Chandler Ransom Lucy of The Hellp on Cult Following, America, and A Giant Ball of Pus and Cancer

An Interview.

I met Chandler in a hip Silverlake coffee shop. We began with the question of whether or not LA has, or can have, a proper music scene. Despite the outpouring of electronic music from the city right now, it seems that there are few shows from local (adult) acts to back it up.

Chandler: Yeah. I mean, I don’t even think there can be a scene in LA. There is, like, subculture. Like the other night—

Luca: Holy shit! That's the Turnstile guy! (Brendan Yates, frontman of Turnstile, was sitting a couple tables over.)

Chandler: Oh really? I fucking hated their outfits on the Grammy red carpet. Ever since I saw that I was like “fuck that.” So to the effect of the scene…

Luca: Yeah. So is it possible to have a digital scene? Can you really call it a scene if there aren’t any shows?

Chandler: You can have a digital scene, sure. You have to be a part of one now to move anything forward. I've never really thought about that because when I grew up, it was like, you met up with your friends, you got on your bike, you went in the woods, you fucked around, you tried to find things to blow up. And now it's like that same thing is happening, but the kids don't meet up on their bikes. The kids meet up on Fortnite, the kids meet up on Instagram.

When I went through high school, it was like, you met people, and you chose which of those people you would hang out with outside of school. And then from there you made memories. You did all this shit. But what's the motivation to go and make memories and go and have experiences and relationships with people if you're already getting that dopamine rush by interacting with them on Instagram every single day?

So to the effect of a digital scene happening, it's definitely valid, but I just don't think it will ever be as valid as any other scene that we know about historically in music. True culture, true subculture, has to be in reality. And if you look around, there's no subculture anymore. There are pockets, sure. Like there's like a whole fucking electronic music scene, there's some cool raves. But outside of that, there's no like, there's no more Burger Records shit. I don't think there's been a true subculture since like…fuck dude, I want to say like 2013, since A$AP Rocky, YouTube rap, you know, Riff Raff, Action Bronson, Danny Brown, Ab-Soul and then the Burger Records shit. 

But I guess what's happening now in New York specifically is the closest thing there has been to anything like that.

You take anybody in the world and you put them in a Crystal Castles show from 2011, 2012, fucking whatever, they’ll bob their head…everyone likes a good fucking four-on-the-floor kick drum. I knew the scene was going to happen.

Luca: How do you think you fit into what's happening [the electronic music scene] in New York?

Chandler: We weren't aware that there was anything happening in New York. We’ve just been doing this, and now there's an undercurrent for sure. There's an undercurrent of electronic music and a post-2000s electroclash revival. It's what I expected. Three years ago, I talked about it with some friends, and I think we might have said it in an interview once… Everything moves in cycles. Everything always does.

I just knew that was going to be the thing. Like, electronic music, Crystal Castles and shit—that genre, more than anything, is some ubiquitous shit. You take anybody in the world and you put them in a Crystal Castles show from 2011, 2012, fucking whatever, they’ll bob their head. They'll think that shit’s sick. Not everyone's going to be rockin’ at a Depeche Mode concert. Not everyone's gonna like an Aphex Twin show, you know? But everybody will like a Crystal Castles show. Everyone's a sucker for two-octave-eighth-note-arpeggiated synthesizers. Everybody likes a good fucking four-on-the-floor kick drum. I knew the scene was going to happen. The only question was when. It's definitely the next wave. And a lot of these artists are gonna get signed and there's going to be a big push for it in the mainstream market. It’s already happening on Spotify.

Luca: I mean, it’s happened with you guys, getting signed to a major label.

Chandler: Sure. Yeah, we did sign to Atlantic records. [laughs]

Luca: That's ridiculous, right? Considering your guys’ size, it's a total gamble for them. 

Chandler: Oh, fuck. Yeah dude. They're gambling. They're gambling hard. 

