lofi.family on Creating a Community

Community has never been more important in music.

In the ultra connected world of today it can become increasingly difficult to feel ‘part’ of something. Community has always been especially important to music. Music has a unifying power but unless there are spaces for artists and fans alike to communicate, collaborate and commiserate; then that power can be diminished. Creating and running these spaces are not only essential but imperative. One such group that has managed this incredible undertaking is lo.fi family. This multi-facet organisation is many things but, most importantly; it is a strong community of like minded people. So when we had the chance to speak the the founder, Griffin aka oneyundaprophet, we leapt at the chance to peek behind the curtain of the ubiquitous group.

So for anyone who doesn't know, what is lofi.family? 

Lofi.family actually wasn't originally lofi.family. It was certainly Lo-fi Hip-Hop but I simply had no idea the genre had a name or anything. I just met a guy named Malachi Ottawa in an adjacent Facebook group and I thought his last name was cool because it's the capital of my home country. I added him and we realised there wasn't really a public group for Lo-Fi at the time. A lot of the ones on Facebook were secret. We made the Lo-Fi Hip-Hop group and, around the time when we first made our beat tape, we changed the name to lofi.family because we felt it would create more of a community, slow down the self-promotion. It actually ended up kick-starting the whole rush of members and the group blowing up as a whole. Really though, it just started as a place where we could share Lo-Fi music with friends because I didn't have any local friends into it, and it ended up becoming a big hub for a community that's growing seemingly every day and a good platform for a lot of people to get their name out there.

Ahh so when would this all have been? Obviously, it’s maybe quite hard to just put a single date on it. But around what year, time of year kind of thing?

Actually, coincidentally, I do have the exact time of year and day. It was November 16th, 2016. Me and Malachi, met on November 11th, 2016. And we were just like, hey, do you want to make a group? And three days later, four days later, we did.

That’s crazy, 2016?

Yeah! It was a long time ago. I think when we changed the name, it was at 420 members because that was the first time I truly realised there was a community. When everybody made 420 jokes, I was like, we're a family now.

It's crazy how much it's grown in the last three or four years. What are the main goals of the group? What environment do you guys try and create?

The whole goal of the group is to have a place where people can get connected with others and share their music, learn techniques, get better as artists, better as promoters. Figure out the steps they need to get to get bigger. There's varying levels of success throughout our group. We have people who just made their first beat today to people who are going overseas to perform and meeting people from other countries, signing to record labels.

Basically, what I personally want for the group as a whole is to just have just a good group of people to look back and be like, hey, lofi.family and those people really helped me get where I am today. As a collective, I looked up to Rick Rubin. I always thought he had the coolest job in the music industry. I just want to eventually do something big and make my own little corner of Lo-Fi that I can really take somewhere personally and take the artists with me. Just make a big deal out of something that's already blown up getting mainstream, but take the next step.

For you, what is it like managing the group? Give us a glimpse into your day-to-day or normal experience while running the group.

Every day, I go look at the group, make sure nobody's just being rude, being mean. I talk to a lot of the people. I contact lots of new members and just say, hi, I'm the admin. If you ever have any problems, get a hold of me. I do lots of listening to music. Every day, I spend at least an hour or two listening just to group members, sifting through it, making playlists, talking with my other moderators, thinking about contests. Then a lot of the time, I spend the day casually talking with members in the Discord. We have a very tight-knit group there. We're all just a group of best friends. We play Minecraft together. It's just all fun in there.

Actually, one of the biggest things is I have to learn is cultures and where people come from and why people are how they are; because there's people from Slovakia, people from Nigeria, people from Japan. You can't really treat everybody the same through a Canadian eye because how I converse with people translates differently to how somebody whose first language may not be mine. 

How do you keep a balance between free posting environment and keeping it focussed and making sure that people feel welcome? 

I try my best not to make decisions that are solely mine. This is the rule. As the sole admin and being known as like the person who owns the group, I don't want to be slamming down a ban hammer or muting and kicking people on my own accord. Because not only does that paint me in a bad light, but it also paints the group in a bad light. It creates an image of a power hungry admin and it’s not that at all.

