Troyboi Talks About His Diverse Background And Influences In iEDM Interview

Electronic music producer Troyboi has had an explosive music career throughout the past three years, collaborating with major artists like Flosstradamus and Diplo as well as performing with his partner, Icekream for their side project called SoundSnobz.

With almost half a million followers on Sound Cloud and his name on numerous major festival lineups, Troyboi’s music has spread throughout the world like wild fire. Despite his rise to fame, Troyboi still remains down to earth and eager to share his music with everyone.

I was able to sit down with him before his set at Electric Forest where he was more than happy to talk about his new music coming out soon. 

iEDM: How does it feel playing a big midwest music festival in the United States like Electric Forest? Do you feel like you will branch out to new fans in this area?

Troyboi: Absolutely, I mean I would like to hope I do. For me, this is very overwhelming because of the fact that I’m from London. So I’m very happy and very honored to be here. Happy to have a great time with everybody and just show everyone my music who has never heard it. And also to feed the fans that are here so yeah I’m excited about it.

iEDM: Any tour plans coming up in the next year?

Troyboi: After the summer festival run, over the next two months I am going to be doing my own solo tour in the Fall. Which will be branching from my new album that I am going to be releasing in the next month. So from September to November I will be touring my new album, It’s going to be all original Troyboi material. I’m doing something pretty crazy for that. Everyone’s going to hear a taste of the new album today. I’ve been sitting on so much unreleased music for a long time so I can’t wait. This is going to be my first album that I’ve ever released. I’ve never released an EP, just singles and songs after songs but now I think this is a good time to show people what I can really do.

iEDM: How long have you been working on your new album for?

Troyboi: It’s been a while, a few months really. I was playing with the idea between an EP and an Album. But then it got to a point where I decided it’s time for an album. Over the past two months its been literally day and night non stop music. It’s been great. It’s the first time i’ve been able to work on music like that in the past two years because I’ve just been on the road.

Photo credit: Joshua White

iEDM: How would you describe your music to new listeners?

Troyboi: It’s very eclectic. I like to take elements from genres of music that I like and kind of blend them together. A lot of my music has a world influence. I would say that comes from my heritage, roots from my heritage because I am Indian, Chinese, Portuguese and Nigerian. As a child my parents played a lot of traditional music in the house. I think subconsciously as a child I soaked all that music in like a sponge. I love to incorporate a lot of world sounds especially from Asia and Africa and fuse it with electronic and trap and hip-hop. It’s a fusion, world fusion. 

 iEDM: What is it like producing in different genres like trap and dubstep? When you’re producing new music is there a certain direction or feeling that you end up going with?

Troyboi: Absolutely, I’ll start off with one idea and I like to let it go naturally. I never like to force anything. Like Michael Jackson says “Don’t concentrate on the music, let the music write itself.” That’s something I learned from him at a young age and that’s exactly how it works for me too. That’s why he’s my guy (pointing at the tattoo of Michael Jackson on his forearm).

I have mind blocks all the time, especially during this album. There were times when I would make two great songs and I would go to make another song and I would be blank for three days. And it happens, but you have to embrace it. It’s normal, you know?

iEDM: What do you do when a creative block like that occurs?

Troyboi: I just relax. I just step away for a minute. I don't think about making music. I concentrate on anything else and then it just comes to me. I'll just get a sporadic moment where an idea will come and ill just sit on my computer and it will just flow. But it’s obviously very frustrating when you want to make music and then nothing comes out but it happens and it's very normal.

iEDM: Would you say your album is very diverse in terms of the different genres that is consists of?

Troyboi: Definitely, with this album I want to make sure to show people my style of music. People who aren't familiar with my style of production they can really see that I have my own particular style. It’s very eclectic in that sense. Like I said before, I like to mix and do different combinations of genres and feels and textures. That’s one thing that I want to show people is the range of how I can produce and how I broaden my style of production.

iEDM: You already mentioned Michael Jackson as a major influence, who have been some other major influences through out your music career?

Troyboi: I listened to a lot of Pharrell and Timbland growing up. In London I would listen to Wookie. There’s so many people, Quincy Jones, Dr. Dre, there’s a lot of people Hans Zimmer, Bach. It goes so far. They all have influenced me in some way. I don't like to do just heavy stuff. I like to do chilled out stuff. I like to do left stuff and with the album you will see it all come out.

Be on the look out for the release of Troyboi's new album Left is Right later this month! And get pre-sale tickets for his US solo tour HERE.

Check out more iEDM exclusive artist interviews HERE.