Luca: It’s kind of awesome. To know that they have that confidence in you.

Chandler: Yeah, they've been very good to us. The people at Atlantic, like, I truly couldn't imagine us working with anybody else, honestly. Luckily we got in with some really good people, Ian and Chloe. They were really good to us. They knew. They saw. They recognize what we were to that scene. They understood that we were the ones that were there first and we were the ones doing this shit.

Luca: I think there's something to be said too for your cult following.

Chandler: Absolutely. 

Luca: How I heard about you guys actually ties into that. A girl had showed one of my buddies The Hellp. He showed it to me and I mentioned it to the girl. And she and her friends were furious that he had told me. She was gatekeeping so hard that she was really, really upset. It was a major beef for a minute.

Chandler: [laughs] That’s awesome. That is fucking awesome. Yeah. That was my favorite thing was when we announced [our record deal] people were like, “Aw we can't gatekeep anymore” and shit like that. But, I mean, gatekeeping is—to go on a tangent—gatekeeping is the most important thing in the world, honestly. Like, we got to be gatekeeping shit. Like, don't gatekeep us. [laughs] I want to make a million dollars. But I mean, there's just so much fucking uh…this girl I've been hanging out with…I don't really listen to music much anymore. I just listen to Oasis and, like, Blink 182. That’s like the only shit I listen to and it’s the only thing I like. That and like bro country, like Florida Georgia Line and Morgan Wallen.

Luca: Yeah, the Morgan shit’s crazy.

Chandler: Oh, dude, he's on a George Strait level run right now. That dude can just make fucking hits.

Luca: Has he put out anything since Dangerous?

Chandler: You haven’t heard his new single? You haven't heard fucking “One Thing at a Time”?

Luca: No.

Chandler: Oh, dude, you gotta bump that shit. It's the best fucking song ever. Uh, what was I saying…gatekeeping. Where was I going with that?

Even though I don't like Death Grips, I still feel like a fucking idiot because I don't like Death Grips.

Luca: That it’s the most important thing in the world.

Chandler: Yeah, it is. I mean, because there are so many cool electroclash bands from the 2000s that have been completely forgotten. And especially in the DJ scene, you can't be telling people what the fuck you’re DJing, dude! And there's infinite shit on SoundCloud that you can't let people know about. That's where I've seen gatekeeping being the most important is just people on SoundCloud. There’s just endless music from kids that have like 200 streams. And it’s like the most advanced electronic music happening in the world right now. It's like Arca level shit that's going on. No one knows about it. There's so much of it that you can't even find it. What was the original question?

Luca: We were talking about the cult following—

Chandler: I think it's like, you gotta be cult famous. Think of all the greatest fucking bands. It starts with these cult followings and these people that feel like they're a part of a community, you know? I think about Death Grips a lot. Like, I don't fuck with Death Grips. I respect them, they're genius, Zach Hill is one of the greatest of all time. And I like maybe four songs. Rest of them, I’m like “That's fucking unlistenable to me, I don't wanna listen to this shit.” But even at this age, what they have with their fan base, I still feel like I'm missing out. Even though I don't like Death Grips, I still feel like a fucking idiot because I don't like Death Grips. And that's what I think is the most important part about having a cult following: even if you don't get it, you still feel left out. And I think we've been very fortunate to have that. And our music's not even particularly fucking that good. I think Enemy, the EP we did—

Luca: Enemy’s good.

Chandler: Thanks man. I think that's like fucking cream of the crop. Fucking amazing.

Luca: It's better than Vol. 1.

I got $23,000 from the federal government dude! I was just like, dude we want to make electronic music. I'm going to spend this.

Chandler: Yeah, no, Vol. 1 sucks dude. I mean, there's a few good moments on it, but, you know, it's like, it's that lore. It's that scarcity. I mean, we put out, like, two songs in, like, two fucking years and only gained fans.

Luca: What were you doing during that time?