Pretty much for anything, I will run it by my mods. We, as a group, decide what's acceptable and what's not. But before we punish anybody, we try our best to get into those places where people are fighting or arguing or just being nasty or breezing the rules. We try and speak to them on that post and try to clear the air. Because in the end, everybody's in the group for the same reason. I don't want to have to remove people.

I actually just added back a bunch of people we removed in the past. Some people just sometimes can't get along in online forums and that's just how the Internet works. Sometimes they just have to be removed. There's going to be a few bad seeds in every batch. You can't really help it.

I get that. What are the biggest initiatives or group activities that the group has actually brought into action, brought to life?

There's a few and there's a couple fun ones. One I’d like to point out is Pick a Pal, where people actually collab and meet friends, make music together. It's actually sprouted a lot of connections easily because you're not forcing people to talk on a post where sometimes they don't reply to each other. You’re like, hey, you guys need to talk. You need to make music and let's see how good of a song you guys can make in this time period. It definitely has made people friends. I know people who also have got a big boost off of their Pick a Pal (and contests as a whole) with their own music too. If you win one, you just get brought forward to a whole platform of, now, I think 4,600 plus? I'm really happy we do a lot of contests.

We did sample contests in the past and do playlists on Spotify and SoundCloud too. Like my chosen ones playlists are one of my pride and joys. There's a lot of people on that playlist and the people on there tell me it has actually done a lot for some people’s SoundClouds. Just by having their music at the forefront. People like Nurv and his (and I can joke and say this) his cringy, real cringy Shiloh sample beat; I got that a lot of plays.

It was actually the reason I made the playlist because I was like, this is one good Shiloh beat. I accepted it and I made the first chosen ones. I've accidentally got a few w.i.ps really high plays. Like Koopsta’s W.I.P I got that a pretty high play amount. I've gotten some interludes, accidentally, high play amounts. But those things I just do because I want to be able to give people more of a platform. People know, your friendly neighbourhood admin, oneyun da prophet and I want to be able to use that recognition to get other people the attention that I don't feel they get. If you look through it, I carefully pick who’s there and they're usually people who really good in the community and just very unappreciated, in my mind, musically.

Then there's things where we take initiative against wrongdoings in the scene. Sometimes we’ve brought a lot of music theft into the attention of others. Without naming names, we brought forth a lot of shady business deals that were going on in the industry. I personally pride myself on being a little bit of a watchdog because it's a community I care about a lot and I don't want them taken advantage of. I know a lot of people are just like, I'm making music. I'm starting to make money on Spotify, and then some big record label that's on the Internet is messaging them and like, hey, you want to sign to us five years? But then the details are shady. Like no leaving the contract, blah, blah, blah. But they're so excited, they do it.

What we try to do, like Trappola and Flavour Symmetry and myself, we all try and keep people aware of stuff that's going on so that they don't fall for it. It's also a hub for a lot of other people to do that themselves. If somebody’s got their music stolen, they can inform the group and because you need to file reports about this stuff we can support with that. My friend actually had his beat stolen on SoundCloud ages ago and it couldn't get removed. The guy ended up getting more plays than him and uploading it to SoundCloud or Spotify and his copy got cut down. That was one of the reasons I was like, I don't like this whole people being taken advantage of and it's really easy to steal a beat. You rip it off SoundCloud and then you rap over it with some weak rhymes, then it's super hard to find it because if I don't listen to your raps, how am I going to find you used my beat?

It’s telling that so much of what lofi.family does stems from community. How essential is that sense of community to the scene? From your perspective. 

With small Internet genres like Lo-Fi, communities are important because we have to work together to get our music out there. It's not going to pop up on Facebook on some music video in your newsfeed you're just scrolling by. It doesn’t work like that. The communities on Internet genres are really important because people need to be able to connect to get their stuff out there. I think a lot of the reason people online say the community is dead is because they're in communities where you go by your alias. Where we benefit is your first and last name is in the group. We know who you are. It says where you live. You're you.

