The 17-year-old rapper and comedian had the Wu-Tang member jump on his incredibly viral track "Dat $tick," so we asked him about it.
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Brian Imanuel: I first got introduced to hip-hop in 2012 by my first American friend, who I had met that year. He showed me Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" and I was so into that. It was the first song that I tried rapping to and my English was so bad back then. And then through that I started listening to 2 Chainz and Childish Gambino. But back then I had no friends at all in Indonesia and really thought I was the only one listening to hip-hop. So I thought artists like 2 Chainz were considered underground.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 didn't really know how to make stuff and it sounded like shit, but the writing was really fun and friends liked it a lot. I started recording at my friend's studio.
It's not considered a third-world country anymore but the slums are everywhere. Even if you're in the downtown area with skyscrapers there's always the slums right around the corner. So it's always super packed with traffic and polluted as fuck. But yeah, it's home.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 home schooled too so I would be on the computer every day. It was so exciting to finally get internet at my house.
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It was actually 2010, before I even tweeted in English. You can find tweets from a longass time ago where I'm tweeting in Indonesian. I started doing the comedy stuff in 2014. I started taking it more seriously and using social media as my platform because I wanted to get enough followers to start promoting my music and videos. I'm really into cinematography and shot films so I really wanted to promote my shit on there.A lot of my Indonesian friends don't really get my jokes on twitter. People definitely recognize me now in Jakarta, especially after local papers published articles about the video compilation of rappers' reactions to "Dat $tick,") but there hasn't been any local controversy or anything like that. Before "Dat $tick," the raps I used to make were not serious. They were kind of half joking, but "Dat $tick" was the first time where I thought, "Shit, what if I tried to be serious with this? What if I actually put a lot of effort into it?" It was the first song that I recorded in an actual studio, and my friend who produced it had pushed me to really work on something serious. At first the music video was going to be the most mediocre music video ever, I was going to try to be cool a stylish. But that was trying way too fucking hard. At the last minute, I thought, "what if I try to make this shit ironic? What if I wear a pink polo and fanny pack? What if I wear some real Dad shit?" I was in a dilemma in my head, it could completely fuck it up or it could make it amazing. So I'm glad I chose the ironic take.
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I was definitely expecting some hateful shit, but it was mostly positive. I thought the video was ass. This is when Sean Miyashiro—part of collective 88rising and head of CXSHXNLY Records which houses South Korean rapper Keith Ape—contacted me. When Sean called me up he let me know he was putting together a compilation of famous rappers' reactions to the "Dat $tick" video. It featured legends like Ghostface Killah, Cam'ron, and 21 Savage. I called my mom up like, "Shit, this is getting really real. It's getting crazy."Why do you think Ghostface Killah fucks with you?
I have no idea actually. I don't know if I'm too humble? Maybe I'm dope as shit to be honest. Ghostface is such a legend and the fact that he wants to get on my shit is kind of unbelievable. I still can't believe it.How did you first get in to making music?
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! My dad put me on to Phil Collins and that really helped me with my music.What's next?
I'm working on new music everyday but I'm trying to get to the states to meet everybody. I want to meet Ghostface and I want to meet Tyler, The Creator. My visa application for the states has been denied twice, I don't think I can say too much on that, but it's been hard. I've recently turned 17 and I'm going to get an official government ID soon, so that should make it a bit easier. They'll be a couple more singles coming, and maybe an EP coming. I've been going into the studio everyday and cooking up new shit.What do your parents think?
They've been so supportive. They don't really know what I rap about, like the lyrics or whatever. But they do know that people support me and they love what's going on. My dad looks at all my YouTube videos and songs every single day and lets me know whenever the views are going up. Like, "Hey Brian. 'Dat $tick' hit 18 Million views today."Justin Staple is a producer for Noisey and VICE in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter.