Caught the coat tails of Montreal fused Grown Folk half Drew, aka Druture. The incessant weight of a not small twenty four year old male was enough to slow him down and grant an interview to. The ideal outcome, seeing as how Grown Folk have long been a continuos blip on the Duracell battery powered radar of this ill lit, Red Bull can littered lair. Through the interview we discussed his own moniker, Druture, and the connection between the solo project and Grown Folk.
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First and foremost, Druture is purely a side project correct? Last time I saw uploads from a group members new alias was when the LOL boys split.
Damn, RIP LOL Boys. Nah nothing like that at all, Brendan actually was the one who encouraged me to do a side project to get some of these tunes out there. Grown Folk is as strong, and busy as ever, expect to hear a lot of new stuff from us in 2013. Shout out to Jerome LOL and Heartbeat(s) btw, some amazing stuff coming from both of those dudes.
Elaborate on the branching.
With Grown Folk, Brendan and I have always taken a more calculated approach to what we put out there, and we’ve worked really hard to establish a signature sound, a sort of strand that ties together all of our material. Its something I’m really proud of creating, but I also have a lot of other impulses which might not fit perfectly under the Grown Folk umbrella.
How are you approaching solo productions differently?
Its actually not all that different than how I go about working on Grown Folk tunes. Brendan and I have actually spent a good deal of our time working together in different cities. Whether its due to the 4 month summer breaks when we weren’t in school, or the 8 months I spent in London 2 years ago. Because of this we’re often starting up projects, getting them to a certain point, and then uploading them to dropbox. I guess the biggest difference is that there is no one else to bounce ideas off of, and when I get stuck on a track there’s no one to help get things going again other than myself. There’s a really nice fluidity to being in a duo, since you’re not always going to be inspired or motivated to work on things 24/7. You also have another set of ears throughout the entire process, because anyone who’s produced will tell you that after a few hours, its easy to get lost in the loops, and doubt can definitely creep in. I think that working on a solo project will only strengthen myself as a producer, and I’ll have even more to bring to the table when Brendan and I work on a Grown Folk track together.
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What genres are you looking to explore outside of the group? Hip Hop clearly. Also, I love that the only person your following is The Dream. The guy is too good, and he remixes so damn well.
Hip-Hop is the obvious jump off point, but there’s a whole world of sounds and regional strains that I’m into. The Houston sound has always been a huge influence for me, and its something that I bring to all my productions, be it Druture or Grown Folk. I’m living in Atlanta right now, soaking up a lot of the mixture circuit as I can, I’ve always been a fan of this city’s output growing up. It was always weird being a Hip-Hop fanatic, but really liking the snap music and “ringtone rap” that everyone was claiming was the death of the music I loved, that stuff just worked to me. Another major influence is the mid 2000s peak-era Roc-a-fella records stuff, particularly the Diplomats camp, anyone who knows me knows how big of a diehard dipset fan I am. I really love Hip-Hop, and to me it means a lot of things.
Outside of Hip-Hop, I’m definitely pulling from a few different places as well. To be perfectly honest RnB is something I’ve only really gotten into since becoming a producer, but yeah I can’t get enough of it. The-Dream really represents a lot of what I aspire to be as an artist. You can hear a ton of different influences in one of his LPs, but they are all distilled through these candy colored filters, and they come out sounding undeniably like Dream songs. I like to think that I’d be able to identify a lot of the songs he’s written as his, even if I wasn’t such a big nerd that reads every releases liner notes before I hear it.
Who are your biggest Hip Hop / Rap influences?
Right now for me the top 10 looks something like:
Kanye, Cam’ron, Max B, UGK, Soulja Boy, Future, Mike-Will-Made-it, Chief Keef, Hollywood Squadda & Denzel Curry
Here’s a big one. Is Druture a play off the rapper Future? I.E. how did the name come about?
Yeah absolutely. I think Future has one of the best names in music, its hard to believe that no one else has claimed the name until now. Regardless I don’t think any other human being embodies the name Future as well as he does, maybe Steve Jobs but those guys just use their real names. I wanted to use my real name, but I didn’t really want to go the Ryan Hemsworth route because I’m overwhelmed by Facebook as it is. Drew rhymes with a cool words, but I really wanted to just have one word. Druture just came to me on a wave out of nowhere, it was a very Future moment.
Do you feel as tough you’ve landed on your sound as a solo artists or is there more feeling to do?
You know that 10,000 hour theory that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his book ‘Outliers?’ He basically says that to reach true mastery of something you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice to get there. I was getting kind of depressed about the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to ever reach that number in anything I do. Then I realized that listening to music is my 10,000 thing. I listen to a lot of different genres, and my taste is all over the place, but there’s definitely a certain vibe that I usually gravitate towards. I don’t think I’ve landed on my sound, but I have a good idea of where I’d like to take things. We’ll see if I end up getting there though, I like taking detours and ending up in weird places.
What would some receive if they ordered a Druture cocktail?
Dirty Sprite mixed by Tommy Kruise.
So what is your next step? What is Druture’s future? Sorry, I’m all about lame jokes.
I’m working on the first Druture mix which I’m trying to record live on Technics. That’s actually how I learned to DJ, but its been a while, with Serato and CDs in the years since then. Helix and I are also working on a mixtape w/ Hollywood Squadda, but that’s still in the early stages. Helix and Squadda are going to be an amazing combination though, just based off of what I’ve heard so far…
The Grown Folk FB page and yourself have been quite a bit more active these days. Is schooling all wrapped up and is that why you’ve been so active online?
More or less yeah. I think a lot of it is also excitement about what our friends are doing, and what we have in store for everyone. 2013 is going to be a very exciting year for people who like good music.
Let’s finish this as charming as possible. What makes you want to throw up?
When people say, “just be realistic for a second.”
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