The RXKKSTRR Interview

By: Braydon Foxx

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An Arizona Anomoly

Thank you for doing this interview. Can you tell everyone who you are?   

Um, My name is RXKKSTRR. AKA BloodBath Beyoncé, I'm a musician, I'm an artist, a poet, I'm a professional self expressionist, that's who I am.  I make kind of like Gothic, hardcore music sometimes.  I got metal stuff, I got rave stuff.  I got electronic stuff.  I do a whole bunch of different things, that's me.

 I appreciate you coming and doing this interview for me.  How was PHANTAMONIA? I went and I saw your set and some of the other bands. There wasn’t a lot of movement from the crowd until your set came on, then everyone was moshing and jumping.  

I wouldn't say it was like lame at all. It definitely was just a bit less than I expected and a bit different than the show I had at ground zero prior to that.  I just think the lineup was like, different and a bit less like what I normally do, because we had a lot of rappers. We had Miserable Ghosts on there. I thought Miserable Ghosts and had like a really chaotic set, much love.  But I just think the audience that I bring, is an audience that comes to mosh and jump around and have a good time. Also the energy that I bring is that, I really wouldn't do a show to a dead crowd, you know like, fuck that, I’ll just walk off.  I want people to leave my shows feeling they had a great time and feeling like they just saw something that they couldn't see anywhere else, you know?  A lot of other bands and artists I see don't push for that, and I've been to shows where I see the frontman is just turned around and like, not engaging with the audience at all.  That shit is not entertaining, that shit is not engaging, and I hold music so close to my heart that it's almost disrespectful when people are like that, you know? I've been to too many shows where people are like that, and even like, your bassist is going harder than the frontman.   I engage my audience, and I'm very theatrical and performative, and I love performing, and that is,, that's the thing I love the most about my job.

Speaking of theatrics and performances, how did you get into music? Did you start with music? Did you start creating other stuff?

I've just been a very creative person for as long as I can remember.  I've been writing poems and novels since I was five years old, like, as long as I can remember.  I would always take my free time in class when I was in like third grade, even still to this day, I take my free time, just writing, I would just sit there and write novels in the middle of class while I was supposed to be doing my work.  The teachers would always have a problem with it.  I think it's so strange, the way the education system is set up, drains the creativity out of people very well, but, I don't stand for the way that they go about things.  I love art and I'm so passionate about music, and like I said earlier, it's something I hold so close to my heart.  I've been recording music since I was nine years old, and I was rapping for like five years, but I never really got anywhere with that.  I took a break for a while, then I really found myself and really took some time to find my sound.  Eventually, I evolved and became what you now know me as.  Music has just always been a big part of my life.  My dad was a DJ for a very long time.  My uncle was a guitarist for a really long time in a lot of bands.  He was in this band that was semi popular in the '80s called Life Sex and Death.  He’s done guitar for the Murder Dolls and other things and he's a big inspiration to me with a lot of things. Music is just my life.  I go home and I work on music until I go to sleep.  That's just my life.  It's how my brain is programmed to be.  It's like a, it’s like a calling. Speaking of callings, if you have something like that you just can't get it out of your head, why not act on it instead of just sitting with that? You know?  I say everyone should go for their dreams.

Coming Up

Are you releasing anything new soon? 

Um, I have an album coming out in October, at the end of October.  I'm not sure the exact date but it'll  drop sometime around like the 20th of October, around Halloween.  And it'll be a pretty hefty album, like 14 or 15 tracks, most of them will be new unheard tracks.  The album is very different from anything you've ever heard.  It doesn't put itself in a box at all, I do literally everything on that album.  There's some Gothic songs, some post punk shit on there, or like actual,really gothic Death rock shit on there. There's some, acoustic guitar songs, there's some, like hardcore style songs. There's a whole bunch of shit going on in this project, and it's going to be incredible.  I'm hosting a listening party for it on October 11th, at Ground zero, everyone should come, because this album is insane and you'll be able to hear it for the first time, like over a week before it even comes out.  Yeah, big shit coming soon.  I won’t reveal too much more but, the album's really good. I'll just say that.  

Can we get a peak at the title for it?