I'm not oneyun da prophet on there for example. I'm Griff and that's how you know me. You know me as Griffin. And I mention I’m oneyun da prophet. I think when you have that element, people are a lot more human. Like a lot of our producer are on a live circuit? So it’s similar to that. You know what actual live community is like. There's no real drama in it because you're all there and enjoying the exact same thing, being yourselves.

Exactly, yeah.

I think that's a lot of the benefit that Facebook has over Discord or some other avenues for people to have communities on just because it's like, hey, I'm Griffin. Nice to meet you. I like music. Do you like the music? Let's be friends. The bonding of knowing where people are too is huge. It's a lot easier when you see somebody's name and you're like, that's a last name in my hometown. Let's go see what’s up with that! Then people meet up and that's awesome. I actually have a whole collection of pictures of people in the group that have met up together, just through connecting through the group. It's my favourite thing in the world and lots of it just comes from me randomly being like, where's everybody from? Just make a post and somebody will say where they're from and they'll get a whole seven people who will be like, I live in the town right next door! We should all meet up one day and make some beats! Then I'll get a picture randomly and it's like, they actually did it. Wow, I just helped people meet in real life! It's such a surreal thing that it just makes you realise that for people on the Internet that make beats in their bedroom, a community is really important.

It’s also important to have a comfortable community too. It is really important for members of minority groups, females and LGBTQ people. Having a community of people where you actually can see who they are and you know and where it’s just like, you make beats. I make beats. You know my name. I know your name. That's it. And it's really good for the community as a whole because with aliases, people can be pretty nasty, in my opinion.

From your perspective, how has the community or scene changed over the years? What would you say the biggest change has been within the community, from your role as the admin of this group, but also just generally being into the music?

I can say one of the biggest changes is probably demographic and where people are coming from in the world. Originally, it was a lot of US, UK, Canadian people. Then it branched out. I noticed Asia popped up a bunch and people were coming and joining. Then recently, it was Eastern Europe and the most recent wave I've noticed is a lot of people from Africa are actually coming and joining our group. It's something that has been very casual too. You can look with Admin Insights where everybody's from as a whole and generally, the southern hemisphere as a whole is low, except for Australia and parts of Asia, but this year we are seeing a lot of new members from Africa and South American which is so cool. There’s an also a few very active South Africans. There's lots of people from El Salvador, Chile, all over the place. It’s just cool.

Because you’ve seen it bloom and blossom out into these other places, it must be very cool to see the map expand, if you will, within the group, but also in the scene as a whole.

Of course! And the other major change is the gender difference. I remember back when we first made the group and we hit 1,000 members, the demographic was 96 to 4%, male to female. But now ,and this still sounds bad but we're improving, we are at 11% female. Lots of women sometimes do not feel the most comfortable in an Internet community, but lots of prominent female members like Sadiva, Bun.e and yonderling are all starting to help, in my opinion, foster an environment of uplift. Recently, one of my favourite new members is Moshun for example. I've been listening to her music all the time since she joined. 

The biggest changes in the community, I've noticed, are demographics and just the overall talent in music making. Like I very much enjoy all of our lofi.family volumes but as you go on and they get longer and longer and you can see the growth and the development of everybody. There's a few repeat members on a couple of the tapes and you can look over a broad spectrum and see people's music changing over this three-year period of time that we've gone through so far.

I think it’s noticeable from the member side as well. I think not only is the visibility raising, but I think the discourse is getting slightly more sensitive to the fact that there are varying different groups of people within the group. What do you think needs to be done to strengthen or grow the wider community? Not just lofi.family, but on a whole. What do you think the next step up is for the community?

