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Giraffage: Where Nintendo 64 and R. Kelly Collide

Bringing R&B to the internet rave, San Francisco's Charlie Yin has gone worldwide.

Coming off of a world tour with Porter Robinson and a separate headlining tour to support his most recent No Reason EP on Fools Gold, Giraffage's Charlie Yin finds himself in what's become a rare extended stint at the new home he shares with his girlfriend in San Francisco's Richmond district. We meet at a Boba Tea house in his neighborhood, and the non-stop rumbling of blenders is an almost hypnotic soundtrack to our conversation as he tells me about his "new crazy projector set-up that turns my wall into like a 200-inch TV!" It's a perfect addition to the home of a self-proclaimed internet kid who "played Smash Bros on the wall last night 'til like 3am."

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Don't let the low-key lifestyle fool you, Giraffage's "leftfield" electronica, has seen him rise up on the bills of music festivals of all ilks. "I think it's really cool that raves like HARD and EDC are leaning towards more experimental shit now," he says.

Giraffage's music is less about an instant gratification and more about appealing to your senses. Like the title of his track "Feels," emotions are something that a Giraffage track builds inside of you with precision, often using sultry R&B samples. This technique has placed him in the good company of rising producers like Kaytranada and Cashmere Cat, acts who are increasingly finding ways to blend R&B into electronica and are gaining the attention of big-name EDM promoters.

Giraffage's output has been nothing short of notable. Last year, he remixed The Dream's Love/Hate LP, which came across as a fresh revival of a highly slept on R&B album. "It wasn't official, but The Dream did reach out to me and I ended up working with him in the studio afterwards before the label took it down," he says of the release. "It was one of my favorite records growing up. I listened to it all the time and I just love the tempo of R&B, I love how soulful it is and the singers are great."

Before the Love/Hate remix project, he sampled R.Kelly on "Undress U" for his 2013 LP Needs: "Thats R. Kelly and that's a straight up uncleared sample…just slowed down and very blatantly R. Kelly and uncleared," he says with a chuckle. But that approach doesn't fly anymore: "That was released on my own, with help from Alpha Pup and on my bandcamp. With my last release on Fool's Gold, that was a big no-no. No more uncleared samples."

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The way things are going for Giraffage, he doesn't have to worry about label takedowns and "yolo-sampling" anymore. He put out an official remix of R. Kelly's "Ignition" last June and less than two weeks ago remixed Tinashe's "All Hands On Deck" (listen above). The Tinashe remix sees Giraffage adding new purpose and melody to a track that's already littered with soul; all the while, maintaining that familiar Giraffage style. It's him staying true to mission statements like, "I'm trying to find a newer sound that I can contextualize within the Giraffage sound."

Talking about R&B seems to trigger Giraffage's creative instincts. During an introspective moment, his mind seemingly begins to swirl with ideas: "I'm definitely looking for way more singers and features for my next release. And I love female singers, I think all the features are gonna be female singers."

And while he says he feels "…more pressure than I used to, since I have a label involved now." He's calm and collected about the direction: "As far as growth as an artist goes, I don't feel pressure to change. I feel like it comes naturally. I could definitely make the type of album I used to make, but I don't want to do that. I want to release something similar to an album with a concept that's very cohesive, like Worlds was."

Worlds

of course, refers to the latest release from his tour-mate Porter Robinson, which saw him shifting away from electro bangers and into something more creatively ambitious. "That was a bold move and super inspiring to me," Yin comments of the shift.

This reverence for his contemporary, comes across like an extension of the Twitter chumminess from rising lefty-dance acts like Giraffage, ODESZA, Slow Magic and Ryan Hemsworth. "We're all a bunch of internet kids who you use social media to push our music and we'll push each other's tracks too, so there's definitely a group or clique element to it."

The collective energy of these new non-traditional electronic producers, armed with a new sound that's starting to bubble up to the top, comes through in Giraffage's every word. He's put himself square in the middle of a paradigm shift in electronic music and even if his sound sometimes still gets labeled as EDM, Giraffage is fine with that. "I don't mind it, it's cool and shows that the scene is changing and its not just people trying to get fucked up…and I think the future of electronic music is gonna be really fuckin' tight. I'm hopeful."

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