RYLEETIME™!!! INTERVIEW
Hello.
Yo.
How's it going?
Pretty good. How about you?
I'm pretty good, introduce yourself for the people. Who are you?
Awesome. I'm RileyTime™!!!. I'm a pop punk, EDM, hyperpop, DJ/artist. Yeah, I'm just here making music and having fun
Doing everything.
Doing everything.
So I forgot to ask you last year to play SWAGFEST. I don't know how I did that, but you did play the first year and you played this year. Between between 2021 and 2023 what's changed for you? Has your approach to making a set changed? How has making music for you changed or stayed the same?
A lot's changed actually. I remember my first set, I just wanted to get it done, and I didn't have a whole lot of my own music to put in there, so I just kind of threw in whatever the heck I could find. I basically just made a playlist.
Yeah, I feel like that's what a lot of people do.
Yep, I remember after that I played Boneyard and I heard underscores’ set, and everything was either like written by them or it was a cover or something. It was a lot of fun to listen to that. And I decided I wanted to do that instead. So I didn't have any covers in mine, I just kind of threw together some demos, but from here on out, I think I want to try to make some stuff for SWAGFEST, like covers and remixes and stuff.
Yeah, that's so real. When I saw underscores live, it totally changed how I do sets too. They do it different, I don't know.
Exactly.
You mentioned like a couple of different genres and you do blend together quite a few different genres, especially different sub genres of pop. Who are some of your inspirations for the different subgenres of pop.
I have so many. I grew up listening to this pop punk, no, it was a crunk band from my hometown Marietta. They were called Family Force 5. They have some hits. Biggest one I think is called Chainsaw. But I like their older stuff like their first three albums went so hard. They kind of fell off I don't even know if they make music as a band anymore, but it was really nice stuff. From there, I don't know, I'm really inspired by a lot of old 2010s party hits. I'm talking Party Rock Anthem, that type beat.
Is there anyone that people wouldn't expect?
Yes, not pop music, but my bandmates got me into some weird stuff that I never would have thought of. Lawson, shout out, he's a folk punk kid. He got me into some nice folk punk music. So I've been listening to a lot of Days N Daze and my favorite one is Escape From the Zoo. They're both bands headed by the same guy. I love folk punk though.
You and Lawson have a lot of music together, but I feel like I don't know much about how you guys met or what you guys do. I know you make music together, but what is the relationship? How'd you meet? What do you do?
I think the only reason I am where I am right now is because of the connections I made through Discord servers, Lawson included. I think the biggest ones I have are Lawson and Hailey. Hailey introduced me to you and Lawson is just a super talented kid I met on the 100 Gecs Discord server. I just posted my stuff in the production tabs, and people would be like, “yo your stuff is so cool let's chat, let's work.” That's what Haley did, that's what Lawson did. I talked to Lawson for about a year first Before we actually started working together and making good stuff. He sent me a project that he wanted me to mix for him because I was like, "yeah sure, I'll mix something for you” because mixing is what I do best. Production is nice and writing is cool and all, but mixing is generally where I shine, so I told him I'd mix a project for him. He sent me this massive, humongous zip file that had literally hundreds of tracks in it, and they were Logic exported. And I've noticed that when I get stems from Logic, the levels are so minuscule on Ableton, they just look like lines, you can't tell what anything is. So I had to literally turn everything up and I decided to give up on that. I was like, “yeah I'm not talking to this guy anymore, I'm not working with him”. He hit me up a year later with 150 unplugged and I was like, “holy moly, this is a really good one, I wanna I want to talk to him again”. So we started working and this time he sent me stems that were a lot more concise. It was like 10 tracks and I was able to actually see the audio files and I worked magic on that mix from the first iteration of the fifth iteration. And I think in a matter of like two weeks, we got that track done completely. And then, since we worked so well on that one, I handed him mute, and I was like, “let's work on this one”. And once again, two weeks it was about done and we were like, “okay, we work really well together, this is insane”. Yeah, so we started an album. We aren't finished with that album yet. We just started sitting down and writing things for a band because if we work so well together, might as well make a band. We don't have a name for the band yet, but we have like a track list of songs we want to do. We already have a record label who's interested in signing us just from some demos we've shown them. It was a song he was paid to write for some YouTuber’s intro, it was like some camping YouTuber or whatever. They were like, “write us an intro song, we'll pay you” and he did it. He got like 25 bucks for it. He had me do the drums for it and mix it and I was like, “I don't want to take your money I have a job.This is the only money you're gonna get so keep it”. He showed the demo to one of his teachers and his teacher was like, "oh wait, this is sick, I know a guy” and “his guy” ended up being a record label executive who was like, “this is some fresh stuff, we need to take a look at these guys”. So we've been kind of texting back and forth. It was a cool little pop-punk-DIY-sounding intro it sounded real fun.
Hell yeah, perfect for camping.
Perfect for camping, right?
So what makes a good collaborator for you? I mean, I guess not sending a million stems that have no visual audio, but besides that.
