#and they’re way more likely to also perform at the Amphitheatre than some other artists

[sternbagel]

*looking out the window, forlorn* when will the Black Keys return from war (add the tour dates they fucking said they would)?

[sinceileftyoublog]

Hyro the Hero Interview: Pits Where There Shouldn’t Be

Photo by Mark Adriane

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Let’s get it out of the way: in the critical sphere, rap rock has a bad connotation. Rarely, if ever, do artists tastefully combine the two genres, or even produce something that touches the spirit of both. Enter Houston’s Hyron Fenton, who goes by Hyro the Hero. Following a series of mixtapes, his 2011 debut album Birth, School, Work, Death was a revelation, blending punk and post-hardcore with rap, featuring contributions from some of Fenton’s biggest influences, namely At The Drive-In/The Mars Volta’s Paul Hijonos. Last year, he finally followed up his debut with the more rap-oriented Flagged Channel. His mixture of styles lands him on tours with bands like P.O.D. and festivals like the Rockstar Energy Drink Disrupt Festival, which comes to Tinely Park’s Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre on Friday, and the Vans Warped Tour. But his loyalty to black music and culture nabbed him a spot on this year’s Afropunk lineup, too. 

Last month, over the phone, Fenton (who now lives in L.A.) spoke to being the outlier at many shows and festivals and how the history of his across-the-board influences helped him navigate the terrain. He also shared some wisdom about the contemporary music landscape and its increasingly blending notions of genre. Read below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: It’s been a year since Flagged Channel came out. How has your relationship with the album changed over then?

Hyron Fenton: It’s more of a live feel with the album now because now I’m performing it. I feel it on a different level. I get to push the energy a little bit more. When I’m in the studio, I try to capture that vibe, but it’s nothing like being on the stage.

SILY: It was a few years between that and your debut.

HF: Yeah, it was a whole learning process. I was just trying to get myself together, learn my craft a little more. I got into rap a little bit more, learned structure, different choruses.

SILY: Is your background more in rap or rock?

HF: I come from a hip hop background. Growing up, I was listening to Tupac, 50 Cent, Cam’ron, Eminem--one of my favorite rappers ever. I was the guy who flipped the channel. I started listening to Nickelback and shit like that, and thought, “Okay, this is rock.” And then there’s deeper than that. I got into At The Drive-In, Rancid, and Bad Brains. A little bit more punk rock. I was learning my roots: The Judgement Night soundtrack.

SILY: Were you influenced a lot by the Houston rap scene?

HF: Oh yeah, man, the Houston rap scene is what got me. My sister used to rap with DJ Screw, who was the man in Houston. He died. She knew him before he blew up. To see him start a movement and turn into a whole thing. In Houston, we were kind of snobby about our music--all we would listen to was Houston music. But I decided to venture out a little bit. I started rappin’, and when I rapped I would scream all the time because I would listen to Tupac and try to imitate him. He wasn’t really screaming, but I thought it was so I would scream. I think that’s what helped me out in rock.

SILY: When was the point where you realized you wanted to combine rap and rock?

HF: It was when my ex-girlfriend in high school left me and I got real mad. So I wanted to make a song about it. I didn’t want to rap, because I couldn’t get the emotion out of it, so I took a rock song and I sampled it. I was screaming on that, and it took off from there. I put it up on Myspace.

SILY: Is it still up, or did it get lost when Myspace lost a bunch of data?

HF: I can’t find it! I think I deleted it. I put that one up and a song called “Punk Rock” where I sampled a Soulja Boy beat and sped it up. I was saying, “I’d rather be a punk rocker than a hip hopper, ‘cause y’all just doin’ the ringtone shit.” I was dissing a lot of people back then. [laughs]

SILY: Were you ever into other bands that combined rap and rock, like the Beastie Boys or Rage Against the Machine?