Welcome to the Freak Show. That's also the name of my most popular single, but that was the name I've had for this album forever.  I've been working on this album for the better part of two years now.

Oh wow.

And it's on its like fifth or sixth version of the entire album because I'm such a fucking perfectionist.  I know I say a lot, but I care deeply about this art and I don't want to just poop out some bullshit.  I want to give something that's genuinely from my soul, gives a piece of my soul, that is original and isn't just some fucking garbage. 

“Poop out some bullshit” that's great haha.

Put it on a fucking painting, frame it.

You already touched on this earlier, but what's it like when you're on stage? How do you feel?  That energy when you're performing, is it more about you, or the audience?

 I feel like it’s equally as much about the audience as it is about me, because when I'm performing, it’s my favorite part of my job and it's so fun, it's like a high I'm gonna chase forever. I love putting on a good show.  And I think it's equally about the audience because obviously, as a musician, I want people to enjoy the music and, I want people to feel something from the music.  So I give them the music and I give them the performance, I give them the Solace.  And I want them to find something in my music.  Also if I didn't have the audience, I wouldn't have a performance. 

Yeah yeah, absolutely.

What makes you, RXKKSTRR, different from other underground artists right now?

What makes me different?  I think a pretty obvious one is the image that I have.  The makeup, the voodoo dolls or whatever.  And I think, like I said earlier, I make music to genuinely make an impact on people.  There's so much bullshit music out in the world.  It's just sad to see because as someone that loves music, it's disrespectful to see all these people just come out here, releasing total garbage.  And, like, people are just like, “yuh yuh, this shit is hard.”  That shit is not hard.  Like, I want to make things that make people think and question the world around them, to allow them to think on a broader scope.  And I think the world can look so black and white, and I want it to stop being that way.  People tend to think so black and white, and not be more open to new and different ideas.  That's why I try to push boundaries with my music, and how I dress or whatever it is.  I think that's what makes me different.  A lot of people will try to be somebody else.  But this is just how I feel.  The makeup and the clothes or whatever is all an expression of how I feel like, the inside is on the out.  The whole idea of the freak show is me always feeling like a freak or like a weirdo or an outcast, my whole life.  It’s only been very recently that I've started to not feel that way.  Well I still sort of do, but it’s something to embrace now, like, we all have flaws, we're all freaks in some way.  We're all human. Welcome to Freak show is just about me being a solace for other people that feel that way.

That's awesome.

So, speaking of what makes you different, you're doing things no one else in the Phoenix scene has been doing right now. I mean, you're combining genres, releasing different styles of music, but it always feels like it's the same artist.  So what's your writing process?  How do you achieve that? 

So, my writing process is, anything that ever bad happens to me or I feel a certain way, whether it's angry or sad or happy or whatever, I always just put those emotions into my art.  My writing process is fueled by emotions and my thoughts and my views on the world.  I just sit in the dark, and I just fucking write, I have, like a candle or some bullshit.  It's how I spend most of my free time, just writing and

thinking and experimenting with new ideas and producing.  

What do you write about?

I write most of my songs pertaining to love and issues I have with it, and issues I have with myself.  I also touch on my political and religious stances that I have, and it just eventually becomes something.  Most of my songs that are more love song-ish, like flesh for example, is about cannibalism and about loving someone so much that it's in the metaphor of, you know, eating them.  It's a very well written, beautiful song, and I need to get my lyrics out on Spotify and stuff because I really am saying shit in my songs, and some people say they can't hear what I'm saying in my songs sometimes.  And, I think that adds to it a little bit, because then it makes you think about what I'm saying.  And sometimes if you don't know what I'm saying, you'll be interpreting it in your own way.  That's the fun of being human and loving music, you can interpret it in any way you want, you know? 

Yeah. I wanted to ask specifically, what's Melonchalia about? I love that song.

