Love Music: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Your background, education, music passion etc. ??
I’m Confidential and I make lofi beats. My background was originally in classical music, playing classical guitar, then I moved onto playing heavier and heavier music until I found myself in a tech metal band, playing music that sounded like Deftones meets Tesseract.
I never had any interest in hip-hop until this one lesson at university where the tutor played this video of The Roots doing a live show. That changed everything for me and I joined a hip-hop band for a few years. After that band, I spent a year trying to do something new musically, but kept getting let down by other musicians until I decided to do things myself.
Love Music: We been hearing a lot about you, with some even starting to call you the face of lofi hip-hop in the UK. How does it feel now you’re starting to gain a lot of attention?
It’s all been very strange, to say the least! I’ve had people from as far as Singapore messaging me on Instagram, telling me how much they like my music and all that, which is really cool. I’m always incredibly grateful when somebody contacts me or shares my music around, but when people say I’m, quote-unquote, the face of something… I dunno, it’s hard to explain.
I mean, I can see that a lot of artists in my genre will use anime artwork instead of their faces and never reveal their names, but I decided that if I wanted to fight for a cause, I’d need to put my face and identity out there.
Love Music: Any upcoming projects?
Yes, I’ve got a new single coming out on June 25th. It’s called Lost Identity and I think it’ll absolutely blow away everything I’ve released before. Lost Identity will be the lead single for my new album, which I’ve called The Search For… and I feel like it’s by far the strongest material I’ve written.
Love Music: What has been one of the most exciting achievements of your career so far ?
To be able to come back from the lowest point in my life and find new identity and happiness through music.
Love Music: What’s your goal in life you want to achieve next?
I started out this project with three goals in mind. One I’ve already accomplished, which was to be featured on the lofi guitar beats playlist that Larry Choppins curates. That was a really big deal for me. The other two are to be featured on the lofi girl playlists on Spotify and YouTube, and to be featured on a Spotify editorial playlist. It would be amazing to see myself on a playlist next to my biggest influences.
Love Music: What motivates you to do your best work?
The idea of improving as a songwriter and musician. It’s as simple as that. I remember this artist called GiwHa asking me what my goal as a musician was. This was a few years ago, but I vividly remember standing there for a moment and simply telling him that I wanted to see how good I could get. I just want to be the best songwriter possible.
Love Music: What is hip-hop, to you?
Somebody already beat me to this one! The best answer was already given by Grandmaster Flash. He said Hip-Hop is the only genre of music that allows us to talk about almost anything. It’s just an examination of life and a social commentary and I think that’s what makes it so controversial, but that’s the case for anything that pushes boundaries and dares to challenge what is normal.
So, for me, I want to break the taboo of mental health. It’s normal to avoid talking about mental health, or to not take it seriously, but I want to challenge that and get the conversations started. Just because you can’t see an ailment doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Love Music: Did you choose this industry, as a career, or as a hobby?
It started out as a hobby and I still kind of see it that way. I do take music seriously, but I enjoy it a lot. I didn’t particularly make a conscious choice about becoming a musician, I just happened to really enjoy playing guitar and ended up at college studying music. When it came time to go to university, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than study music. Here I am today, having fallen down the stairs and seemingly landed on my feet for the most part.
Love Music: Everybody needs time out. What do you do in your free time?
I will do almost anything for an adrenaline rush! When I was really young, I always thought I’d end up being a motocross rider. My dad was definitely grooming my brother and I to be pro racers, but I gave up on that dream after breaking a bunch of bones and almost losing the use of my left hand.
So I’ll always try to do stuff that’ll give me my adrenaline fix, even if it’s something simple like going for a run. But I love anything with a competitive element, like go-karts, riding dirt bikes or BMX. My adrenaline dream is to one day jump out of a plane with no parachute, just like what Travis Pastrana did.
Love Music: How can people find you and follow you online?
The best place is Instagram, which is @confidential_lofi. Outside of that, there’s Facebook at /confidentiallofi and Ko-Fi at /confidential_lofi.
Be sure to also follow me on Spotify if you haven’t already, so you can get notified about all my new releases and hear them first. You really don’t want to miss what’s coming!
