Interview By: DJ Floetic & David Dalley
We caught up with Kentucky native Bryson Tiller before his show at Doug Mitchell Stadium at UBC on Friday Night. DJ Floetic sat down and chatted with him about the new album, video games, charity, ‘Wild Thoughts’ & more!
HHV: Welcome back to Vancouver Bryson. Last summer you headlined Friday Night at Fvded in the Park here in the city. You’ve had a huge year scoring one of the biggest songs of the year with DJ Khaled & Rihanna. What can we expect from your show tonight?
BT: Tonights show will be completely different, a different type of energy. It’s nice to perform just for my fans, people that are coming just to hear R&B music, my music.
HHV: Growing up you weren’t the biggest Hip-Hop head. Has that changed?
BT: It changed when I was about 16 or 17. I started listening to Wayne on the bus. All the other kids were judging me because I listened to R&B when they were listening to Lil Boosie. I felt I needed to listen to something harder, which is kinda wack in hindsight on my part *laughs*, so I started listening to Wayne and I got into Rap heavy. As far as new rappers go I really fuck with Kendrick.
HHV: What kind of people would you like to work with?
BT: I admire people that really know how to sing. I’m good with melodies but REAL singers like the opener we have on this tour (H.E.R) inspire me. She has so much soul, can do the jazz thing with all of the runs. I really like that stuff.
HHV: A few weeks ago you were honoured by the city of Louisville for your involvement helping fix up a local basketball court you remembered from your youth. How did that transpire?
BT:That was something I always wanted to do. I would ride past the court and see how run down it was. Charities are cool, but I want to do stuff that I can actually see and something I can be apart of. The court felt like one of those things. I hope kids from the neighbourhood see that and want to become successful and aspire to give back to the community as well.
HHV: Let’s talk about video games. I read that you want to create your own video game by the time you are 30 years old. Where are we at right now?
BT: I have written a ton of stuff. I’m working on two games right now. Nothing is being coded yet or anything, I’m still working on writing the story. One is a fighting game and the other is an open world RPG style adventure game.
HHV: What did you play growing up? I used to play Warcraft..
BT: The thing with Warcraft, the commercials always looked way doper than the actual game *laughs*. When I went to play the game it just wasn’t that. I like hints of RPG in a game like San Andreas but it wasn’t overly RPG. Thats what I’m going to aim to do with the game that I create.
HHV: Do you have a PS4 on the Tour bus with you?
BT: I’m kind of upset that you said PS4. I’m an Xbox man, but lately on the bus I’ve actually been playing a lot of Nintendo Switch and N64.
HHV: How was it working with DJ Khaled & Rihanna on ‘Wild Thoughts’?
BT: Khaled showed a lot of love since the beginning and Rihanna just knows how to make #1 records. She heard my verse and she wanted to keep me on the song.
HHV: Was ‘True to Self’ received like you expected?
BT: I was working on a few different albums before this one trying to figure out where to take it, what I wanted to do and if people would accept it. I thought I would make a bunch of different types of songs and have my close friends chose what this album is going to sound like. I asked them what their top 5 would be and just narrowed it down. Next time around I’m just going to do it myself without my friends. Just something for me, something similar to Trapsoul.
