Hoodie Allen

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FMN Exclusive Interview:

Rob: For those who don’t know your music, give me some adjectives in your words to describe it.
Hoodie: Upbeat, fun, summer hip-hop

Rob: About your career- you graduated college, had a sick job working for Google, how did you decide to give that all away and go with music?
Hoodie: Well it wasn’t easy but like this is my passion this is what I love to do, so I got to the place where I felt pretty confident that I could support myself doing this, and then it was just a no brainer. I moved back to New York and found a place and have been doing this full time since February.

Rob: So what are you up to now? Doing shows like tonight, but are you recording too, staying in the studio?
Hoodie: Definitely. Doing college shows and right now I’m working on my debut EP which will be put out somewhere between January and March. It will be putting out something for sale finally and dropping a lot of free tracks in the process to keep the fans happy. It’s leading up to the first sale sort of thing.

Rob: Talk to me about “James Franco.” What inspired both the song and the video?
Hoodie: Well, the song: RJ my producer/DJ, he just got really high and he named the beat James Franco and I liked it and ran with it. The song isn’t about James Franco it’s more about the celebrity lifestyle that we live in and just kind of poking fun at the fact that I always reference musicians and songs and stuff, so it’s very sarcastic and it might have gone over some people’s heads- it’s a very sarcastic song. And the video: we wanted it to be like a regular hip-hop walking video and the twist to be everywhere I go I can’t escape James Franco in LA. It’s stupid but it’s funny.

Rob: You collab’d with Tayyib Ali on one track, are you looking to have more features in the future and what was that process like?
Hoodie: Well Tayyib’s my dude, I’ve known him for a while. I didn’t want the mixtape Leap Year to be really collab heavy. Right now I’m trying to put out a lot of free collaborations outside of the EP I’m working on, so there is a lot of stuff of that nature coming soon. I haven’t done a lot of collabs in general, so I want to do like a Hoodie and friends type thing- like here’s sort of the people I f*ck with. *laughs*

Rob: If you were tight with everybody, any artist in the world, who would be your ultimate collaboration?
Hoodie: Andre 3000. Or Ye or Cudi, all those guys are great.

Rob: How do you promote yourself?
Hoodie: Well, I think I have good music and thats the first key you have to have something good. Then you have to tirelessly get it out there and show it to everyone possible. For me it’s been a big online push and trying to make relationships with different websites and people who I feel are the tastemakers of the Internet, for better or worse. It’s been a slow process ’cause in the beginning when no one knows you, you really have to put your best foot forward and show them something, but right now I feel like I’ve developed a lot of good relationships with people online so it makes it easier.

Rob: Who’s the coolest person or your favorite artist you’ve ever opened up for or played with?
Hoodie: Good question. Um… Matt and Kim. B.o.B was pretty cool, but Matt and Kim outside of hip-hop I love them and they were really nice and that’s why I try to always be nice to people, ’cause of them being nice to me. It makes the experience so much better when someone you like is not a d*ck, so I try to keep that same mentality. B.o.B was the man too.

Rob: Last question, where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Hoodie: Hopefully filling really big size rooms/arenas, having 2 albums out already, and at the point where my fanbase continues to grow- like 10 times the amount of awesome people I have right now. I mean that would be nice. It’d be nice to get a lot of money and then be like alright I’m straight, I’m chillin’, make nice music and have fun. *laughs* That’d be the good world.

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