Honestly, my thing with producers is you need to get a hold of a YouTube content creator. That's my biggest thing right now. If you can get on a YouTube channel and your music plays during their little cinematic cuts, they is a huge potential to be heard. If two million people watch the videos they are going to go to you. You make a deal with the video creator, you get some AdSense and that’s great way to get out there. I think that's pretty much going to be a future for a lot of people. There's always going to be somebody that makes a cooking video that's willing to pay a good chunk of money for a song that they can play throughout all their videos. That's always going to happen. There's going to be somebody that does drone shots or a real estate agency that needs music for their videos. 

Wait, the real estate example, is that real?

It’s genius, trust me.

Wow that’s amazing! So getting into other areas is really the next step.

Yeah. I actually found out about a lot of group members whose posts I just didn't come across, through YouTube channels and their outros. There would be a big sign that says their name and music by them at the end of their videos. And it's like, I’m going to search that person up on SoundCloud. I think if people start to make more of conscience effort to connect with people with bigger platforms, that’s going to take the whole community up a level. Because right now, it's within our reach and a bit above. We don't really reach out very far to make any connections and sometimes with those people that do with some record labels or some just big platforms, they can be done wrong. We just we got to be careful and learn our own rights and safeties before we can jump right into these sorts of things. Expansion is the key.

The group also has a collective now. How did this idea come about to create a collective? How long was it in the works? 

We had, back in the day, a mod named Maxime and he was in charge of the collective.Over time we started to realise had a lot of big talents in the group. Like it was actually one of my ‘holy shit!’ moments when I realised charlie toØ human was in our group. And Maxime pointed in out in our mod chat and he was like, hey guys, we really, really should make a collective if we have this many good producers in our group. And we’re like, yes, that's a good point!

At the time, I did not have the connections he did so I was like, go ahead and make it. That ended up being the first wave of people. It was all people he had connections with and it benefitted because at the time, I was just this group admin. We were only maybe a year, year and a half into the group. We just had to scramble up everybody we knew that was really good and we trusted to be a representative of us off the bat.

As we've continued on, we've started to branch out to more and more different people and different genres of music. Recently, we added two Lo-Fi House producers, DIODE and Tom Vernon. We also welcomed back Hier and Flavour Symmetry who also both do all sorts of EDM music in general. We just wanted a name for ourselves on the Internet and we didn't just want to be some Facebook group that stayed inside of itself. We wanted to be able to have a platform for ourselves where people can hear the music that's coming from us sort of thing.

Is that why it's so important for the group to have a collective? To be almost like ambassadors in a way?

Yeah, pretty much. I like to think of the collective members as people that are representative of our sound overall and just our community. If you listen to the music on the collective, it’s all just what I personally find to be very, an indicative of us. Malachi or Malatto’s anti-establishmentism music to the versatility of Seven Diosma and then Mot singing and Aquifer’s dual collabs with his friend. There's actually two of them in there. I can't remember both their names off the top of my head right now. But it's Jack and Alex, I'm pretty sure.

It turns out that I actually picked some pretty good producers for mods. There's a few crossovers there like Trapolla and Cherrygrove who's one of my favourite producers. I think pretty much he as a person is a symbol musically and what we are as a group. Just a wholesome producer who just makes some happy, Good Time Beats. I think those members that do a lot for the community are also good adds. There's just lots of people. I could go on and on. Sadiva and her WOW tapes which I've bought every single time because that’s just a brilliant cause for example and just all sorts of stuff like that. The collective as a whole, with all the people, are lofi.family.

I get you. You’re almost trying to create an A-team where all the bases are covered?

Yeah. I actually have a phone note filled with about 150 names that I’m just waiting to add. My fingers are twiddling like I want to add you, but I cannot have 300 people in this thing! Haha. That's where those playlists come in and my chosen ones tape. I actually have a tape in the works right now that won't be out when this comes out and it hasn't been announced, so I can't really talk about it. But it's just, for those people. It’s just I can’t have a ginormous amount of people in the collective. They're not in there and I like them but you best believe I'm doing my best to promote them. But to keep a nice flow to the collective, you have to have a hard number because we've seen with some collectives throughout all sorts of genres, if you have 70 members, the music just gets saturated and you basically just become a repost page, but you're uploading everything.

