“Paul… it’s Posner!” – When a man refers to himself by his second name you know he’s a bloody cool guy…. I then played the really un-cool card and asked him to call me back as I was just leaving work… dang – I wish I could be cooler!
Mike Posner is really making some serious waves in the music industry right now. Here is a guy who has worked from making bedroom mix tapes – to being on a US & European tour within 2 years. But what struck me most was just how down to earth this guy from Michigan was. His heart and soul is in his music and it’s always a pleasure to speak to artists who are musicians through and through and who get their biggest kick out of the music – not the dollars or the prestige. In a similar vein, those passionate about gaming and the digital revolution seek out the best crypto casino sites, places where the innovative spirit of cryptocurrency meets the timeless thrill of gaming, catering to enthusiasts who value the cutting-edge experience over traditional gaming encounters.
Before jumping into the interview, Mike was kind enough to send us the exclusive dubstep remix of Cooler Than Me by dj/producer Boson adding a much needed aggression to this track.
[Dubstep] Mike Posner – Cooler Than Me (Boson Remix)
here’s the interview:
We’ve been fascinated with your journey so far – we’ve seen your active on twitter and it’s great seeing someone with so much talent start breaking through. Your number 6 in the UK Charts right?
MP: I guess… I don’t follow the charts man – I think that shits poison. I don’t wanna sound like anyone else on the chart I think the worst thing to do is to just listen to people on the charts
So I took a peak at your schedule your err.. ever so slightly busy..
MP: Just a little bit!
What’s the year ahead look like for you?
MP: Right now I’m in Berlin, tomorrow I go away for the American Music Awards and then I come back to Germany to perform on the show called “The Dome”, then I go to Paris after that, then I go back to the states and I do a tour there – and then it’s Christmas time! I’m gonna take like 3 days off and go to Hawaii I think, and then after that I’m going home to eat a copious amount of food with my family
What’s your thoughts about the blog scene. Do you check blogs?
MP: Yeah so I’m a big Hype Machine guy – I think that’s how I got onto Music Ninja just through clicking through a link. So I’ve got I think about 5 blogs booked marked and yours is definitely one of them. {Laughs]
Dude that’s so cool. Tells us a bit more about how you’ve used twitter, facebook etc to get yourself more exposure?
MP: Well you know I’m an artists that would be absolutely nowhere without Twitter or social networking.
So you know I was a college student (a freshman at university) and in my freshman year Red Bull had setup this thing called Red Bull Music Labs. They put us up in a house and taught us how to make beats and gave us the software at the end. The teacher of the course was Bassnectar!
So Bassnectar taught me how to make beats. I’d been making beats since I was 13 but he taught me all his tricks about 5 years ago! Ever since then I haven’t really looked back,
I kind of got tired of just being a producer – that’s what I was a the time and for my whole life I just considered myself as a producer and a writer. Then I just got sick of giving my ideas to other people and having to channel my creativity through others, so I started singing 2 years ago. I made a mix tape in my bedroom and one of the songs on the mix tape was the original version of Cooler Than Me. I put it on iTunes U, which was setup for Professors at my school to put their lectures up for free. I wanted my music on iTunes ‘cus I wanted my music to be in the most accessible and universal space there was – but also free of charge cus no one knew who the fuck I was. So that’s what I did and then I started a Facebook page and it kind of just snowballed from there… and now I’m on the phone with you!
{Laughs] – You’ve hit the big time with us [jokes]…
MP: No man this is the coolest shit I’ve done in the last month so you don’t understand… I’m on the [The Music Ninja] every day.
That’s so cool to hear man.. Tell us a bit about you upcoming European tour…
MP: The European proper tour starts in late February and early march and it’s about 3 weeks long. I’ve been in Europe for like 2 or 3 weeks now but I’ve just been doing TV and radio no like proper shows
Have you got any crazy fan stories?
MP: Yeah I got some crazy fan stories! I think a crazy fan just stole my bed from my spot in LA!
I don’t know exactly what happened. I’ve been away for about a month and my manager went to get something from my apartment and he was like “is there a reason your beds gone?” and I was like “…no!” {Laughs}
Haha… You get any presents from your fans?
MP: I don’t get any like presents cus I don’t provide a place for them to mail me stuff. So one time I really wanted to re-read Catcher In The Rye cus I hadn’t read it since high school. So I put out a tweet saying that I was looking for a copy and I was presented with multiple copies at my next show, which was nice… I saved like 15 bucks!
Haha.. So when you’re on tour, what 3 things would be on your dream rider?
MP: Oh the rider questions… the dream rider though would probably be:
– White tiger in a cage
– Free trip to the moon and back
– And a javelin… You never know what you’re gonna need a javelin for.
Haha… maybe to kill the tiger in case it gets out of hand
MP: [Laughs] or maybe just to look cool next to the tiger holding a javelin.
[more laughs] Brilliant… so getting back to your music, your track Cooler Than me – produced by Gigamesh – what’s he like – tell me a bit about him:
MP: Well a friend of mine told me about Gigamesh like 2 years ago and I just fell in love with his work. I heard the remixes he had done for Lykki Li, Radiohead, Daniel Merriweather and they’re just all incredible! So I hit him up on MySpace and was like “Yo – you should remix my song” and he did and now we both have platinum plaques on our wall and I can’t wait to work with him in the future. He’s just an incredible producer!
Yeah he is. he keeps a pretty low profile though…
MP: Yeah definitely – that’s the coolest thing about him is that he doesn’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks man. He’s just in it for the music and no other reason. He doesn’t do shit that he doesn’t really love or believe in and that’s what I admire most about him. If he’s not feeling the record he’s not gonna do it, He’s not gonna remix a song that he doesn’t like… ever!
So tell us about the remix your giving us of Cooler Than Me
MP: Yeah dude we got another one too for please don’t go. The paperwork isn’t all done yet but by the same guy Boson… it’s incredible man they’re both so hard!
My friend Benny Blanco who is an incredible producer in his own right – first put me onto this dude Boson and a dubstep remix he had done to Pony by Genuwine and I encourage everyone to check that out. It’s absolutely retardedly dope!
So when it came time to do a remix to the remix for Cooler Than Me I was like “let’s rock with this guy”, I hadn’t heard him do like any contemporary songs or songs that were big at the time so we reached out, he was down and he absolutely killed it! I’ve never talked to the dude though so I can’t really like give you any inner secrets that you might be looking for.
Haha… well you know you’ve made it when people you’ve never even met are remixing your track
MP: Yeah… well when people that are dope are remixing your track ay!
So Cher Lloyd covered your track Cooler Than Me on UK show X-Factor recently…
MP: She did… one of my buddies sent me a YouTube link and was like “hey man – you should probably check this out ‘cus half of the UK is watching this. So I clicked on it and I kind of felt terrible that she wasn’t feeling her best and I kind of wanted to give her a hug, but I was overall honoured that she knew my song and liked it enough to sing in front of so many people.
I was chatting to a work colleague before you called, and she said that your song is always on the radio – Is that a good thing for you?
MP: I don’t know – I guess it’s a good thing for me ‘cus I get to go to the UK and do shows – I’ll be there in march so for a lot of people it would be the first time they hear my music so I think it’s a good thing.
So you looking forward to playing anywhere particular on your tour?
MP: I’m sure all the shows are gonna be incredible in different ways and it will be really fun to come back to the UK. Obviously it’s some place I’ve been before but a lot of the shows are in places I’ve never been before. So I’m excited to be there and do what I love which is being on stage and connect with people that allow me to do what I love!
Do you have any pre-gig rituals?
MP: Usually I draw the name of the city on a piece of paper then I attempt to make it into some sort of a weird artwork and I write down things that make me feel good. Then I tape it too the stage and it usually ends up in some young concert goer’s possession after the show. That’s my biggest one. There’s some other really crazy shit I can’t talk to you about though
Oh yeah?
MP: Involving white tigers and javelins [laughs]
The dream rider started as a joke but these promoters really wanna make you happy… it’ll be 2 white tigers next.
MP: Yeah… 7 white tigers!!!!!
Back to the music – where do you get your new tunes from?
MP: From You! I’m kind of excited because apparently Ellie Goulding has similar tastes to me because these 2 new covers she’s done – Temper Trap and your song by Elton John – I fucking love so I’m really excited to listen to those but yeah man I’m on Hype Machine and I’m on your site everyday – I gonna be totally honest – that’s where I get my new shit from!
Which artists have you got your eye on at the moment? Any you think we might not have spotted?
MP: I don’t know if I can tell you about anyone that you don’t know about, but hold on. Let me load up my shit [loads up his mac] and see what I can find:
I’ve been listening to Tinie Tempar a lot – his stuff is really dope!
I’m a huge Deadmau5 fan – you definitely know about him though.
I love like Feist,
Metric are insane. I think Emily Haines has some of the best lyrics of ever! When she said “hard to be soft and tough to be tender” that made the hairs stand up on my arm.
Recently though I’ve been listening a lot to lot of Leona Lewis – how about Laura Marling?
Yeah we love her
MP: How about Mansion on the Moon the song “she makes me feel” – you gotta listen to that!
So what’s your guilty pleasure song?
MP: Okay this is an easy one… it’s James Blunt -Your Beautiful – and Britney Spears – Circus.
Haha… you got any other Britney spears numbers tucked away?
MP: Yeah I like Britney spears -3
I use to just absolutely hate just about everything that was popular. If it was popular I hated it and that was the song that changed all that for me because that pre-chorus where the guitars come in and play… the minor chord, is so ill, it’s like so hard and once I heard that I was like “I can’t not like this song. Even though it’s Britney spears it’s good!” {Laughs}
So random question… if your music was a wild animal from the woodland what would it be?
MP: Do white tigers live in the woodlands?
They can do…
MP: Alllllllright… white tiger then! But not in cage though… this one’s roaming free baby!
Yeah you can slam a saddle on it!
MP: Yeah just riding my music [laughs]… no saddle though – no shirt and no shoes… and a pair of Gym Shorts!
Haha, nice… Tell us about growing up – you grew in Michigan right?
MP: Yeah yeah… I was born in Detroit and I was really blessed to grow up in one of the most diverse cities that there is in the States and that’s South Fields, Michigan.
So from a very young age I had different friends from all races, ethnicities and social economic status’s. The result of that being that I was exposed to all different types of music from a really young age.
I’m somebody that was listening to Wu-Tang Clan, Mos Def and J-Dilla but then you’d turn the page in my CD collection and you’d find Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana and Led Zeplin, then you’d turn the page again and find Charlie parker, Myles Davis and obviously being born in Detroit, Motown music kind of runs in everybody’s veins and all that stuff is constantly being ballsed and jumbled up in my brain and then spat back out as my sound.
Who’s been your most influential artists then?
MP: I definitely can’t pick one. I think the worst thing for me to do for me as an artists, is for somebody to say that I’m doing something that’s already been done before. I’m all about taking from a million different places and making something original, out of a lot of million small parts.
How do you produce your music?
MP: Well when I first started making my mix tapes, I was like I said a producer for about 10 years and a singer for about 1 month. So I would start off with the beats then, then I’d just write to my beats.
It wasn’t until a year or so ago that I started being more conscious of melody so now I’ll just sit down with the piano or the keyboard and I’ll try to write great melodies. I’ll just sit there and record gibberish you know like… “ Ba ba dee doo ba ba be doo” [laughs] until I think I’ve thought of something that’s dope. it’s not until then that I’ll start attaching words to the melodies that I’ve created. Once I have a melody & chords and lyrics that I feel okay having my name attached to, then I’ll start working on the track and start producing – but it’s until the song itself is dope in my eyes that I’ll start producing it. That’s why it’s always fun for me to do acoustic shows and shows that are just piano because that’s how my songs are written. To strip them back is always good fun and to prove to people that these are good songs even without the beats being dope?
Do you have a favourite instrument?
MP: I think my favourite instrument is one I don’t play – it’s acoustic guitar, that’s my favourite to listen to. I play the drums and the keys but I’m by no means the best drummer or keyboardist that walked the earth. I play keyboard with all the wrong fingers but I do enough to get by!
So you don’t wanna be like anyone else … what about genres would you like to experiment in?
MP: Yeah I’ve really been experimenting with sampling again and I think there’s enough tradition now that we can talk about sampling without it being a dirty word like it was maybe 10-15 years ago.
The stuff I’ve been working on recently, like the stuff in the London Studio, is super dope. We did a lot of guitar-based tracks, almost like Chilli Pepper guitar sounding tracks but then putting crazy vocal samples on top of it, so you’re almost throwing together Chilli Peppers with J Dillah and mashing them all up.
So that’s the direction I’ve been pursuing for like the last three weeks or so. I’ve been in the studio with DJ Hi-tek and I’ve gotten beats from people like Jake One. It’s really exciting for me to dive into the early sample bass, Like the early 90’s hip hop stuff… the straight rider music… and then sing over it… and not rap.
Do you have any producers you’d like to work with?
MP: I’d love to work with Pretty Lights – I love them. I’d also love to work with Stuart Price. He’s top of my list – he’s my favourite!
Brilliant! Mike thank you so much. We really appreciate you taking the time to chat to us…
I know I’ve said it a million times but this is probably the coolest interview I’ve done in the past 6months so just thank you again for the opportunity, your time and if there’s anything you guys need for the site just let me know and I’ll always be down.
Thank you man!