Chandler: [laughs] Surviving. Noah started the band with this dude Eddie. It was us three and then Eddie quit. And then we were like, we have to learn how to do all this. We used GarageBand and learned how to do everything. I was still drumming, and then we met this other dude, Jacob. That era of “Lucy” and “Curtis” and like “Tu Tu Neurotic,” was us with him. And then, like, we couldn't take it to where we wanted to take it. 

COVID happened, and then I got—I mean, if you were smart, every single person got this. I got $23,000 from the federal government, dude, for like no reason. I didn’t even pay taxes. I mean, I pay taxes! [laughs] I got $23,000 from the federal government dude! I was just like, dude we want to make electronic music. I'm going to spend this. COVID was, for what it's worth, if you were smart enough, it was a fucking huge blessing for you. Like, you could really just be paid to not do shit. Everyone had a year off, like how many people throughout history just had a whole fucking year off? You know what I mean? Never. That's never happened before. So I just spent that whole time getting completely hardware-pilled and understanding how to do a live set. In that time we were just trying to find someone who could help us take our music to the next level. Because we weren't equipped. We didn't have the skills to do what we wanted to do. Now, I wouldn’t say that we’re particularly efficient, but we both have our strengths. Noah is like a fucking, just absolute genius psychopath, an absolute lunatic. But, I'm pretty technically proficient and I can simplify things.

Luca: What is the division of labor when you guys are producing? 

Chandler: We both do everything.

You capture that moment and then the fucking next two months is “Holy shit, dude, I fucking hate this song. I hate this.” But you always gotta remember that moment you heard that sound and you were like, “Oh, fuck.”

It's a lot of swapping out sounds. We pass things back and forth to each other through laptops. Noah will come to me with a demo, I'll come to him with a demo, we'll kind of work on it together, argue about it, and then go, “Okay, I hate this song,” and then we'll go to somebody else.

We just finished our newest song, “California Dreamgirl.” I don't know if you've heard that one on SoundCloud yet. But we made a fucking banger.

Luca: And someone’s put it on SoundCloud?

Chandler: Yeah. People have recorded from our DJ sets or like Instagram. 

Luca: That’s the cult following thing. You can go on YouTube and look up “Chandler Ransom Instagram live” and someone has put it on there.

Chandler: Absolutely. I didn't even really think of it that hard until like 2021. I didn't think people would show up to a fucking show. I didn’t think we would sell 300 tickets in LA. I didn't think we would sell out shows. New York, I knew we could. Sorta. But all our shows in LA have been sold out. All the ones in New York have been sold out.

Luca: The upcoming LA show sold out? I didn’t buy tickets yet!

Chandler: Oh, not that one. I think we’ve sold half the tickets to that one. But that one’s going to be great. It’s like the real deal venue.

But the other thing, the main component comes down to uh…it comes down to…sorry I think I have Alzheimer’s honestly. I swear to God I have fucking dementia…um…

But yeah. It's very cool that there's accessible lore, like, “what the fuck's up with these guys?” You know what I mean? You go on YouTube, type in “The Hellp” and it's not just some music video. It's like, here's that documentary, here's this Instagram live. And we don't have any press, dude. Our press has been like fucking interviews with random kids at the park, you know what I mean? To me, that's very important when you bring up a cult following.

And there's Instagram pages, there's memes…there really is a bubbling online community. [Chandler tells me a crazy cult following anecdote that he asked me to leave out] Like, you take that shit for granted sometimes, you know, because to us, it's always been just work. It's just a blue collar approach. It's just, got to wake up, got to do the work.

Luca: Yeah. You're using a lot of analog gear, and I wonder how that factors into that approach. You talk about doing construction and I wonder if that feeds your interest in working with analog gear, making it feel like a job. 

Chandler: It does. For sure. I like working with my hands. And personally, music's only fucking fun—I'm sure a lot of people relate—music's only fun for like 10 minutes. And you capture that moment and then the fucking next two months is “Holy shit, dude, I fucking hate this song. I hate this.” But you always gotta remember that moment you heard that sound and you were like, “Oh, fuck.”

