Le Youth Talks Genres in iEDM Exclusive Interview

iEDM had the pleasure of speaking with Wes James, better known as Le Youth, at Electric Forest this past weekend. Le Youth is known for his mixture of R&B and 90's dance music. We caught up with Wes who told us about some of his inspiration behind Le Youth's soundscape he's worked hard to make, his view of the music he makes and current and future musical pursuits. 

iEDM: What inspired you to start producing music and what is your production mindset?

Le Youth: I've been making music my whole life. I was always in bands growing up. At first I was never really into dance music. I kind of got disenfranchised with the whole band thing and started making music on my own.

I usually start with a cup of coffee just sitting in the studio. It's not like writing a song with a notepad, guitar, microphone, it's just kind of experimenting and not going in saying I want this type of song. I just go in with an open mindset. To me it's always been about just making a rad song. 

iEDM: What type of genre would you define your music in? 

Le Youth: I'd say Indie dance. It's kind of weird the whole different connotations of varying genres, but I'm more underground dance music. I go for things I grew up listening to and things that speak to me. Around three or four years ago, I started messing with 90's acapellas and it spoke to me.

Music is kind of cyclical I feel, ten years ago it was the 80's and 70's that had a revival, that's not why I did it, but maybe I'm still a product of that. Music is music and I love to make it.  

iEDM: Are you working on any new projects with 90's accapellas you want to tell us about and have you ever messed around with 'Rhythm of the Night?'

Le Youth: Yeah and it's not even because I'm trying to stay in that lane, it's just fun to do and it's old enough now to where people hear and interpret it differently now as opposed to using some acapella from Katy Perry. There's this nostalgic sense that comes along with it, some of those acapellas are hard to mess up with a good beat behind it. 

Oh yeah plenty of times. There's already some good remixes ('Rhythm of the Night') out there as well. Blonde did a great remix of it as well. I'm working on a couple new singles coming out that have been tied up in a record deal with a slow release schedule. Now I'm just opening up the door to release some new stuff. It's kind of overwhelming to be honest. 

iEDM: How'd you come up with the name? 

Le Youth: There's no good story behind this, but I wanted to be sort of mysterious. I love the idea of youth and at the time it really spoke to me and I threw a "Le" in front of it, and that's how it came about.

Great time meeting with Le Youth and we're all excited for some new good tunes to be coming out. Check out some of his newest releases and stay up to date on following Le Youth!