A Leap of Faith: Ekkstacy
EKKSTACY wears JEANS by DSQUARED2, BRACELET by MARTINE ALI, BOOTS and BELT are TALENT’S OWN.
Jason Nocito— So what should we start with? Do we want to be really basic?
Ekkstacy— Have you ever interviewed somebody or is this your first time?
JN— This is probably the first interview I’ve ever done. Okay well, when I first hit you up on Instagram two years ago with the disbelief that you were from Vancouver, what was your response?
E— There was no response. I didn’t want to respond because you were a fucking photographer.
JN— Because I was some creepy old photographer sliding into your DMs?
E— Yeah, I told you I used to have a strong dislike for photographers.
JN— Why did you hate photographers so much?
E— First of all, I just don’t like being on camera. I do now, kind of. And, photographers are annoying.
JN— I agree. Photographers are the type of people who constantly need something from somebody else all the time.
E— Yeah like, “Can I have a photo pass? Can I have this? This? All I need is this...” but Andrew said I should meet you and then we met and I was like, “Damn, we’re boys.” Then we went on tour and we became best friends.
JN— I wouldn’t say we’re the same person, but we do have more alignment than less alignment. Any chance I get to hang out and talk with you, I’m happy.
E— It’s funny because we only spent two weeks in a car together. Two weeks is not long.
JN— We’re pretty good for people who don’t know each other.
E— I was also in a dark hole most of that tour... everything was tight and then it got bad. I was too drunk. I’m sober now. Kind of.
JN— Dry?
E— Yeah, I’m not binge drinking. I couldn’t even tell you why I was doing that.
EKKSTACY wears JACKET and PANTS by OFFICINE GÉNÉRALE, TOP by Y-3, BRACELET by MARTINE ALI (left)
EKKSTACY wears COAT by DAUPHINETTE, GLASSES by FLATLIST x OFFICE (right)
JN— It’s hard to stop once you start.
E— Yeah, but I felt so awful.
JN— Maybe you were just nervous in New York.
E— New York wasn’t even the first day of that. I did it, every show, up until that day.
JN— Okay but let’s reel it back, how did you end up in music anyway?
E— My dad made music.
JN— What kind of music?
E— Bad rap music.
JN— So your dad’s the first white Canadian rapper?
E— Yeah, my dad has unreleased records.
JN— Did he produce them?
E— No, that fool had me producing music for him when I was 13, 14 on GarageBand.
JN— No way.
E— I’m so serious. I started on my grandma’s computer then leveled up to iPad GarageBand and upped to GarageBand on my own computer where I was making full-on rap beats.
JN— When did you start making your own music whatsoever?
E— The first time I sat in front of my computer with a microphone was December 26th, 2018.
JN— That’s insane.
E— My first song came out sometime in January 2019.
JN— The first song that you put up on SoundCloud?
E— Yeah, it might’ve even been December 30th, or is there a 31st in December?
JN— Yes.
E— Then, it might’ve been the 31st.
JN— But you had been spending time on SoundCloud before then right?
E— I was producing lo-fi beats and uploading those. I remember one got 800 plays and I thought that was super goated, but the SoundCloud algorithm is so shit now. We used to just blow up on there without anything else. You know what I mean?
JN— So at what point did you cross the line?
E— I crossed the line with “i walk this earth” March 2021, so really I was only in the mud for two years.
JN— How many songs versus beats had you put up on SoundCloud by then?
E— I only ever put out probably five beats, and then I probably put out maybe 45 songs on SoundCloud before “i walk this earth”. Maybe more like 50 to 75.
JN— Did you make them with other people or were you just cranking them out in your bedroom alone?
E— Always alone, or I’d have my homies in there, but always on YouTube beats, bro.
JN— Really? You weren’t making beats?
E— No, I wasn’t good enough. I could only make lo-fi shit. I couldn’t make good trap beats.
JN— That’s when you were working at Amazon and living in Vancouver.
E— In Langley and downtown at that point, in garages and shit. I would leave home for months and just couch-surf downtown.
JN— So you were just bouncing around for three years.