All music is just trying to capture a moment in time, dude. That's all you're doing. You're trying to capture lightning in a bottle. You're trying to capture that moment and you're trying to convey an emotion to people. The complexity of the music has nothing to do with the emotion that you're trying to get across to people. And I don't know, I try to make things as simple as I can but still keep that…that Gen Z complexity to it, you know what I mean? I don't know how to really describe it, I'm kind of rambling. 

To be creative, to make music, you constantly have to be creating parameters for yourself and doing it in a new way or you're just going to get fucking bored.

The analog synth thing is just, it's just tools man. Like you’d use this tool to take down that header, you would use this tool to frame the wall, you know? And I go, okay, I need to do drums? I’m gonna use this machine. I want to process that sound? I'm going to use this machine. I want to do like a really deep low end arpeggiated synth. I'm going to use the Novation. Oh, I think the Korg will be better for this thing. You know what I mean? Turning knobs in real time is what really does it and like…but the other thing, the main component comes down to uh…it comes down to…sorry, I think I have Alzheimer’s honestly. I swear to God I have fucking dementia…um…

It comes down to the parameters, that's where you'll be the most creative. When you have access to every tool, like on a DAW [digital audio workstation], you open up Logic and it's infinite. It's just every sound you ever want. But if you need to do that synth line on this one machine and you can only do X, Y, and Z, you're going to be more creative. If you're using a groove box that only has seven channels and you only have one LFO per channel, you're going to be more creative.

Luca: It makes sense. I mean, I just got Logic, and I’m like “There are way too many things I can do on here!” I'm like, “Alright, I'm going to make a song,” and then I spend 30 minutes like flipping through synths and making weird sounds, and by then I’ve lost that creative spark.

Chandler: But the thing is if you're just starting to use Logic, like, that's when you’ll make the best shit because you aren't technically proficient in it yet. It’s the same with GarageBand. We learned on GarageBand, but we weren’t limited by just parameters of GarageBand—we were limited by the parameters of our own minds and our proficiency at using that software. “Ssx” was made on GarageBand. A lot of our coolest shit, like “Air Bnb Sonnet.” That one was strictly Logic. That was all just moving samples and using plugins and being like, “How can I turn a hi-hat into a synthesizer on a plug in?” It was all just us not knowing how to use the software. 

To be creative, to make music, you constantly have to be creating parameters for yourself and doing it in a new way or you're just going to get fucking bored. I went through that like six months ago. I was like, “Holy shit, I know how to use all of these instruments. I know how to get any sound I want” and I just could not create anything fucking cool…I made something the other day that's really good and I only made that because I was just approaching music in a different way. I'm always trying to do that and find a way to make myself stupid again. 

Luca: Put yourself in a work environment where you don't know what you're doing.

Chandler: The flipside of that is like, people who are into modular synths and all that stuff. It becomes a fucking money pit. If I had all the money in the world, you know how many synths I’d be buying?

Luca: Yeah, I'm a guitar player and I have that same thing with pedals.

Chandler: Yeah, the pedal game dude! You can never end with pedals, dude. Like that shit never ends. You can make the most insane fucking sounds ever with pedals, but that's where the money pit comes from.

Luca: I wanted to ask you about all the American imagery. I saw your Instagram yesterday and you’d posted a story with the caption “This isn't a resurgence, it's just America.” and I was like “Fuck, I was gonna ask about the resurgence!” But there are American flags in your studio and on stage for your live set. And even the leather jackets are American aesthetic cues.

Chandler: Sure. Easy Rider, you know? Dennis Hopper. R.I.P..

That's what American culture is. It's just appropriating other things and reinventing them or reinterpreting them.

Luca: What else do you think is American about The Hellp or about your aesthetic? 