So as well as running the group you also make your own music and I wanted to talk about your influences. What are some your core foundational inspirations?

Lots of it is just me sitting there and feeling. After sitting outside and having a smoke, I'm just like, what kind of music do I want to make today? When I first started making music, I was trying to make Hip-Hop but my ear is set at 120 BPM but it’s good sound. I was just making House music and I just ended up going with House music a bit. As I branched out and learnt more of what I was doing, I made some fun, random Trap music.With the mod team that I have, I have a lot of people I can learn from. They're all quite talented individuals and I can pick their brains. I just make what I'm feeling. Like if I'm making a ketamine dealer track, it's going to be something like House or Techno. I just have fun on that account. Imade J-pop on there once.

oneyun is more stuff that… I don't know, I feel like the broader spectrum of people will like. And then I have the øsanyin project with LuneArbor. We have a group together and that works like this: I send them a sample, we talk about it for a bit and then we go for a sound off of that. It's lots of just moods and stuff. I listen to certain artists. I listen to certain music and I'm like, I want to try and make something with that. But it's more like, at that time when I feel like making music, what do I feel like personally? And then make it off of that.

Are there any artists that inspire you that go across the genres no matter what alias you're sitting down to create under?

Kanye West and Timberland. Their production is some of my favourite and I've listened to them pretty much my whole life. As a kid, I listened to Timberland and Nelly Furtado taking over Canada because he's the Canadian icon of our decade. When you're growing up and you live in Saskatoon and Saskatchewan and there's a grand total of 200,000 people and you hear Kanye West for the first time, and you hear Jesus Walks, you’re like, my Lord, what is happening in my life?

I've just always been a fan of that production side, then a lot of the inspiration I take from the modern day, is more off what their impact is in music more than their music. I'm like, that person does that for the scene, that’s important etc. For instance, DJ Premier, when I was young, I didn't listen to much 90s rap until I was older but when you start to look at him, J Dilla, all those producers that people just love, you can realise more than just have some real good music. They were the foundation for a broad spectrum of stuff. Rza is also that's a big player for me. With Rza, if you look at his music, he went back to back to back to back on amazing albums in, I think a span of two years? He came out with four crazy albums.

I want to be able to make music that just hits on all sorts of different levels of the same genre or all sorts of different levels of different genres. I hate the idea of being boxed in. I see it all the time. I don't want to make this genre of music anymore. I don't know what to do. I've never put myself in a box. I make whatever sounds good to my ear at the time. Then I'm like, I can upload this now. I’ll throw it up wherever I feel it's appropriate.

Why is it important to have the different aliases for you?

Honestly, I have ketamine dealer just because I thought the name was funny. Everybody in the Lo-Fi scene knows who sleepdealer is and I was making house music, so thought the opposite of sleeping is just doing ketamine and going to a rave, listening to some House music and going wild. I was like, I'm going to be ketamine dealer. It's just about being able to express yourself under different names. I think it’s important and so many people throughout music have done it. It's just fun!

Having an alias with a friend is just a fun thing to do. We both work on the song and it's like, we both made that. People see it, they see the name, they think it's one person, but it's actually us. It’s cool just two people becoming one and I think that's something that you just need an alias for. You could collab a bunch.

I think that's what MF DOOM does well. I'm not the biggest fan of his music but when he collabs with people, he makes an alias for it. I think that really helps makes the music connect. If you have a name that fits towards who's on it or what the sound is that is. With oneyundaprophet, if you look at the history of that SoundCloud name, it's been everything under the sun. At one time, it was oneyungangster because that's actually where the name originates from. All my local friends had a rap groups in high school. They’d write diss songs to the other groups and all that, and I was like, why don't I have a rap name? What the hell?

Haha yeah for real. Like where’s my name? Why do you get a rap name?

