And then you had the Dungeon Family. Freaknik started flourishing because of all of the different people that were coming into Atlanta and getting that culture because that was a whole different culture down there than any other city.
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HipHopWired: If there is one – you can narrow it down to one – what was your all-time favorite moment making this film?
Nikki: My favorite moment, all-time favorite was Clay Evans. Getting his interview and talking to him about his time at Freaknik. I wish we could have just shown his whole interview. How he acted; y’all he acted so crazy that day of filming. He wouldn’t let anybody talk to him. I was the only one allowed to talk to him. Nobody else can look him in the face. Everybody refers to him in the third person. (Laughs) Yeah, he sent me a two-page rider and let me know that he wanted oysters, but he’s the only one that does the shucking. I provided nothing. I gave him juice. And you have a good day.
Terry: We can’t leave out a very important partner. And that’s Alex Avant who was Clarence Avant’s son. I’m good friends with him. Alex was instrumental in bringing Hulu to the table. So, Alex saw the vision as well.
Jay: And to piggyback on what TR said, my favorite moment of the film is not even a film. What people don’t know is with me, Nikki and TR, other people are in the mix. For me, Nikki and TR are on the frontlines of this. And people know what we went through just putting together materials to pitch, to talk to people to get them convinced, to tap into his entire network, TR tapping into his entire network. And to see the big billboards in LA and New York and everywhere else off the idea that we were literally sitting with, like looking at each other like, “Are we crazy? Is this is a good idea?”
We’re at South by Southwest and we all look at the crowd like, “Oh, we did it.” That’s the moment for me that I was just like…you can’t let people tell you that you’re crazy. We did get rejection letters from people, people who told us that this wasn’t relevant and nobody cared about it. So to have a billboard in Times Square in the middle of a promotion that broke the internet? It just makes me appreciate these people on this call. I know we believe in ourselves and we kept pushing from day one. Never, never hesitated. And we should give some love to Tamara Knetchel. Tam connected us, she’s an unsung hero.
Source: Hulu / hulu