Chandler: It has nothing to do with politics or patriotism or anything like that. It's just, at the end of the day, we grew up in small fucking towns. People have said things before and I’m just like “I live here.” There’s nothing else to it.

American iconography is very important. It's very important to music. It’s very important to culture. I don't know. There's nothing particularly deep about it. I wouldn't necessarily call it an aesthetic choice, it’s just America man. It's the American flag.

This is how I substantiate what I mean by “It’s not a resurgence, it’s just America.” It’s the nature of American society to do shit like this. Look at food. America made food all across the world better because we were like, “oh, let's commodify this.” Let's make McDonald's, let's make fucking Taco Bell, let's make this shit. It's like, go to Italy and try to get a burger. Dude, America has the best food. America forced the entire world to make better food. Look at Japan. Look at their approach to food and fast food and mini marts and things like that. American culture has forced everyone else to innovate.

So back to the resurgence… Like, how often does that happen in other countries? America is like, oh, here's country, here's rap, here's fucking electronic music, here's rock and roll. For lack of a better word, I think of it as successful appropriation. That's what American culture is. It's just appropriating other things and reinventing them or reinterpreting them. Bruce Springsteen wasn’t in Nebraska when he MADE Nebraska. He appropriated an idea of low income, middle America.

What were the Rolling Stones doing? They were imitating the blues movement—which they knew nothing about—and created something insanely beautiful. 

That's how America reinvents things. It's like, the Detroit fucking rave scene, imitating all these European groups, then you have German industrial and it leading to something like Nine Inch Nails—that could only happen because America happened. That's what I mean by “there's no resurgence, it's just America,” it’s just Americans fucking reappropriating things. We are making American music. We're reappropriating what we grew up on and what we think is important, which is Bruce Springsteen, Crystal Castles.. that kinda shit. And we don't even particularly sound like any of that. When people hear that, they're like, “what the fuck?”

They were the biggest band in the world in 2003 and the entire time they still wore Dickies and Hurley hats and had lip rings and made jokes about blowing their dads on stage.

Luca: Yeah. With your music, there’s nothing that I would pinpoint that sounds exactly like it. But I can see how it’s an evolved version of certain things. Lyrically, I think you guys are almost like an updated LCD Soundsystem sometimes, like with that kind of melancholic post-party or mid-bender energy.

Chandler: It's like a little bit of like Soulwax in there, and a little bit of like—

Luca: Justice.

Chandler: I wish our music sounded like Justice. We keep trying to figure that out.

Luca: You know, they used GarageBand too.

Chandler: We just found that out, like, a couple months ago. And I was like, “that's so fucking cool.” They're genius, dude. They're the coolest fucking band ever. But they really are like, one of the coolest—they’re as cool as Salem dude, like, they’re fucking sick.

What would Oasis be doing if Oasis wasn’t on stage doing their job? They’d be in a fucking pub yelling at a TV over a football match.

But yeah. America's idea of appropriation has led to the most innovation in the world. Whether that's food, or industry, or business, or fucking music, or film, whatever it is.

Luca: The process of sampling, a very blatant kind of appropriation, is an American musical technique.

Chandler: Absolutely. So that's what I mean by “this isn't a resurgence.” This is just what America does, dude. It's like, here it is again.

I got plenty of hope and optimism for the future of America and fucking whatever is going on. You know, it's really easy to get pessimistic nowadays. I grew up looking at music as something that you identified with. I grew up with like CDs and shit and my favorite band is Blink-182, man. When I looked at them, it was like, “Who are these guys?” These guys were skateboarders in San Diego who made dick jokes and they loved NOFX, Screeching Weasel and like, The Descendents. What did they appropriate from the Descendents, NOFX and Screeching Weasel? Nursery rhymes and offensive jokes. They could go on stage and play these songs and make dick jokes and call each other gay. They were funny ass dudes and didn’t change one thing about themselves. They were the biggest band in the world in 2003 and the entire time they wore Dickies and Hurley hats and had lip rings and made jokes about blowing their dads on stage.