Where's my rap name? Why do you get to be Johnny Bugatti? Haha. Anyways I said this to one of the co-creators of lofi.family and he was like, you can be one yung gangsta. And I was like, but with 2 G's back to back that looks dumb. He stopped, looked at me and said "you're too G for the G in Yung." and i was like sure thing"

Then when I realised I'm going to be in Lo-Fi music and oneyun gangster doesn't really fit that, I switched to oneyun. Then I was like, Lo-Fi Punk music’s pretty good and started getting into GG Allin. I watched his interview where he called himself a prophet of Punk and I was like, that’s hilarious. I'm going to call myself a prophet. So now, I’m oneyundaprophet. So on one side there’s a reason and on the other it’s just GG Allin’s a silly dude haha. Like I'm supposed to be a gangster and I'm like 135lbs. I am definitely not no gangster haha.

It's just basically everything, my music and me, just all my aliases are just me joking around and having fun. I don't personally strive to do anything major with my music. I just plan to have fun and make what I like because as much as I would love for people to like my music, I really want people to love me for what I do for the community.

I get you. Does that mean that there's not a full length project on the way anytime soon?

I still put a lot of effort into it and I want to get better and I want to continue on. But at the end of the day, as somebody who leads a community, it’s hard to promote yourself in the communities you're in. With my music, I put it into the ether once and then I just let it sit because I just don't want to abuse that power I have. I take it as seriously as I wouldn't put it up if I didn't like it and I would never put up music just to be like, this is whatever.

It’s not like I need to upload music today. It's more like, I make music. Recently, I made a noise song because I was feeling stressed. I was like, noise music would feel good right now. Some of my music actually just originated out of spite but now, it's just out of desire to counter my moods.

That could be the album name.

Out of spite, first album. There we go haha

How do you balance the two roles you have, as community leader and musician? Or indeed, do you even have those days where you don't feel like doing either?

Yeah. Just like any job, some days, you're like, I don't want to be at my job today. The thing about being the admin of a Facebook community is your phone buzzes all day. There's definitely days where I'm like, I don't want to be in the group or I don't want to make music. But that’s the benefits of having so many talented and dedicated moderators comes in. If one of us isn't in the mood to be in the group today, there's six or seven or whatever it is, of us to step in and pick up the slack.

Personally, I've taken breaks from the group. But at that time, I actually spent a lot of time learning how to make music. Conversely, when I'm very dedicated to getting things done with the group, I take a break from music. I only have so much spare time you know? I have two jobs in real life and I want to make the group the best I can. It's just a juggling process. If I can make some music before I go to bed or after I have a cigarette outside or whatever then that’s cool with me.

So it's more about managing the workload of the two things and also realising what a priority is for you at that present time. Like you say, if you need to take a break from the group, you've got a very strong, dedicated team who can help. 

And they’re in every time zone in the world! If I need to leave, there's one person that's an hour ahead of me, one person that's at the same time and one person that's an hour behind me. We have people that are all in different time zones. It's real nice to be able to just step away and know the group's going to be watched for the next 24 hours. I can sleep at night knowing nothing bad's going to happen because there's going to be some British dude sitting there in Discord having a good ol’ time. I don't have to worry.

That is nice. And I think it's a testament to the strength of the community that you have that, that that trust even exists. 

The mod selection’s a big thing. That was probably one of the tougher things to do. We've had some mods come and go and they were very instrumental in growing our group as a whole. But there's mods we have now like Ben Hier, Jake Grant and Jake McCall, Triston Stevens,Patrick Le Bras, Malachi Ottawa, Johnny Fabian, Anssi Antila, Daylen Bell and Owen Mcbride on the art! They've all been members for a long time.

I'm probably missing some heads, but there’re so many people I talk to everyday in the group, but I'm certain that's everybody. The way we've picked everybody so far is if they're being too good of a member. It’s like I should just give them a badge so they can be a member and be a good member as a staff member. With Jake Grant, he just came in and started being the most social, helpful person in the world. Just live streaming, helping people.