HF: Oh yeah, man. Limp Bizkit. Especially when it came out when they had a song with Method Man, and Eminem had a song with Kid Rock. I saw it becoming cool in a sense. I saw how much respect rock had for rap, but I didn’t see it the other way around so much. Rap was kind of scared of guitars, so it was cool how they blended it.

SILY: I’ve talked to friends who only listened to rap and then the Jay-Z/Linkin Park mashup came out, which turned them on to rock.

HF: They did it right! Jay-Z has such a cool voice, so they really nailed the chill hip hop vibe with it. The music with Linkin Park is so good and respectable. It blended it perfectly.

SILY: Do you feel like you’ve established your own sound beyond your influences?

HF: Yeah, I think I’ve got my own sound going. I’m always compared to Rage no matter what, but the way I rap is a little different. I put in more words. The way Zack [de la Rocha] did it, with little small sentences that were so powerful. That’s a hard thing to do. I got a lot of stuff to say, which is why I rap a little fast and make my words poetic. What they did was so special, though, so it’s cool to get compared to them.

SILY: Looking at the types of shows you’re playing, you’re with a lot of pure rock bands.

HF: The cool thing about me is I can do rap, I can do metal, I can do punk. They can put me in anything. My music blends all categories.

SILY: When you go to the Disrupt Festival versus something like Afropunk, do you cater to what the crowd is gonna want to hear?

HF: I used to do that, but I felt like that didn’t work for me. Now I just do my own thing. I’ve turned some places into pits that shouldn’t have pits. Especially Afropunk--I can’t wait to bring my vibe there. Same energy I bring everywhere.

SILY: Have you gained a lot of new fans at festivals where you’re the genre outlier?

HF: Oh yeah, man, especially in this day and age. Back then, it was a little different. People were a little bit wary of it. Now, everybody is into everything. If you look at rap shows, they’re trying to be like punk rockers with mosh pits. It’s really no different.

SILY: Trap has mosh pits, but then there’s also emo rock rap like Lil Peep.

HF: XXX[Tentacion], Lil Uzi [Vert], and all them. They’re doing stuff I was doing when I was young. [laughs] I was just a little ahead of my time.

SILY: The rise of the Internet really allowed that to happen.

HF: It’s a gift and a curse. It’s open for everybody, so everybody thinks they’re a rapper and they can do music. The special feel of it has gone. Truly talented people don’t get heard. It’s just if someone makes an ear candy song. At the same time, people are able to express themselves and it makes everybody work harder to get heard.

SILY: And people who previously didn’t have an in or money can get heard.

HF: I was like, “Damn, man, I didn’t have these opportunities when I was young.” I had a crew, but I didn’t have YouTube or Instagram. It’s a gift right now. 

SILY: Do you feel like you have to anticipate trends or what people are going to be doing so you can stand out?

HF: I just do my own thing. I don’t pay attention too much. I listen to music, and it inspires me, but as far as the waves go, I’m a little too old to know what’s up. By the time I hear a song, I’m like, “Oh, it’s a big song?” People got dances to it and everything, and I’m already late on it. [laughs]

SILY: How do you listen to music these days?

HF: Spotify playlists. I love YouTube. I like looking at old live shows. If you look at my Instagram stories, I call it homework. Looking at live shows from Queen, Bob Marley.

SILY: Have you heard anything lately that’s blown your mind?

HF: Lately, I’ve been into this band from Flint, Michigan, King 810. The song “Alpha & Omega”. It’s real dark and heavy. I don’t know if it’s old, but I jam that album. [Editor’s note: It’s from 2016.]

SILY: Are you a big metal fan?

HF: Oh yeah, I’m into metal. More punk rock, but I fall into metal because I love the metal sound. But I couldn’t tell you any new metal bands. I’m into old school metal. If you look at lineups, the old school cats still headlining.

SILY: I saw the Slayer farewell tour at the venue you’re playing here.

HF: Oh man. For throwback Thursday, I was gonna post a picture I had with Kerry King. It’s from back in 2012.