But at the same time it's like, what did they do? They appropriated nursery rhymes. That's what Blink-182 is. Its nursery rhymes. It's like the “da, nanana, nanana, nanananana.” Not like it's all fucking “Jack and Jill went up the hill, ba dada dada.” But it's just fucking clean and it's snappy and the drums are perfect and all that. And it's like, if these guys weren't doing that, they would still be skaters in San Diego. What would Oasis be doing if Oasis wasn't on stage doing their job? They'd be in a fucking pub yelling at a TV over a football match, you know what I mean? 

You can identify with those people. I think that's why they were so successful. And I think now, you can’t identify with a lot of music. And if you can’t identify with it, you're not going to change who you are to adapt to it, you know?

The second you start to try to understand the magic of what's going on and try to recreate it, you're going to lose it.

Luca: What does the average Hellp listener identify with in your music?

Chandler: Authenticity. I don't like to think about my Instagram too much, because it's just a fun little thing to do sometimes. But like, dude, I don't know, you can probably tell from hanging out with me for this long, there’s probably virtually no difference with me on the Internet and me in real life. And I think that's very important because I think that the sixth sense of humans, if there was to be one, would be the ability to sense authenticity in others. And it doesn't matter if you fucking have an IQ of 40 or if you're a fucking genius, people can feel that. They can feel authenticity when they meet you.

I think about Lil Uzi Vert. I have a homie who was friends with him back in the day, back when he was in Philly. This is before he blew up. And he was like, “Do you fuck with Lil Uzi Vert?” I was like “Yeah, he’s cool, whatever.” And he's like, “Yeah, he's actually hella sick. He's like, this weird little nerd. He loves anime and he loves My Chemical Romance. He's an emo kid, but he's making this hip hop. Like, it's trap music whatever you would call it. It's really interesting.” And I was like, “Oh, that's cool.”

And then what happened? He blew up and his fan base found out. They found out he was an emo kid. They found out he liked anime. And then instantly—and maybe I'm speaking out of pocket here, maybe this isn't the case at all— but he gets the Audi with the anime girl on the side, he gets the Marilyn Manson chain, he becomes emo, he does the thing with his hair. And that was only because he became too self-aware. You can’t identify with him nearly as much now because he's doing this as…not a bit, but he knows what makes him special. So he's playing into that. And the second you start to try to understand the magic of what's going on and try to recreate it, you're going to lose it.

Dude. He raps like every other rapper on that just to flex on them. The Life of Pablo is the most avant-garde interpretation of what Lil B was doing. 

Luca: You think self-awareness is something that obstructs authenticity?

Chandler: Absolutely. But it can be done successfully. I’m sure Frank Ocean is incredibly self-aware. He knows what he’s doing. Aphex Twin is incredibly self-aware. But I think the best example of self-awareness being successful up until…I guess the last year is Kanye West. Listen to The Life of Pablo, that's the most self-aware record ever. And I think that's like one of the best records ever made. I fucking—I would die on that hill. That record is better than Yeezus, better than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, better than Dropout, better than all that shit. That album is genius. There's never been anything that fucking good in my opinion.

Luca: Yeah, it’s great. It’s some of his best rapping too. That verse on “Highlights”...

Chandler: Dude. He raps like every other rapper on that just to flex on them. The Life of Pablo is the most avant-garde interpretation of what Lil B was doing. It's just fucking genius. Kanye was incredibly self-aware. Now he's way too self-aware for wrong reasons. And now he's, you know, saying crazy shit and like, only doing it because he knows it's getting people pissed off and he's acting like a toddler now. But yeah, shout out, fucking Life of Pablo man.

Luca: Do you think you’re self-aware?

