HYPE FILES - The Hudi Interview

Hudi exports memories (and music) from the shadows. The 25-year-old artist/producer has created in secret since he first experimented with Garageband as a teen, laying out plastic cups and plates around his family’s NYC apartment like a makeshift motion alarm system to avoid detection — and ire — from incoming parents.

Channeling the slick confidence of Hip Hop giants like 50 Cent, Missy Elliot, and Timbaland, with an ear for melodies that’d have your favorite pop star hearing footsteps, Hudi makes music for anyone trying to find their next thrill.

Hudi’s talents have already garnered him playlist support from Spotify (New Music Friday, Fresh Finds; Anti Pop) and Apple Music ( Chill Rap; Emo Rap; Vibes). Listeners have streamed his early works more than 10 million times.

Get to know Hudi better in this exclusive Hype Off Life interview, where we got into his background, moving to LA and new music.

For those unfamiliar, give us a run-down of how you started your career and ended up to where you are today?

I was just grinding it back home, pumping out music on SoundCloud every week, throwing snippets up on IG, Facebook, wherever. I was going to school at the time and failing classes, not turning in assignments.

Brand manager at Epic reached out to me one day and said he wanted to get me connected so he put me in touch with Alex and Jeremy out in Cali. He’d just heard a couple songs of mine on SoundCloud, his friend found them and threw them on a playlist.

Alex flew out to meet me and convince me to drop out of school, which I did a few months later. I moved to LA, found a day job and started grinding it out here instead. 

GarageBand played a big part in your childhood creativity. How long did it take for you to get the hang of producing songs? 

I still haven’t gotten the hang of it. Every time I open Logic I’m scared, I feel like nothing’s gonna come out and I’m wasting my time. I’ll start dropping sounds and things on the page and build a collection until it starts sounding like something.

There’s always this off feeling when I start working, like I feel like I’m not a musician and I shouldn’t be doing this, and are people smarter than me gonna think it’s too simple? You start doing something because you’re interested, then you’re curious, then the curiosity leads to doing it because it’s fun initially, then you surprise yourself that you even did it even if it’s trash, then you start actually getting good, then people expect you to be an expert on it.

I think I’m still at that stage of curiosity and interest, even when I’m making shit that sounds complete now. I act like I’m decisive and that’s a strength, but I’m really not. I really don’t know shit. 

Which albums from your youth have had the biggest impact on your sound?

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and The Massacre got the #1 spot no question, I knew all the words to Candy Shop when I was 7. I heard Right Thurr when I saw that animated movie Robots and was like what in the fuck is that, so I started listening to Chingy. It wasn’t Jackpot I fucked with though it was PowerBallin’, you don’t understand the effect Leave Wit Me had on me.

I saw Shark Tale in theaters when I was a kid and heard Good Foot for the first time and went bat shit. If I ever heard that song on stadium speakers I’d cry. That whole album, aside from the Tarzan soundtrack of course, is the best animated movie soundtrack of all time. And most of it is grayed out on Spotify which is upsetting.

But there’s too many, I could name a hundred I loved as a kid but those are a few that definitely inspired what I’m doing today. Bieber needs a special shoutout, I had the My World poster on my wall next to 50 and Bob Marley, and that was when you’d get stoned and exiled for rocking with him. 

Some artists listen to everything new out to keep up with emerging sounds and rhythms, while others prefer to not listen to anything in their same genre, so as to not influence their sound. Which side do you fall on?

Before I was working at the day job I’m at now I listened to music all the time. New shit, childhood shit. My job has a radio that they play pretty loud for the 8 hours I work every day so when I’m off I throw on the rain falling on soft top roof 10hr Youtube videos, I really can’t listen to music after work or deal with any type of noise. And the rain makes me feel like I’m back home.

Speaking of influence, how does it feel to have 500,000+ monthly listeners?

Like Harry Styles said, this doesn’t happen to people like me very often. 

At what point did you know you were on to something with your music?

The first time I ever opened Logic was on a school computer, I downloaded the Someone Like You by Adele MIDI, dragged and dropped, recorded a kick and a clap on it, unquantized, and yelled. I was so hype. My friend dapped me and was like this is crazy. You really couldn’t tell me shit after that, my feature price skyrocketed. I was in class making beats, hoodie up. They knew I was cooking.

So, you just dropped a new single, “Brand New”. What does its title mean to you? 

“Brand new” is ironic, it’s a inside joke with myself. Cuz this is the type of music I was making in high school, and for a while I was confused, I’d built myself up and made industry connects, and was thrown into all these confusing whack sessions with producers who were way too talented to waste their time with someone who didn’t know what they wanted.

I felt like I let my management down and people who fucked with me cuz I couldn’t figure out how to be a session artist, I needed to step back and stop making pop music that didn’t feel like me authentically. Everybody convinced me to start rapping again until I convinced myself. So the new shit is “brand new!” but not really, it’s just what I’ve always wanted to make but never thought there’d be a place for it. And there might not be but I’m at the point where I don’t care anymore I just think it’s tight.

What else do you have in store for fans this year?

The project is gonna be rolled out slowly, I really hope I can do some shows, that's all I really want. I wanna be a real life tangible thing, not a YouTube short or an Instagram reel. I want the fans to smell me because I smell good as fuck.