Theophilus London: Digital Love

The dig­i­tal era has im­posed lots of changes to the music in­dus­try. Adapt­ing to the new ways of dis­trib­ut­ing music is a chal­lenge all record­ing artists are con­fronted with nowa­days. Since com­mu­ni­ca­tion en­ables trends to find today’s au­di­ence faster and more ef­fi­cient, es­tab­lished mu­si­cians have to ac­cli­ma­tize them­selves to the de­mands of a new gen­er­a­tion of music lis­ten­ers.

While this de­vel­op­ment can sig­nify a strug­gle for ex­pe­ri­enced artists to leave a legacy, there has been a wave of new faces emerg­ing within the in­dus­try that seem to com­pletely aban­don the con­ser­v­a­tive way of build­ing a ca­reer. Theophilus Lon­don is one of them. His multi-genre in­fused sound is not the only el­e­ment that sets him apart from the older gen­er­a­tion, he un­der­stood the new ways of the in­ter­net and made good use of them. We sat down with the tal­ented Brook­lynite and talked with him about how he in­tends to build his own legacy.

Dur­ing the past few years you es­tab­lished your name within a dif­fi­cult in­dus­try. Peo­ple some­times tend to have prob­lems with cat­e­go­riz­ing your style, so how would you de­scribe your sound?

There is re­ally no spe­cific de­scrip­tion of my sound since it has been shaped by var­i­ous mu­si­cal in­flu­ences as well as my per­sona. I don’t think there is a no-fi­nal form but steady de­vel­op­ment. It’s all a process. Ev­i­dently, my art ex­pe­ri­enced a rapid growth dur­ing the last three to four years. My new EP, Lover’s Hol­i­day, shows a part of this growth as it con­tains music from the last year. Being in­flu­enced by mul­ti­ple gen­res, I’ve re­ally tried to de­velop my own sound and en­hance my song­writ­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. I’m ba­si­cally aim­ing to live up to the brand that I try to es­tab­lish. I un­der­stand that I de­pend on my sup­port sys­tem, which has for­tu­nately been very strong.

How would you de­fine your sup­port sys­tem?

There is free music every­where nowa­days. It has been like this for a long time – not only through dig­i­tal down­load­ing. Nowa­days us record­ing artists, we have to de­tect these new ways of bring­ing our music to the peo­ple. Kanye West un­der­stood that. He launched the G.O.O.D. Fri­day se­ries which has ex­pe­ri­enced an im­mense re­sponse. He gave free songs to his fol­low­ing on a weekly base. Some of the songs even ap­peared on his album. The fans

Ob­vi­ously there are dif­fer­ent ways of build­ing a con­vinc­ing sup­port sys­tem. The dig­i­tal era en­abled us to find new ways of es­tab­lish­ing re­la­tion­ships with brands. I ded­i­cate lots of time and thought to come up with an ad­e­quate strat­egy that ben­e­fits me and my art. Thus, I’ve col­lab­o­rated with brands like Gucci, Sound­cloud, Moun­tain Dew, Bush­mills. I’ve worked with Nike for Cole Haan that are de­signer and lux­ury shoes

Since your music is reach­ing more and more ears, 2010 must have been a good year for you and your sup­port sys­tem

There has been tons of trav­el­ing for me last year. Thanks to my tours, I’ve been to places I’ve never had the chance to visit be­fore. I’ve been to Japan, Korea and Ger­many for the first time. It gave me a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the world. There are lots of smart kids out there. They go to the blogs and un­der­stand their pur­pose. They un­der­stand that they have to be smart to get my music. I re­ally don’t have to be on the radio to make my pres­ence be felt. With the sup­port they have been show­ing me within the dig­i­tal sphere, I sup­port them back by putting out new fresh qual­ity music. I have to work out strate­gi­cally a way to de­liver my music to them, and this year is get­ting re­ally

crazy com­pared to the last one. I have two al­bums com­ing out – one EP and one LP. In ad­di­tion, I’m prepar­ing a spe­cial sur­prise for all of you but I re­ally can’t talk much about that right now. Just know that I’ll make sure that my new music will be heard