Chandler: I think I'm self-aware in the right way. Like, I've definitely gone through moments in my life where I've…I don't know, man. I think I'm misunderstood, you know? I'm self-aware from a third person kind of perspective. Like, dude, I try to flow like water, you know? And I have my own problems, same as everyone else does. But I think I'm healthily self-aware. I never try to dwell on anything that I think makes me special or makes any of our work special or anything I've done that’s special. I know my value and I know what I'm capable of. And I try to leave it at that because the second you really start to dive too far into yourself, you fucking go crazy. I don't think most people are emotionally intelligent enough to handle that. 

We live in a fucked up world man. It's hard for people to even get to the point now where they even know who they are because they're so stimulated. It's like what we were talking about earlier, with community and digital community and the internet and all these kids on Fortnite, Instagram, TikTok and what have you. Like, dude, how I found out who I was—I had relationships with people and we went out and we fucked around and we did dumb shit and we lived in reality. 

Not to sound like a fucking boomer or anything like that. iPhones weren’t things until I was like 16. That was not the norm. We all had flip phones. We had MySpace. We had to talk to each other through that. But we weren't overexposed to each other. There wasn't mind games. There wasn't “Oh, I dated this person and like, now I got to see them on Instagram, I got to block them.” Like, dude, you used to date chicks and then never see them again. I was bitching about a breakup I went through recently and my dad was like, “That's crazy. I don't know how you guys do that shit. I used to date chicks. I would never see them again.” I was like “Dude, that's awesome. That's so cool.”

Think about having a Fitbit. It’s like, “Oh, I took 12,000 steps today!” You’re feeding the machine, dude!

Luca: Your band is called The Hellp, so I was wondering if you could help some of the people reading this. Dish out some advice for different kinds of people. 

First of all, do you have any tips to be more sincere?

Chandler: Get off your phone. Get off your phone. That's how you find out who you are. And it's not just your phone—it's YouTube, it's everything. It's overstimulation. You have to avoid overstimulation. You have to get inside your own mind. 

The best advice I was ever given came from an ex-Marine named Joe who used to come into this grocery store I worked at. He was a free spirit, man. He was in Fallujah in 2004. The guy was the real deal. Very cool dude. He was from Arizona, and we talked about drugs and partying one time. He was like “Yeah dude, I've done it all, bro. Like, I've been smoking tweak for fucking five days straight, fucking in the middle of the desert,” doing real Arizona tweaker shit. 

And he was like, “But I had to do that, because I had to find out what I was capable of." And he grabbed me and he's like, “Every one of us has that demon inside of us. And if you don't fucking wrestle that demon out yourself, that demon is going to sit there and fuck with your life, man, you got to know what you're capable of.” 

And that's not an easy path. It’s not "Hey, go smoke some fentanyl and have some fun." But that really stuck with me. You got to find out who you are. The only way you're going to do that is by forcing yourself to find out who you are. And that's going to be in solitude. That's going to be in silence. That’s going to be working by yourself, that's going to be being lonely. It's going to be living by yourself. That's going to be fucking going on a road trip in silence. Authenticity and sincerity aren’t taught. It’s discovered in your own confidence in yourself and you’re only going to get confidence in yourself if you're not overstimulated. 

It's hard for people to even find out who they are now. Now kids get iPhones when they're eight years old now, man. Like, they don't have a fighting chance anymore. Instantly they go "I gotta compare my life to these other people.”

Everything's being pigeonholed into this world now where they want you to be avoidant of interaction with other people. And the most important thing in this world is relationships and telling stories with other people and growing with other people. That's the basis of what I think the meaning of this world is. 

And these people's introduction to relationships and sexuality is pornography; it's Instagram baddies; it’s OnlyFans. People's introduction to dating isn't "Oh fuck, that girl's really pretty in that bookstore. I gotta sack up, be a man, and go talk to her." No, it's you fucking go “I’m gonna swipe right on Tinder. Gonna keep swiping. Oh, she's cool. Then we’re gonna have a weird, awkward conversation in real life. And then we're gonna have transactional sex.” 