SILY: Sounds like I need to follow you on Instagram!

HF: I have tons of cool stuff there, especially with the lyrics I spit. I’m not political--I leave that up to everyone else. Everybody’s super political online and “woke”--I just like to be fun. [laughs]

SILY: Changing gears--does Houston still feel like home?

HF: Oh yeah, I was just there with some homies for 4-5 days. Went out to the club, partied hip hop style with bottles and stuff--shit I don’t normally do, but it was fun--I ain’t gon’ lie.

SILY: My girlfriend has family near Houston in Humble, and we go to the rodeo every year.

HF: The rodeo is fun, man! I haven’t been to it in a while. I remember when Destiny’s Child did shows there before they were super famous.

SILY: Increasingly, they’re booking a lot besides country. This past year, Cardi B broke the attendance record, before first Los Tigres del Norte and then George Strait broke it again.

HF: That’s crazy! They’ve been booking all kinds of acts now. And even if you look at country--look at Lil Nas X. Hip hop goin’ country. There’s another song going viral right now, a young black kid doing country with a trap kind of vibe.

SILY: Do you like “Old Town Road”?

HF: I love it. I hope he got another one, because it’s so good. It’s kind of hard to top it. [Editors note: Yes, it is.]

SILY: I loved Billy Ray Cyrus’s post-Billboard charts “Is this country enough for you now?” flex?

HF: [laughs] I get it. They probably looked at it and thought, “You’re making a parody of country.” But he’s really sticking with it.

Country already had some hip hop aspects to it, like Florida Georgia Line. I’m from Texas, so I know a little bit about old country, like “Mama Tried”. It’s cool to see the hip hop aspect of it.

SILY: Why did you change your name from Hyro Da Hero to Hyro The Hero?

HF: “D-A” was a little too hard--I always had to spell it out. People just said “The” anyway. So I thought I’d change it. Maybe some Mandela Effect type of way. But I didn’t realize I had so much stuff that said “Da,” so it messed up my merchandise. [laughs]

SILY: It’s probably really valuable!

HF: Yeah, and I have a lot of it.

SILY: Do you have any new music you’re thinking about or recording?

HF: I’ve been working on some dope stuff. I can’t really speak on it, but when people say it’s kind of hard to do the next album--this one might give Flagged Channel a run for its money. Some of these songs, I’m just so excited to do live.

SILY: Are you going to do any of them on upcoming shows?

HF: No, we haven’t learned them yet. A lot of them I don’t even know if they’ll make the album. I have a few for sure with some really cool people. Artists like me--I’m a rapper slash rocker, so I can move around with different bands and musicians and have an all-star cast.

SILY: And introduce people who haven’t met or worked with each other.

HF: Exactly. That’s what’s so dope about it.

[lanadelreyfiles-blog]

California Dreaming ‘Not all my romantic relationships were bad, but some of them challenged me in a way that I didn't want to be challenged, and I am happy I don't have to do that now.’ Lana Del Rey. Does Lana Del Rey really live right inside the middle of the 'H' of the Hollywood sign and spend most of her nights perched high above the chaos that swirls within the city of angels below, as the teaser for her new album, Lust For Life, suggests? Or does she rent a house in LA's Santa Monica or Silver Lake or someplace else she's not about to divulge, in case, having taken a cryptic February tweet of hers literally, a posse of her 6.3 million well-meaning Twitter followers showup on her doorstep with the ‘magic ingredients’ to cast spells on President Trump? Does she really only dip her toes into ‘the muck and the mires of the city every now and then’, as she says in the album's trailer? Or does she ‘go out quite a lot actually’, as she tells me when we meet, and spend her nights having fun with a tight crew of mainly musician mates, dancing at house parties, going to gigs and occasionally wrestling the microphone from her male friends to sing Hotel California in karaoke bars? In this post-truth world, it feels pedantic to care too much either way.