Well for me, I'm a big starter, I start tons of projects, and I don't finish most of them. I'm a great starter, terrible finisher. My best collaborators are people who are fantastic finishers, and not great starters. Like Lawson is a great finisher, especially since he plays guitar so much. That's his main thing, he sits down and he plays guitar. He can write a song based off of an idea that I had in like three minutes. Then I just gotta produce his song and we have a collaboration. Hailey is pretty much the same way. I start a song, she finishes the beat, and then you and I just do vocals over it, and we have a g00fb4lls track. Yeah, just someone who can finish the ideas that I have, because I'm really bad at it.
Yeah, that's fair. That ties in perfectly to this question; you make a lot of music that doesn't end up seeing the light of day. What percent of things would you say, do you start, that end up actually being released?
Probably like one or two. It's bad. But actually I'm working on an album and i'm taking a lot of my older tracks, ones specifically that I think work well together and that I think I could finish, and i'm hoping to have this thing out by 2025 including music videos, pictures, advertising campaigns, and all of it. It's going to be really exciting and the album is turning out to be absolute heat.
Exciting.
Exciting.
How many work in progress songs do you say you have going at any point in time? I like to have three or four songs going at once cause I'll just get bored of working on one for too long, so I can hop to another one. Are you the same way?
I'm sharing my OBS scene so I can literally show you this right now. So basically from here… to about all of these… are all just tracks that I've started and probably will never finish. And this is just the ones I have on iTunes. I have probably just as many on SoundCloud that aren't even on here. So all of that to say, a lot. I don't know that I could count them, but basically my workflow is “make what I'm feeling right now”. Sometimes it's folk punk, sometimes it's pop punk, sometimes it's EDM, sometimes it's hyperpops, sometimes it's some trap beat. Whatever I'm inspired by this week I just sit down, make that, and then if I want to finish something, I scroll through my library. “Do I think I can finish this one? Do I have any ideas?” I have playlists of tracks that I'm generally always inspired by. I have this one playlist called “Rylee Discography”, which is songs that I've finished, and songs that I plan on finishing at some point, cause every time I listen to them, I'm so inspired. It's pretty long. It's 61 songs. It's an hour and seven minutes of mostly just 20-40 second demos that I have ideas for that I could actually finish one day.
You gotta do the Mac DeMarco thing and just release like a 10 hour album of all that.
I've thought about it. It was actually Jack Stauber who gave me that idea with “Micropop”. It was 100 songs and they were all like 20 to 50 seconds.
So you're inspired by a lot of different things. How do you find new music? For me, it's mostly my Discover Weekly and like Spotify playlist and stuff. But how do you find new stuff?
For a long time it was SoundCloud. I would go on SoundCloud and I would kind of just go down rabbit holes. I had a really big EDM era where all I wanted to make was dubstep and riddim, so I listened to a ton of it, but I only ever made super cute Snail's House type beats.
That's how it goes.
That's how it goes. I was never able to make EDM or dubstep specifically. I got really good at making those though. They sound clean and nice, but I don't want to release those. The way I would discover music is I would go to artists I loved, like Virtual Riot, Panda Eyes. And like Disciple was a big thing so I would go “oh virtual riots on Disciple. I'll go to disciple I'll listen to all the artists on Disciple”. I'm like, “I like this guy. I'll go listen to that guy, and listen to the other collectives he's in”. Basically like a rabbit hole all the way down and sometimes Soundcloud would just start recommending me new songs that I would listen to just because I was bored and I would discover new artists that way. Artists that I never would have discovered otherwise because they have smaller followings. Nowadays, for the most part, it’s playlists. When hyperpop was starting out I was listening to a ton of 100 gecs. I wanted to find more like it. So I went to the Spotify hyperpop playlist, listened to whatever was on there, and I ended up discovering all the different artists that I think are so cool now. I don't know how I discover new music nowadays. It's mostly whatever my favorite artists are shouting out and what they're part of. Like Dylan Brady. He produces songs for all these different artists and posts them to his story. And I love Dylan Brady's production. Dylan Brady is like a number one for me. Generally I'll just listen to whatever artists he produces for us. So like. Usually Ravenna Golden is an artist he produces for. Cali Cartier, Lewis Grant, Cakepop, I just kind of dive down the rabbit holes of the artists that I really like. Also it's friends recommending things to me like, Escape from the Zoo is a number one for me. And that one was recommended to me by Lawson. And I went through like, "who do I like in Escape from the Zoo? I like, Jesse Sandejas. And he does Days N Daze as well. So I like listening to that music as well. And I was like, what is this? Oh, this is ska punk. So I look for ska punk playlists on Spotify and I ended up finding the Aquabats, some songs from Blink 182 that I love, Mustard Plug, things that I never would have heard of before, which is absolutely fire. And then recently I jumped on a crunk rabbit hole because it was so funny to me. What's funny is that the crunk band that I listened to, Family Force Five, they're like Christian, but it's not like super big Christian. It's Christian party music, right? So it just sounds like music but it's clean and there's no bad words. So I thought this is what crunk was and I go to listen to crunk music and I was taken by complete surprise. I was like, “whoa this is… oh god… Family Force Five are the Christian ones, jeez louise.”