They want you to do everything on the phone, everything on the Internet. They want you to be insular. They want you to be reclusive in the wrong way. They want you to order food on your phone. They don't want you to have to go and talk to someone in real life. They want you to do everything through the Internet, through, you know, a false reality.

And in turn that's going to keep people from being themselves. It's going to keep people from being authentic because they won’t have to face themselves and to face yourself you have to interact with the world. You have to move reality around you. And if you're not doing that, you're not going to grow as a person.

Everyone’s reality is completely constructed for them, by them. How are you going to find yourself if everything’s curated for you?

I'm not a fucking adult. I'm not an adult, dude. I'm a fucking manchild, dude. But I meet fucking 40 year olds who don't have shit figured out. I meet people every day that I'm like, "Dude, how the fuck are you standing? How the fuck are you driving that car? What the fuck? Who are you to judge me in any way? You don't even know who you are. If I ask you right now how your day's going, you won't even have an answer.” You just realize everybody's stunted, everyone's fried, dude. Even like, adults in my life I used to look up to. What are they doing? They fucking watch the TV screen all day, man, they watch the fucking news. 

People are just sucked into the vortex right now. If all of your energy is spent feeding the machine—there's a machine going on. It's a giant feedback algorithm that's happening right now, where it's this giant ball of pus and cancer. Think about having a Fitbit. It's like, "Oh, I took 12,000 steps today!" You're feeding the machine, dude! The machine isn't sentient and it's not controlled by anybody. It's out of our control. It’s Google ad space, it's YouTube algorithms, it's Tik Tok, it's Instagram. 

It's all this giant machine that's giving you your own digital reality. Whatever you're exposed to first is going to define your reality. Did your parents watch CNN or Fox News? Okay, there's your political alignment. What did you find on YouTube back in the day? You found that? Well, guess what? There's your music taste forever. And now you go on Google. You were talking about chairs, well guess what? Now your whole phone is chair ads on your shit. Everyone's reality is completely constructed for them, by them. How are you going to find yourself if everything's curated for you? Based on one decision that you made randomly instead of you having to find it yourself. You know what I mean? Everything's curated for you now and it's terrible, man. And I think that is what keeps people from being authentic and understanding who they are because they're basically babies. They’re in a proverbial fucking baby carriage their entire life, you know, where they never have to face themselves. They never have to face, "Hey, do I really like this person? Do I really like this music? Am I doing this because I want to be validated by these other people who don't even know who they are?" You know? I don't know. That's my tangent on that.

Luca: Shit! 

Well, I wanted to wrap up with some rapid fire questions. Ten second answers. Chop chop. 

First: what makes an ideal lounge space?

Chandler: A good coffee table.

Luca: What's the best way to cook a steak?

Chandler: High heat. Two and a half minutes per side. Olive oil. Hella butter. Super rare.

Luca: How do you feel about the flavored vape ban?

Chandler: Love it. Don't let anyone smoke those fucking things.

Luca: What makes a good remix?

Chandler: You can dance to it.

Luca: What would you say to someone who would say that you're too skinny to be a construction worker?

Chandler: Doesn't matter to me because I can frame a house and they can't.

Luca: What would you say to someone who would say you're too fat to be a rockstar?

Chandler: [laughs] I'd say, “you're right.”

Luca: What's your favorite logo?

Chandler: McDonald's.

Luca: Favorite marketing campaign?

Chandler: Fuck. That's a good question. I do have an answer for it. Fuck. I was thinking about this the other day too. You gotta give me a second.

It never comes to him. We leave the cafe and hop in my car to listen to The Hellp’s next single, “California Dreamgirl.” And it’s awesome.

You can catch The Hellp in Los Angeles and New York later this month. Look for new music from the duo soon.

Chandler can be found on Instagram at skinnyyoungthug, and the interviewer at lumrob.

All photos courtesy of Chandler.