The 'real' Lana Del Rey is a 31-year-old woman called Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, born in Lake Placid, New York. She's close to her younger sister - Chuck, a photographer - but less so to her parents, Patricia and Robert, and her little brother, Charlie. They're a family of individual she tells me: ‘It was natural that we all went down our own separate paths, and we've all stayed there.’ We are sitting next to each other on a sofa in the Los Angeles recording studio where she has been creating her most musically accomplished work yet - the aforementioned album, Lust For Life, is destined to be the sound of this summer. Lana is fully present, smart, funny, engaging and refreshingly able to laugh at herself. She wears jeans and a vintage shirt, and she talks softly but with a compelling certainty. I like her all the more for the fact that no amount of everydayness negates the magic she exudes as a performer. To her fans, Lana exists in flickering Super 8; the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who comes with no baggage or bad days, but is here only for you in a Valencia-filtered fantasy. She's an idea of a woman who didn't grow up anywhere, but emerged fully formed from the elevator at the Chateau Marmont Hotel. She's a montage of Americana, finished with a flick of black eyeliner. Both the reality and the fantasy of Lana Del Rey make up a fully formed, albeit exceptional, human being. But, as Lana tells me, inhabiting these two worlds hasn't always been easy: ‘I know that if I had more of a persona then [when she released her breakthrough hit, Video Games, on the internet in 2011] I have less of one now. I think it comes down to getting a little older. Maybe I needed a stronger look or something to lean on [back then]. But it wouldn't really be hard for me today to play a mega-show in jeans without rehearsing and still feel like I was coming from the right place.’ I suggest that the scrutiny Lana was put under by the media for having a melancholic persona was unfair. Everyone, to some degree, presents a different side of themselves at work, right? Plus, she's hardly the first artist to change her name or cultivate a distinctive stage look. Yet, countless conspiracy theories called into question her appearance, talent, and family background around the time her second album, Born To Die, was released in 2012 but Lana is remarkably understanding. ‘Looking back now, I get a little more of what they're saying. When I was in the mix of a lot of reviews and critiques, I was kind of like, “What? I do my hair and my make-up just like everyone else for my pictures and my show, and yes my songs are melancholic, but so are whoever else's.” So to see a couple of other female artists not get criticised made me think, “What is it about me?”’ In hindsight, she says, she understands what the criticism and intrigue over her authenticity as an artist was about: ‘I think it comes down to energy, I really do. It wasn't overtly saying “I'm unhappy” or “I'm struggling” in my music, but I think maybe people did catch that and they were saying, "If you're going to put music like that out there, you better fessup to it.” But I don't think I really knew how felt. Then when things got a little bigger with the music I was still figuring out what was important to me.’ I get the sense that she's done a lot off figuring out in the past few years, like many of us now in our early thirties probably have done too. The difference with Lana, of course, is that all her experimentation, mistakes and regrets were fodder for public consumption. I mention that sinking feeling I get when I stumble across an old diary or a Facebook post that feels like it was from a totally different place to where I am now. I ask if she can relate. ‘That applies to me,’ she says. 'I have cringy moments. Certain things I have said and songs I have done, but mostly the ones that were leaked... I mean, they're not my finest.’ She's talking about her computer being hacked in 2010, when hundreds of unfinished songs were released online, without her permission. It was a horrible invasion of her privacy, and it leads on to a discussion about vulnerability though interestingly, it's not a word she says she has ever applied to herself. I ask her what performing on stage takes from her emotionally and what she gains from it, her amphitheatre shows usually hold up to 24,000 people at capacity. She fixes me with a not-at-all vulnerable look and says, ‘Well, it depends on the day. If I'm having a good day, it still takes a lot, but so much of it is physical. I try to take strength and sing from my core, so I have to actually feel good and get a lot of sleep. Of course, it also helps if my personal life is even; when you're on stage for an hour and 40 minutes, you think while you're singing. I don't like my in-between thoughts to be restless, or worrisome, so I can focus on the crowd.’ After a show, she feels reflective and needs time to process it. ‘It's not like you do it and it didn't happen; it's a real experience. I know rock bands who say they fucking love it - that they would [perform] every night and wouldn't do anything else. I don't know if it's as emotional an experience for them [as it is for me]’ Back to that need to feel good and have an 'even' personal life, Lana has lived in both New York and London, but says Los Angeles is starting to feel like home, and that's a big part of what's making her happy right now: ‘I'm growing my roots and meeting a lot of other friends, so I feel a little more settled.’ In her downtime, she loves swimming in the ocean: ‘I have a friend called Ron who likes to swim with me. So every now and then, we find an empty beach, jump in and swim the length of the coast, from one side of the cove to the other.’ Hey friends are her family, says Lana and that's why she can't accept anything less than total honesty and trust from them: ‘The fact that l know that now everything a lot clearer. What's interesting is how unsafe we [could] feel among each other [if we weren't] able to express how we really feel. It's hard knowing that if you tell someone exactly how you feel, like if you're happy or unhappy, that could be the end of the relationship because they don't feel the same way.’ We speak about the crews you pick up through your life and agree that, in your thirties, you are much better at surrounding yourself with people who make you feel good. ‘When you're in your twenties, you let this cast of characters [into your life], especially if you're in the arts,' she says. ‘It didn't matter what they stood for or what they thought was important. But as the years went on, there were things that I saw in people that I didn't like.’ Lana is enjoying being part of a music scene in LA where her friends include photographer Emma Tillman (also the wife of singer-songwriter Father John Misty), Zach Dawes, who has played bass with the British super-group The Last Shadow Puppets, and musicians Jonathan Wilson and Cam Avery. They play music together, which is not something she's done with friends before. The first time she had dinner with the wholegang, she thought: 'Wow, this is great.’ She tells me: ‘Feeling part of something is definitely a nice feeling.’ The downside to rolling with a crew of fellow musicians is that karaoke becomes a competitive sport: ‘If I am with the guys, they're always on the microphone and sometimes it's hard to grab it from them. Everyone pretends that it doesn't matter, but you can tell there are moments in the choruses when people are really singing.’ We laugh and I feel pleased that I'm meeting Lana at a time in her life when, as she puts it: ‘All the tough things that I have been through - that I've drawn upon [in my work] - don't exist for me any more. Not all my romantic relationships were bad, but some of them challenged me in a way that I didn't want to be challenged, and I am happy I don't have to do that now.’ I don't mean to rain on her parade, but I ask whether she feels that when she admits she's happy that something bad might be just around the corner? ‘Yes, sometimes. I have a little bit of that feel that it's a human thing to be superstitious. Sometimes I say to my friends, “I don't want to jinx it.” Or if l'm on the phone I'm like, “I'm so excited about this”, and then waiting for that phone call the next day... but there's no such thing as jinxing it. Just let go.’ The key to happiness, she says, is to ask yourself what will make you happy: ‘I try not to do anything that won't [make me happy], even if it's a show in a place that doesn't suit me. It's so simple; I always used to ask myself that, but never listened [to the answer] because I knew I was probably going to do it anyway. If someone really needed me to do something, I would probably be like, “OK!"’ I wonder if we put too much emphasis on being happy and that in itself causes stress and anxiety, but Lana passionately disagrees: ‘No! I think happiness is the ultimate life goal. I think it's the only thing that's important. There are no mechanisms in place for routes to happiness, that's the whole fucking problem. I think people are unhappy in school - the education structure has been the same for a long time and kids are still not satisfied all over the world with their educational experience. And you don't have enough conversations when you're young about what makes for a satisfying mutual relationship. Those collective life experiences - your youth, your academic education and your education about business, marriage or relationship goals - they all lead up to happiness. I think the emphasis is on the wrong things, and it has been for a long time.’ Lana tells me she's more socially engaged than ever; her fifth and latest album is a mix of personal introspection and outward-looking anthems, such as God Bless America, in which she sings: ‘God bless America and all the beautiful women in it.’ She says that, with this record, she was striving for a feeling that we're all in this together: ‘I think it would be weird to be making a record during the past 18 months and not comment on how [the political landscape] was making me or the people I know feel, which is not good. It would be really difficult if my views didn't line up with a lot of what people were saying.’ We discuss being constantly bombarded with news and other people's views in our hyper-connected world, and I ask how she reconciles her personal wellbeing with the collective feeling that we are all going to hell in a handcart. ‘I think it's a balance, I really do. You are so fortunate if you have good health and high energy because it takes a lot to be a responsible human. Responsible to yourself, responsible to others, and to know when not to get too deep into the wormhole of news, but still be politically in-the-know and not be disconnected. In my life, it's like walking on a tightrope. I read the news, but I won't read it before bed; I won't read it when I get up and won't read it between my recording sessions. I have windows of time where I check in and catch up with everyone, but I keep my sacred things sacred.’ And as for her paean to America's women? "I wrote God Bless America before the Women's Marches sprung up, but I could tell they were going to happen. As soon as the election was over, I knew that was going happen. People were way more vocal and more active on social media and in real life, so I realised a lot of women were saying out loud that they needed support and they were nervous about some of the bills that might get passed that would directly affect them. So yes, it's a direct response in anticipation of what I thought would happen, and what did happen.’ Predicting the Women's Marches must have taken a seriously smart, social instinct, or some kind of sorcery straight from one of her otherworldly Lust For Life trailers. Whatever you think, you can't deny that the pulse of the zeitgeist beats throughout Lana's new album, from her pop collaboration with The Weeknd on the title track to the moody duet with John Lennon's son, Sean,and my personal favourite, Yosemite, a beautiful song about the way relationships change over time. After she plays me this track in the very room in which it was recorded, I can't help but ask what Lana is like as a girlfriend. ‘I'm amazing. I'm the best,’ she jokes, before clarifying, ‘I actually am the best girlfriend because I only get into a relationship if I'm really excited about it. I'm unconditionally understanding, very loving and like to be with that person for a lot of the time.’ After hearing Yosemite's refrain that she's no longer ‘a candle in the wind’, which to mean she's found a steadier light in her life, I wonder whether what she looks for in a relationship has also changed? ‘For me, the dream is to have a little bit of the edge, the sexiness, the magnetism, the camaraderie, be on the same page and all that stuff, but without the fallout that comes from a person who is really selfish and puts only their needs first, which is like a lot of frontmen if we're talking about musicians!’ (Lana has previously dated Barrie-James O'Neill, the Scottish lead singer of alt-rock band Kassidy.) ‘I'm going to write a book one day called, “The curse of the frontman and why you should always date the bassist."’ Lana smiles, takes a sip of her iced coffee, and says: ‘I guess have a little bit of a fantasy that really great relationships, friendships, and romances can stand the test of time. Even though each person in the relationship or the group changes, they don't change in ways that would make the relationship come to an end. The chorus [of Yosemite] is about doing things for fun, for free, and doing them for the right reasons. It's about having artistic integrity; not doing things because you think they would be big, but because the message is something that's important. And then, it's about just being with someone because you really can't see not having them in your life,not because it would be 'beneficial' to you to be in their company. It's that concept of just being in a relationship for 100% the right reasons. Being a good person, basically.’ Lana Del Rey is mercurial - just when you think you've got her she slips through your fingers like quicksilver - but in that hot second, I think I see her clearly: an artist who is rising from the ambiguity of youth and emerging into a woman with an authentic vision for her life and her art. Yes, that might one day fade like the barely there ‘Chateau Marmont' tattoo on her left wrist, but right now her power is in sharp, unfiltered focus. Lana Del Rey's fifth studio album, Lust For Life, is out soon.