E— After my parents divorced, I would go back and forth between their cribs. Then I started blowing off school and eventually dropped out.
JN— In 12th grade?
E— Yeah.
JN— When did you get the face tat?
E— Right after I dropped out. I never went to school with a tattoo which I regret.
JN— What did your mom say when you came home with that?
E— I didn’t fucking go home. I FaceTimed her and I can’t remember exactly what she said, but she cried.
JN— What about your dad?
E— I don’t think he saw it either. I was staying with him at the time and he just told me not to come home.
JN— Do your parents see you now? Are they proud?
E— Yeah, dude, for sure. We’ve done a lot of fun shit since everything’s happened.
JN— And that brings you...
E— That brings us to today, where I live in New York City now. I was in LA for six months and in and out of LA for the last year and a half.
JN— So New York City is your favorite city?
E— Second. Vancouver is my favorite city.
JN— Right. And that’s what we have most in common. Except for the reverse. New York’s my favorite and Vancouver is what New York is to you.
E— Yeah.
JN— So when you make something, when you made “i walk this earth”, did you know it was going to blow up?
E— No clue. No idea. It felt good, just like every other song feels good.
JN— At that point, what were you listening to?
E— Only Current Joys and The Drums.
JN— How did you go from the triple X world to—
E— I stopped listening to the SoundCloud shit a while ago.
JN— But what was the first thing you got into outside of that?
E— In high school, I wasn’t just listening to SoundCloud. I was also listening to really basic indie stuff. That’s what got me into Mac DeMarco, The Drums, Mild High Club, and shit like that. Me and the homies, we always liked indie and punk and all that shit, but we just didn’t know how to play instruments. It wasn’t band culture in high school. We thought it was tight and we liked it, but impossible for us to do.
JN— It seemed for a long time that it was just SoundCloud rap.
E— When I grew up, it was a punk scene, and you would get fanzines and write letters to people, staying in touch and creating a community that way. SoundCloud’s community and the internet obviously operate in a totally different way. SoundCloud’s dead now.
JN— So this next record then? How do you even start?
E— It’s so easy. You just do it. I don’t take much credit for anything I do. I feel like it just happens, even from the beginning—from the second I sat at my computer in 2019. It just comes to you and you get lucky. Sometimes, you make a big song, you blow it, and sometimes you make a shitty one. Usually, whatever comes to mind first is going to be the best thing you make.
JN— Is anxiety a motivator for you? Do you ever feel paralyzed?
E— No. I don’t think anxiety is present in the creative process at all. I mean, I’ll get a little nervous whenever I’m making a song and it’s going too well, like if we’re speeding through something, the riff is amazing, the drums are amazing, the bass, everything. But that’s how I’ve done every single song I ever made. Instrumental first, vocals after.
JN— And you aren’t going to do that anymore?
E— I have a band now. We’re going to demo now, just write as we go.
JN— You’re not going to be doing it with your friend, the German guy anymore?
E— I’m sure that Mango will be in the room and play with us, but it’s going to be us making the record.
JN— When do you plan on releasing your trap record then?
E— Dude. First of all, it’s an EP. When do you plan on shooting all the videos?
JN— When you’re in New York.
E— But yeah, we’ve been sitting on this shit for a long time, but this genre is dead as fuck, bro. It’s not going to change. We can drop this shit anytime. It doesn’t matter. If it comes out in a year, it’s not going to be more dead. It’s going to be the same.
JN— But how can you say the genre is dead when there are legends still making insane songs?
E— No one’s making insane songs, bro.
JN— How does genre play into what you make now and what genre is your music? Is it emo?
E— I don’t know what genre my music is. It’s pop music, it’s emo, it’s indie, it’s punk. It’s all those stupid things. At the end of the day, now I’m just going to be doing rock music.
JN— What if you hate it?
E— I know, I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t even know what it’s going to sound like. Am I going to blow it in a rock record setting? Am I going to sound like shit? Who knows?
JN— Sometimes when we’re convinced that something’s a bad idea, it’s the best way to go in.