I was like, hey guys, we need to mod him. So we modded him. Same sort of thing happened with Ben, I think. He was around 15 at the time we modded him because he conducted himself like an adult. We’re like, this kid needs to be a staff and then he's like, I am four years younger than all of you. We're like, wait. What? We’ve been talking to a child this whole time haha.

Yeah when we met up for drink a couple months ago, he told me that story and my mind was blown as well. I was just like, what? How old are you? Haha.

Back in the day when I wasn't always this amazing (not that I am now) but I wasn't always this great group leader. In the early days, I was like, what am I doing? Why do I have this huge community? So I used to get Ben to write my important posts that I needed to be articulate and properly written. He was in my equivalent to grade ten and I'm in my third year or second year of working as an adult, and he’s writing my messages for me. It’s like, goddammit haha.

If you got the gift of the gab, you should use it. And he just knows what to do.

Exactly. I can talk verbally. If you asked me to write things properly and properly say what I'm trying to say, it's just going to be like, I don't know about that. I’m going to get this smart little British kid to write it. That’s the plan.

What have you learnt from managing the group?

One thing I have really learnt is patience and a lot about myself as a person. It's helped me grow as a person with being patient, understanding and knowing how to properly conduct myself. I think that's the thing a lot of people strive to make communities need to realise. You need to have a certain attitude going into things and you need to represent yourself a certain way.

If you come off the wrong way, obviously, not everybody's going to think I'm the best. I don't expect everybody to, but if, let's say, I present a bad image of myself; then it taints the whole group. If you want to make a community, you need to just be able to take a step back and look at things, not as yourself. Like somebody could be saying something mean about me, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're being the person that needs to be taken and punished.

I need to be able to look and be like, if I was just a regular person, what would happen? If you're the leader of a community and you have the ability to just wave goodbye to people at will, and you abuse that, then your community is done for. It dies. People will leave. People will say bad things about you and then there's nothing you can really do.

The way I see it is you have to conduct yourself like a behaving adult. Like act who you would if you went for a supper with people. If you only knew one person, you would read the table, talk to people, try and start conversations. You wouldn't just sit there and talk to the one person you knew. 

You lose your credibility if you wield the ban hammer too strongly. I get what you're saying.

Exactly.

So the biggest lesson you learnt was patience and your biggest piece of advice is to be able to separate yourself from your community, but in a positive way, if that makes sense?

Yeah. Because, like I said, I added people back because back in the day when I was learning how to do this, I'm not going to say that I was some perfect admin. I've kicked and banned people before. But I've recently, over time, reached out to a lot of them to explain I have realised how to do this better, so I want you to come back. I want you to join our community again because at the time, I wasn't the best leader I could be for the community.

You got to, as you grow, take a step back and look within yourself and be like, hey, who have I done wrong to? What have I done wrong? Can I fix that? Sometimes you got to realise you can't fix that, but you need to try to prevent it from happening again.

What is coming next for lofi.family and what is coming next for you in your music?

So for lofi.family, coming next is the secret beat tape that I got going on. It's going to be on our SoundCloud. We also finally got stickers. We're figuring out shipping for those. We are confirming to everybody now that, that is exactly what the coffee funds are going to be used for just so everybody is happy because I live in (I’ll be honest) the middle of nowhere. I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada and shipping will be pretty expensive as a whole. We've took some crowdfunding and took a big stack out of my wallet so I'm going to ship them all to the coffee donators. Coffee donors will have that to look forward to!

What comes up next for me, personally is some music. I'm hoping to travel somewhere and meet some people out of the family. Just in general, have some fun, to meet some people. I want to go to the UK and meet the hundreds of people that I know from the group there now. There's people that are also in Canada like Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal. There's a lot of people that I really want to meet. I'm also keeping myself very busy with my paying jobs, as I call them, because I would like to consider lofi.family, my favourite job. But I'm working hard in my everyday life just trying to afford some money so I can go visit some people and further those connections I made on the Internet!

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