So Melancholia is a song about sort of pushing back on how I had always felt like a freak or whatever. I've always had this feeling for as long as I can remember in my stomach that's like a pit, almost. It's just a melancholy that follows me my whole life and I just can't seem to get rid of it.  I've always been sad.  I was a sad, sad child, and I sometimes had no reason at all to be sad, most of it would be just unexplainable and I just always felt like, depressed and melancholic.  So melancholia is about that feeling manifested as if it was a person.  It's sort of a love song, so the songs a bit lighter and more upbeat, I guess, just for the instrumental.  But the actual song is very meaningful to me.  And I have another very meaningful song, Lifeless, the whole chorus is “This is my life, I can't disappear.” It’s just about, I feel like this is MY life and regardless of how bad it gets, regardless of how much I want to give up or I want to disappear, I can't.  You know I can't just crawl into a hole and die if I want to.  So it's just about coping with that kind of feeling. 

I think there's a lot of people out there that can relate to that, That's beautiful.  

Do you ever feel like creatively, you're in a box at all? Like, you have to make certain music or appeal to the scene in anyway?

I feel like I do, in a way, I would I would love to be more experimental and just, make some fucking, noise music.   I mean I am always experimenting with new sounds. I love, like, cyber grind and, shit like that, I sometimes experiment with shit like that and I feel like I try to not keep my music in a box, but for right now, it's kind of limited.  That's why I'm pertaining to gothic, hardcore and rave, I'm doing everything that's popular in the scene, instead of just one thing.  Yeah, my next project that I'm doing after Welcome To The Freak Show, that's already in production, is very experimental.  Very different from how Welcome to the Freak Show is and, very ahead of its time.  I'm excited to see how people will react to that because it's different from anything that’s ever been put out before.  Welcome to the Freak Show, you could compare it to some stuff, but what I'm gonna be doing after, it will be, uncomparable.  So I try not to put myself in a box because, why would you do that?  If I'm gonna do this, I should go all out and fucking do everything, you know?  A lot of people tell me, like, “oh, you got to stick to one genre and find a sound or whatever” but that's how people get old and outplayed.  That's how artists get repetitive and fall off because they keep doing the same shit every release.  Regardless of if it works for me or not, I'm gonna be constantly rebirthing and doing different shit.  Whether that relates to my music, or my style.  If you do an interview with me when I'm on my next album, I'm going to look completely different than how I do now.  I won't talk too much about the album since that's kind of in the future, but yeah.

Intuition of RXKKSTRR

How do you feel about record labels you think you even signed on one day or stay independent? 

I think I would like to stay independent for as long as I can.  Because I'm not just gonna sign to a label that's not gonna really give me much of an outlet.  I mean, they can give you a billboard or whatever, or like puts you on a playlist, but that doesn't really do much.   I'd sign to a rapper's label or something more than I'd sign to, like, a label label, you know? Because it's like, that's still under a label label.  But I feel like I'd want to stay independent for as long as I can because every artist gets fucked over by a label at some point in their career.  So, it's gonna happen eventually.  I've had record label, people trying to sign me and I've said no, because it'll be like an account with like 10,000 followers and I'm like, I don't need you bro. Because what happens when i surpass 10,000 followers? Like, you can't give me much anymore.  I know my worth as an artist, and it's worth more than 10,000, followers.  I don't want to just sign my life away.  So, yeah, that's how I feel about record labels. I think personally, fuck record labels, and I'm probably just gonna end up starting my own record label.  We'll see what the future entails.  At the end of the day, they steal your fucking money and they tell ye what to do with your art.  I think that's fucked up, why are you telling me what to do with my shit?  Like, I see a lot of artists, they get this studio time from record label or whatever, but the studio tells them, or the record label tells them, they have to be in the studio all the time.  That just eventually leads to burnout.  I mean I do this shit all the time, but i’m doing it willingly.  The music business is a twisted fucking business, but I love it. I wouldn't do anything else.  And I don’t wanna be repetitive like a label will push me to be, all of my songs I've released since Welcome to the freak Show, don't sound like Welcome to the Free Show.  A lot of popular artists, are just doing the same fucking thing, I don't want to call out names, but it's just, like, it gets fucking too a point, do something different. Be original. Stop being a fucking copycat, I can't stress enough how fucking pissed off it makes me when I just be scrolling on Instagram, and I'll see someone that's just copying like, OsamaSons whole flow, whole beat selection, literally just trying to be Osama Son, be yourself. Like, you get what I'm saying, bro? 

Dude, I can't stand that aspect of pop music. I can't I can't.

