“My goal is not to ‘make it’ myself as an artist; it’s to help as many artists achieve creative and financial freedom as I possibly can. That’s why 100% of the funds raised from all HOUSE FUNK drops will be reinvested into the music NFT community.”
Music has been the driving force in my life for as long as I can remember. When I was 6, my dad shared his collection of Beastie Boys cassettes with me. He didn’t know it at the time, but he sealed my fate and the journey I would embark on in that moment. At age 9, I got behind a drum set for the first time and started driving my neighbors crazy on a daily basis. The idea of being someone who actually created music, like all these legends I looked up to, consumed my every thought. By 13, I had formed my first punk rock band with some friends, and the dream of being a creator was finally a reality. Every Sunday for the next 5 years, we got together in the unfinished basement of my childhood home and did our best to make the concrete shake.
Like most kids going off to college, my priorities and interests changed a little bit. No, I didn’t suddenly lose my love for music. That fire in my belly to be a creator, however, was gone. In my mind, it was a childhood hobby, and I was ready to move on to the next stage of my life. I was convinced that this was part of growing up, and I continued down the new journey without a second thought.
However, when I returned home from college, I took stock of my life and the things I spent my time on, and I wasn’t satisfied. Almost reflexively in that moment, I purchased my first MPC after roughly five minutes of research. I became determined to do whatever it took to become competent at making beats. Since that day over 7 years ago, I have been producing music as KILROY. Hundreds of beats and many completed projects later, I can confidently say that I’ve never felt more creatively fulfilled in my entire life.
Well…sort of
Yes, I have been making music every chance I’ve had over the past 7 years. However, besides sending one off .wav files to friends, I have yet to share my music with the world.
Anyone who has made art in any capacity knows the sinking feeling all too well; you have a very clear vision of sharing what you’ve created with the world, but executing on that vision can seem nearly impossible. That was how I felt for years…until I started learning about the world of web3, and all of its practical applications for creators of all types.
Welcome to HOUSE FUNK - A Mission Driven EP
That moment led directly to this one - the announcement of my upcoming release HOUSE FUNK, my debut EP. HOUSE FUNK is a collection of 7 songs I produced over the course of 2020 and 2021. Outside of it being my first release, it happens to be the first collection of songs where I am truly stepping outside of my creative comfort zone. My production roots are in hip hop, but I was determined to make my first release sound like the music that has gotten me through the last couple of years - music that makes you want to be on a dance floor with your best friends.
Of course it’s exciting to be on the precipice of releasing my music for the first time, but I have goals for the project that go beyond achieving that personal milestone. Seeing artists like Matthew Chaim, Iman Europe, and Pat Lok find new ways to creatively express themselves in this brand new arena, while simultaneously being on a laser focused mission to onboard as many artists and fans into the space as possible has been incredibly inspiring to me. So inspiring, that it made me push the release out to later in the year than I had planned because dropping my music for the sake of dropping it was not enough - I needed the project to serve a greater purpose that moved the space forward.
My goal is not to “make it” as an artist; it’s to help as many artists achieve creative and financial freedom as I possibly can. That’s why 100% of the funds raised from all HOUSE FUNK drops will be reinvested into the Music NFT community. As I go through the process of releasing the songs off HOUSE FUNK as music NFTs, I will document through my Twitter how all the funds are redeployed into other artists’ music NFTs. Outside of being proof of supporting me at the beginning of my web3 journey, becoming an owner of a HOUSE FUNK NFT will identify you as someone looking to push the entire space forward and support a wide range of artists.
HOUSE FUNK - Debut EP, and Roadmap for Anon Artists
Being a perfectionist and not wanting to release a song until it is deemed “ready” is a challenge every creator can relate to - myself included, and most definitely to a fault. Something else that I came to terms with recently was that the longer I went without releasing my first song, the easier it became to come up with reasons (read as: excuses) as to why I was refusing to do so. The more songs I stacked in my hard drive, the harder it became for me to figure out what my first step was going to be. And so HOUSE FUNK will serve as an experiment on what it is like to take that first step, and doing so in the world of web3.
In partnership with my fellow co-founding members at Morii Music, I will be creating an entire content series around the rollout and release of HOUSE FUNK. The plan is to leverage every web3 tool available to artists, and then share my experiences interacting with those tools with the community. I want to to create a roadmap that will serve as a “how to” guide to leveraging web3 tools as a musician with zero digital footprint. I’m looking to make an impact through transparency - I will share my process, what it’s like working within these groundbreaking protocols, all of the wins and all of the mistakes that I make along the way.
I’d be lying if I said this project wasn’t for me in a lot of ways - to even have the opportunity to release my music into a community of so many smart and supportive people is already a dream come true. But the opportunity to attach it to a greater mission is beyond anything I could have imagined when I turned on my MPC for the first time.
In Tyler, The Creator’s tribute to the legendary Virgil Abloh, he spoke about how Virgil “opened doors, lead people in and tossed the keys outside for the next person to have”. If you are reading this and you’ve released your music as an NFT, you’ve opened those doors for me. I plan to toss the keys to as many artists behind me as I possibly can.