You’ve probably heard his Daka mix or caught him as a special guest, and now, ToBeHonest is blazing his own path forward.
He spoke with Dance Music Northwest about his upcoming Q Nightclub show on May 29, to tell us all about how he found his sound, and where he’s headed next.
DMNW: You’ve been on a bit of a tour, and you have a show coming up at Q Nightclub in Seattle. What can you tell us about it? Any special guests?
ToBeHonest: No special guests, as of late. I have been a special guest, though, for a lot of artists that I’ve been opening for on this tour. So that’s been really cool. I’m kind of at a growth level right now. So I’m not as much a special guest, more like the main act. But, I mean, nonetheless, it’s been cool.
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The last time you were in Seattle was at Hangar 30. Do you prefer playing in larger spaces or in small club settings more?
I mean, it really just depends on the preference. I’ve tended to find that when I play smaller rooms, I enjoy the crowd a lot more because I know everybody who’s there is there for me, and they know all the songs, and they sing along. And that’s really cool. I love when people sing along.
But in the bigger rooms, obviously, I’m getting my name out there to more people in a larger audience. So it’s always nice to kind of get that exposure. I can’t really say I like one more than the other. I love them both. They’re both really fun, different experiences.
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Tech house is having a moment right now, and you’ve really carved a path for yourself even though it’s not easy to stand out as a DJ. What has that journey been like?
It’s kind of been kind of tough. I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs. When I first started, I was making more like Latin-esque tech house, because that was kind of having a moment. And then I just started toying around with a bunch of other pieces, and then I got the sound that I am currently at right now.
It was hard, just because I’m not gonna lie, for a period of time, I wasn’t entirely sure where ToBeHonest was going. But now I’m kind of happy that I figured out, sort of, what lane it sits in, and what lane I sit in, and what I’m happy with making, and also comfortable with and love doing, and I don’t know, feel good standing behind.
But I don’t know, I would say you kind of need to just be yourself and feel inclined enough to want to play that music in front of 1,000 people as much as you can, and be confident with it and stand behind it as much as you can. And that kind of gives me the confidence and the strength to really push it on the internet. Push it in front of my peers. Push it in front of people I don’t know.
I mean, that’s kind of how I was able to carve myself into this lane. Just kept going after it in the studio, and just kept working hard until I found something that I thought was unique and cool, and other people liked it too, and I started playing it in front of my peers.
How would you describe your sound?
As of right now, I’m kind of falling more into indie dance. Mostly Israeli-esque house music, like Max Styler and Solomun. So labels like Diynamic, Maccabi. Club Sweat is currently doing a lot of it right now. So is Black Book. They’re posting a lot of indie-dance-esque music.
But it’s kind of a combo of those two. It’s more synthetic, it’s more synth-driven, and it’s a slower tempo. It sits somewhere around 124 BPM to 127 BPM, rather than like in the current world we live in, guys like Prospa, Kettama, or even Chris Lake or Chris Lorenzo, they’re all speeding up their music. So they’re releasing music at 128 BPM, 130 BPM, even higher. But yeah, the genre of music I’m making right now is kind of indie dance.
Who inspires you?
Right now, it’s like guys like CamelPhat, Max Styler. I’m lucky enough that all these people I am friends with. So it’s kind of nice to be friends with some people who inspire you every day. And you can kind of build ideas off of and sort of go from not having a solidified idea to all of a sudden having something that you are comfortable with.
Always inspired by Chris Lake, too. He got me into house music. He’s the very first artist that I listened to. And the same with Skrillex. I’ve always listened to Skrillex my whole life.
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You’ve had a couple of big hits, No Lames with Pedroz, and then the Nun Major Shoreline Mafia remix with Disco Lines. How was it working on those songs with those guys?
Really dope. Pedroz and I have been good friends for a long time. I want to say like two years. So it’s been pretty cool to get to know him. He actually is touring America for the first time, and stayed with me at my house in Austin for a week. And we just started making music and came up with No Lames. And it’s actually been one of the easiest, put-together songs I’ve ever collabed on with somebody. And he’s just a homie. He’s really talented, really nice. English is a second language, so it’s kind of fun. I learned from him a little bit of Portuguese every time.
And then Disco Lines, he and I have been good friends for quite some time. I want to say two to three years. And that song is actually pretty old. Two years ago, we made it when I used to live in Culver City in Los Angeles. And we made a bunch of music together, but made that one as well. He wanted to put it out on SoundCloud together, but some other release was conflicting with it. So I just couldn’t do it with him at that time. But then he got it as an official remix for Shoreline Mafia. And I was like, “Dude, I would love to be on it. I don’t have any conflicts.” So he just ran with it and got my name on a Shoreline Mafia remix with Disco Lines.
You recently posted that Evil Ways hit 5 million streams on Spotify. What does that mean to you?
It’s really special. Probably the simplest song production I’ve ever made. It was really, really easy. It’s only 13 channels, so there’s not much to it. And I used to grow up listening to Willie Bobo. Willie Bobo is the original sample on the record. A lot of people think it’s Santana, but it’s Willie. So I took that song, I stemmed it out, and I kind of made my own revisions. It’s just really groovy and cool. I loved it.
I sat on it for, I want to say, six to seven months, and I was messing with it a lot, and I was sending it around, and it was getting played. It was getting played by CamelPhat and Adam Ten. It was getting played a lot, and we never had a way of clearing it. And then I got my Helix deal, and they were like, “We want to clear it.”
So they were able to clear the sample and get it out. But, like I said, it’s just been super, super special to me, because that song means a lot to me, and it took a lot to get it out. And the fact that it’s at 5 million streams in a little less than a year is pretty insane. Every time I play it, people sing to me, and it’s slowly becoming everybody’s favorite song. It’s just really special. It’s cool.
What are you most looking forward to in the future, and what are some of your goals?
What I’m looking forward to most in the future is continuing to grow down this sort of path. I feel like a lot of people still don’t really understand what ToBeHonest is about yet. So I need to continue to grow the brand and the vision.
What I’m most excited for is to get back out there and start playing in festivals and making new music as much as I can. I have a crazy catalog right now that I’m really proud of, and I have releases all the way up until October at the moment, so I’m really stoked to give that to the world. And I’m really stoked to kind of continue to pull back the layers on this new sort of direction that I’m putting ToBeHonest in.
Grab tickets for ToBeHonest’s Seattle show here.
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