People just try to be the same fucking person. Some people could compare me to, Marilyn Manson or some black metal person or whatever 'cause of the makeup look.  Everybody has inspiration for the shit they do.  Marilyn Manson, for example, gave me an outlet to be like, "Damn, like, this is how I felt. I'm gonna do it in my own way." But people don't be doing that shit in their own way, and they just do the same thing.  I was, trying to be somebody that I wasn't when I was doing that rapping shit, and that's why it didn't work out.  There's so much bullshit. It's just, ah, dude, I can talk about this for hours.

As I said earlier, I really loved Melonchalia.  You have a couple of music videos out. Are you gonna do one for Melancholia? 

I may or may not. That song has been kind of popping.  But I'm more focused on just getting this album out.  I think there's other songs that are a bit more worthy of a video in I don't know what it is, but I see this in a lot of artists, it’s always the songs that I put like the least effort into and I make the quickest that get the most attention.  Like, skin dress is one of my personal favorite songs I've made, and people hate that song.  It's like my least streamed song, I love that song, bro.  It actually meant something to me.  I made Melancholia in like 20 minutes at like three in the morning on a school night.

I feel like that's sort of an artist's nightmare.  It happens all the time.

 It does, literally, always like their biggest song is their least favorite.  I fucking cry, listening to Welcome to the Freak Show because I feel like I captured something in that song that I can't capture often. It’s the way I was feeling around the time I recorded it. I recorded that song over a year ago. A lot of the songs I have out right now, I recorded months ago.  But, I've been on a different wavelength than y'all have even heard.  I'm excited to see how people react to the album because I don't think it will be what people will expect it to be. But in a good way, you know?

You might have already talked about this earlier, but you know, your style, you're really into clowns and Gothic style, where do you draw that from?

So it's kind of on the freak show, and how like the term comes from, clowns and the circus and it ties into that, covering up their face and, being someone else, feeling like a freak or an outcast. The way people in the circus live is very interesting to me, and it's a sad life.  You know, it seems kind of fun on the outside, but it's not really.  I don't know if that makes any sense, but if you've done any research,Clown Pack was like a real term, they would pack into cars, like tons of clowns, and they just fucking go on the road and then go and perform and do clown shit. I feel like that's also kind of how touring musicians are.  Musicians are fucked up in the head, either you gotta be like a psycho to do this shit or you gotta really want this shit. And this ties into what you were asking me earlier.  I don't know if that answers the question, but. 

No, I think you answered it really well. 

Last question, where do you see things taking you? What's next for RXKKSTRR?. 

There's so much next for me.  What's next for me is that album I was talking about earlier, but that'll be later.  I'm pushing “welcome to the Freak Show” for quite some time.  Also, I don't want to say too much about this, but I may or may not have a show with adamn killer coming out and so I got a lot of big shit coming up and so.  I want to shout out Saints Castle, Saints Castle is an awesome fucking dude, he seems to get a bad rep from some people, but that dude is a fucking angel.  My first show, I had Filthy genes as my DJ, and he left to go to LA, one song before I was supposed to come on stage.  Saint's Castle happened to be at my show, and he had a laptop so he did my sound for me and saved my show.  He's gonna do the sound of this show.  But outside of that, what's next for me is I have the next five, ten years of my music career completely planned, out of the names of the albums, the tracklists, how they're gonna sound everything.  I'm very coordinated with the things that I do.  I have a lot of creativity and passion I want to share with the world.  I think what's next for me is fucking world takeover, everything will unveil in its own divine timing, so you're just going to have to see for yourselves.

Come see me. October 11th, at Ground Zero, My album listening party. I got Saint's Castle on that show, I got a few other really cool people on that show.  Come out and have a fucking good time, come cry, and dance, and mosh.  Have sex in the bathroom.  Apparently, that's what somebody did at my last Ground Zero show.  Just come to the show, pop out, listen to my music.  Interpret the art. Tell me what you think. Tell me I sucked. Tell me you like it, whatever, I don't care.  My name is RXKKSTRR.  Welcome to the Freak Show mother fuckers.

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Asphalt Mirage: The RXKKSTRR Interview

By: Braden Foxx

Photos By: KILLFORTHECAMERA, CAMERACRAYZ, VANTALYNX