Interview with artist and songwriter, Bryce Vine

 

Bryce Vine is a recording artist and songwriter. He has performed with headliners such as Ludacris, Big Sean, Karmin, Andy Grammer, G-Eazy, and more. He just released his newest song,“The Thug Song,” and the music video. Read our interview with Bryce below.

I basically spent all morning listening to your music, and it was really good, I’m impressed.

Bryce Vine: “Oh good. It would be a pretty sucky interview if you didn’t like it!”

What was your favorite show from the 90s? Your such a 90s kid, and include so many references to shows during the 90s, I was wondering if you had any favorites in particular?

“Well, obviously Friends was one of them! There was also this show, that was real short-lived, on Fox, that no one is gonna remember. It was called the BJ’s. It was like a claymation thing, and it was about a black family, that lived in the ghetto. It was so gleefully not right to be a cartoon, but it was f*** ing hilarious. It was one of those shows that aired from, 1997-1999. One of a bunch of shows on Fox that everyone forgot, but this one was actually really funny.”

Speaking of things from the 90s, do you have any favorite 90s candy? I mean, Sour Patch Kids, obviously, but do you have any other favorite 90s candies, or candies you can’t get anymore?

“There’s one that you can’t get anymore, and I`m not even embarrassed to say it. When the Spice Girls were huge, they had these lollipops, and they were the best things ever. I was also obsessed with warheads when I was a little kid, I loved any kind of candy that was, like painful. Jawbreakers, Warheads, Fireballs, all that stuff.”

I really loved your music videos. What inspired the look behind them?

“There all kind of different. The first one we did was kind of an experiment, to see how it went. It was the first music video I really put out. If you had a birthday party for me, and invited every single person I know, it would be so many different kinds of people, and I wanted to create, artificially create, a place where a whole bunch of people, were in one spot just having fun, but it’s people you would never normally see together. Like, real tatted up dudes with Pit-bulls who look like skinheads, there’s a dude who’s dressed like a ninja, there’s another that’s dressed as a middle eastern guy, I don’t even know what else. We wanted to create this vibe where, like, literally everyone is invited.

The second video, “Where The Wild Things Are,” we shot in Gary Indiana. We shot it in this old, run down, abandoned Cathedral, in Gary Indiana, in one day, and that’s how we got such a cool product out of it. We got a cool product and a cool spot, and shot it in a city. I was staying in Chicago, one of my favorite cities,  and it’s only a 45 hour drive to Gary from there. That was pretty rad, that was the one where the visual effects kind of took over for the whole video.

The Sour Patch Kids video, we shot all of it at my producers house, in like two days, on a really small budget. The director, my producer, and I had been juggling with the concept as to what the music video should be. We wanted to do almost a “Wes Anderson” style video. If Wes Anderson made a rap video about going back in time, what would it look like? So we did our best, and even though it doesn’t quite look like that, we did our best. We wanted to be quirky, and have dialogue without words, and you kind of know where it’s going the whole time. The shots are very specific.”

So today I got to listen to your new song, “The Thug Song”, which I really like, and the video is great too, so I wondered, do you ever feel pressure to be more thug like as an artist in rap music or anything like that?

“Do I feel the pressure, to fall into that category? Of rappers? I guess a little bit. Not really pressure, I just wish I had a little bit of that, you know.. that quality to my rap. I wish I had the quality that those guys have in their rap. Not that I want to, I just wish that I had the option.

You know what’s cool about the project rappers, or the one’s who come from tough areas? What they do is automatically cool, because they’re the ones doing it.

Like, Fetty Wap, are you kidding me? The guy is singing romantic songs… there’s nothing gangster about that, but he’s so cool, that he makes it cool. I don’t feel like I can do that and make it that cool.”

What are your thoughts on your place in the music industry?

“I think I’m something fairly new and different, and there are more and more people coming up like me. Like, with the more thought provoking writing, and, with rap, it does not have to be one thing anymore.

Even in the 90’s, there was a rap station and a pop station, and now you get get rap on the pop station, you know? So it makes it easier for artists like me to talk about other s*** other than, like, spending money, and f****** b**** and you know, spending way too much money on jobs.

I want to talk about stuff from when I was a little kid. I’ve always wanted to avoid insulting people’s intelligence, and people are really wanting to hear something, like, someone is talking directly to them, which is kind of lost in music a lot.

They are either way too general, or people know they’re being condescended to, or it’s stuff they can’t relate to at all.”

Kind of going from there, I think your music is very relatable, especially to people who grey up in the 90s, who are now getting older, stuff like that. Do you see yourself as a good representation of that whole generation, or like the voice of a generation or something like that?

“I love that, whenever you play an old 90’s song, everyone is singing along. I don’t think people are going to be singing along to…”if I was your boyfriend…” they’ll be singing “if you would step back from that ledge my friend…”  It’s like an all encompassing thing that got lost a little bit.

I think about Blink-182, because they had so many great songs that were really relatable, they had that teenage angst vibe, they didn’t take themselves too seriously at all. Blink had fun, they were funny on stage, you could tell they were having fun, you could tell they were friends, and that’s the kind of person I am.

Where, like, this should be fun, music should be fun. You should feel like you’re at a party, not, like, you’re here, and everyone else is watching you. Like, we are all here together right now.”

 Is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?

“Oh hell yes, there are tons of people I want to collaborate with. I want to start with Childish Gambino. There is also a rapper I really like called Jamie T,  I think that would be really cool. I think he would come up with some cool stuff. He’s like me, he raps, he plays guitar, he talks about alternative stuff, it would be really cool.”

One of your songs was featured really heavily in the X Games, so what did you think about that? Was that really really cool?

“Yeah that was super cool. And I`m not even that super into sports, at all, so the last thing I`m thinking about is my song playing over, like, a hockey game or a basketball game. When I saw the trailers, with the song playing, I was like “holy s*** this song was made for this”! I had no idea until I saw the trailer how perfectly it fit with those. It made it look more fun after watching.”

To close us out, I was wondering, where do you see your music or your career progressing from here?

“I want to put out more music, I want to do a tour with another up and coming artist, whether it be Kyle, or I like that guy Paul a lot. There’s a couple people I would really like to go on tour with. I want to start playing shows, and people are just coming to see me. It’s starting to happen. Every time it does happen, it throws me off.

I never can gauge how many people are going to be at shows, so I’m always happy. I want to go on more tours, if I’m touring, I’m happy. I think that’s the happiest I can be. I just want people to find my music and buy it and love it, and show their friends, and just be part of it. I can tell when people are fans, because of the way they talk about the music, they appreciate it, it’s not just that they like the song, they appreciate the music and the lyrics. They tell me what it means to them, they want me to see what they’re working on, they feel involved with me.

I think it’s really important that people feel involved with the artist. It’s something that I have wanted, and I feel like it’s happening!”

Watch Bryce’s Official Music Video for “The Thug Song” here:

 

 

 

 

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