Speaking of EDM, and you mentioned liking EDM a lot, if Slushii unblocked you for one message, what would you tell him?
What would I tell him?
And maybe the people need context. Yeah. For those who aren't aware of Slushii and Rylee.
Let me pull up receipts. So on SoundCloud, on my alt account, my demos account. One second, let me pull this up… make sure I'm logged into my demos account… There we go. So I messaged Dinner With Judy, which is Slushii's hyperpop alt. And I sent him a bunch of my demos two years ago. Most of them are private now. These two aren't. And he actually responded. I was not expecting it, but he responded. He said, “hit me on Insta”. And after this, you know what he did? I didn't hit him on Insta. He hit me on Insta, and followed me and we just started chatting it up. Let me see if I can find that or if I deleted it because I got hurt butthurt by it when he blocked me.
We're canceling Slushii. (/j)
Canceling Slushii. 1 million followers. It's crazy, his stuff is so fire, too. So he hits me up first, he goes “yo dude”, and I'm like “YO!!!”, I remember I was sitting there playing Minecraft And I got a message from Slushii, and I was like “what is going on?!” He said “yo”, and he said he checked out my stuff. He said “leave me alone is a heater”. Leave me alone was a collab that I was doing with you and Hailey at the time. Yeah, he found it on my account. Then I sent him this link, which is our version, because I said I've been working with you on it. And he sent me, this video, I remember this so distinctly, of him in his studio playing a bootleg that he made of my track on his monitors, and then he sent me this link which is, it's still valid, the bootleg of my track… yeah “Leave me alone Slushii wip”. That's how it got started. And then I started messaging him like crazy, being annoying, but he didn't seem to be bothered by it for a while. You could see there's a lot more blue than gray. He sent me his number at the end of it.
What?!
Yeah I asked him if he could send me his number and we started texting. We had iMessage, so we started sending like demos back and forth on iMessage, which was crazy. He sent me some unreleased Slushii tracks on mine that he… wanted me to…? He didn't tell me what… I just have some Slushii…
IDs
IDs yeah, so I actually put one in my set this year which was fire. I love that one so much. I also put the leave me alone remix in there, too
If he unblocked you, what one message would you send him?
If he unblocked me? Yeah, he blocked me after a while on iMessage out of nowhere, just out of the blue and now my bubbles are green. Well, my bubbles are green now because I'm on Android, but my bubbles were green when I was on iPhone. If he unblocked me, I'd probably send him my best project now. Two years later, there's a lot of improvement. I'd be like, “bro, listen to this, listen to this one.”
Slushii, if you're watching.
“Give me another chance, bro.” Okay, wait. I’ve been wanting to show this to you and Hailey in the g00fb4lls group chat, actually because this is gonna make waves you.
It's giving, like if the mix was cleaner, it's giving Skrillex, like new Skrillex.
Right? Man, and it feels like Slushii to me so I would send that to him. I’d be like, “bro. This? Come on. Come on.”
So you mentioned leave me alone. Which do you think is going to come first, leave me alone dropping or a female U.S. president?
Probably a female U.S. president. I don't think it's going to drop for a long time. That song has a detailed, long history.
There's lore.
There is lore to that song. But, it'll come out one day.
Hopefully.
Hopefully.
Everyone I play it for likes it.
Yeah… my mom doesn't.
Your mom doesn’t??
My mom doesn't.
My parents probably wouldn't either.
Do you know why?
Is it because there's bad words in it?
No, well now she wouldn't because of that.
Is it my verse?
No.
She hate my verse?
Well, she didn't like it when I showed her my demo because I remember I wrote it when I was mad at her and I told her and I showed it to her.
That's so funny. It's funny that you told her that and then showed it to her. That's so petty.
I know. And she hates it now.
So you mentioned the 2025 album. What else should people be on the lookout for from you?
As far as I know, that's it. I don't have anything else coming out anytime soon that I know of. Except for maybe some g00fb4ll songs. If we finish those before 2025. Like, “64OZ”, “semi truck body slam”.
There's a couple.
There’s a couple. Those two will be absolutely fire when they finally drop.
Okay, final question before we wrap it up.
Okay.
What time is Rylee time?
All the time.
All the time?
Whenever you're Ryleeing.
Whenever you're Ryleeing.
It can be any time you want. Whenever you're Rylee. I don't know. I don't know what it's supposed to mean.
I don't need to know what it means. I just need to know what time is Rylee time. All the time works. That's a fully valid answer.
All the time. Anytime.
Anything else for the people?
I love you all. You're so sweet to me.
You heard it here folks. Well, thank you for the interview.
Yeah, thank you for interviewing me. This was a blast.