It doesn't really bother me if people misunderstand me. It's cool, but you can't do anything about it.Collection: Cool
I've always felt like I could express myself better in English just because the way the grammar works.
Me and my family used to have a Christian covers band together... like rock Christian music, upbeat, all in Indonesian. The band was called Roasted Peanuts.
I grew up in West Jakarta, in a middle-to-low-class neighbourhood.
I just love making people laugh.
I have very little thoughts on Lil Xan. I think his music is very unique.
In my neighborhood, there are stray goats everywhere, and, someone owns it. Someone has a farm full of goats. At daytime, they just let them loose, but then at nighttime, they just come back. So, it's like, in daytime, the whole neighborhood is just filled with goats walking around.
Every time I get the chance, I just talk to myself basically in English just to practice my pronunciation.
Things can go away just like that. You got to be always respectful and nice and positive.
One day, I was just thinking about something, and then - you know when you think, and you have that inner voice in your head? I realized it was in English.
I didn't want to be one of those people that does something that blows up and keeps doing it for way too long.
Some fan literally broke into my house. He literally came in and said, 'I'm a huge fan. I brought you food.' He brought me three boxes of noodles.
I feel like, with an album, that's how you get to know an artist.
I would also love to get into acting. I love being in front of the camera.
At, like, 11, I think, that was just me watching a lot of YouTube videos, and I whenever I had the chance, I would talk to myself, practise pronunciation. Then I found out about hip hop and became friends with American people through Twitter. I was like, 'Yo, I need to be in a country where everybody speaks the same language.'
I used to play the drums when I was, like, 5 through 10.
My sister sings, and my brother plays the keyboard.
When I found out my parents wanted to homeschool me, I was so bummed out. I missed all my friends. But now I realise that if I wasn't homeschooled, I'd be the lamest kid ever - I wouldn't have been able to speak English, for a start.
I wouldn't really call myself a spokesman for anything. All I wanna do is inspire young people everywhere - not just Indonesia.
My influences are a wide variety: from Dave Chappelle stand-up comedy specials on YouTube, to watching chick-flick comedy movies, to scrolling through stuff people say on the Internet.
All I have to do is to do my thing. I don't have to talk about it like, 'Oh, I'm representing for Asians.' I'm just... doing it.
I started listening to rap music in 2012 or something, because that was when I started becoming friends with American people, and they showed me rappers to listen to. I actually started listening to Macklemore a lot. He's the first rapper I started listening to.
I'm definitely trying to make longer songs, but if it's short and good, I'm not going to do anything about it.
My dad is constantly looking up my name on Twitter, every single day. He made a Twitter account just for that.
I started making raps in 2014, recording stuff from my iPhone and putting them together in Sony Vegas, which is a video editing program.
I always liked to draw, and when I was a kid, the Internet wasn't big at all, so I would go to Internet cafes and search Google images for cartoon characters and save it to my USB drive.
When my family got Internet installed at my house, me and my siblings went crazy and would take turns browsing. I'm homeschooled, too, so I would be on the computer every day. It was so exciting to finally get Internet at my house.
I started playing the drums at five years old and used to listen to a lot of screamo bands like Asking Alexandria, Dream Theater, and Attack Attack!
It got to the point where I would wake up at 6 A.M. and go on my phone and tweet something and have it be really good and get lots of retweets... and then I would wake up, because it was actually a dream; I would wake up with my hand holding nothing - an air phone.
There are good things about Indonesia, but there are bad things about it that I hope can be fixed.
It's important for kids to see someone who looks like them carving his own path. I definitely acknowledge that, and I think it's super great.
I remember in Indonesia, there was this actor in a film that got pretty big internationally, and he went to Hollywood. Seeing an Indonesian guy doing that when I was 13 or 14, it really motivated me.
I have this friend who does comedy but also music, and I really enjoyed his stuff, and I wanted to do that.
I started home-schooling when I was in elementary school because my parents were really busy back then. They didn't have time to drive me there, and we didn't have a school bus or whatever.
Hip hop helped me learn about a whole bunch of American culture.
I was, like, 12 or 13; the first hip hop song I tried to rapping to was Macklemore's 'Thrift Shop,' and my English was so bad, but learning to rap to different songs really helped me with my pronunciation, and looking at the lyrics on Rap Genius and stuff like that.
I don't want to be just seen as a character, because that can get exhausting after a while.
I take my music very serious. I don't call myself a comedian.
My dad put me onto Phil Collins and Dream Theater and all that stuff.
I'm definitely not making fun of hip-hop.
I like lyrical rappers and turn up rappers.
For songs to be big, I don't think there's a certain formula to it.
I don't want to be boxed in or looked at a certain way, as in, 'Yo, he's an Asian rapper.'
It's pretty hard as an Asian rapper to not be put in a box. I do my best to avoid that.
When I say 'homeschooled,' I was homeschooled for, like, two years, and then we just stopped. It was me and my parents, and they'd give me homework and stuff like that, but then one day, they just stopped.
I learned how to make videos, I learned how to make music, I learned English from the Internet. It's such a great platform, too, to release your stuff.
I actually, honestly don't look into politics that much.
Academic studies in general is not something that I'm very good at.
I've known about hip-hop for a long time. The first time it intrigued me was when I saw this music video by Tyga on television. I was intrigued by the whole aesthetic. It was very unique.
My main goal was to be a cinematographer. I was making short films, and the plan was to keep uploading them on Twitter and build a fanbase there. One day, I just started making music for fun. When I made 'Dat $tick,' it blew up, and I saw the potential in that.