Hi, everyone! I recently sat down to talk with Aaron Cunningham, the Dallas-based musician making songs under the name Pretty Boy Aaron. Since he started releasing music since 2017, Cunningham has had a string of successful singles, including "Comb My Hair". The track was featured heavily on Spotify's "Bedroom Pop" playlist and has given him a lot of exposure. I've been getting into his music a lot recently, and I'm glad he agreed to chat for an interview.
bazzreviews: What were some of your biggest reasons for starting a music career?
Aaron Cunningham: In high school, I joked a lot about the idea of becoming a rapper. I remember at one of my best friend’s birthday parties, a buddy of mine and I made a rap for her as a joke. It turned out that I had a lot of fun doing it, so all throughout high school, I just kept writing this little raps on the side. I was also dabbling in short film at that time, too. I made a project for a film festival, and we were going to get accepted, except the audio in our film was so lackluster. From that day on, I made it a top priority to learn audio engineering so that kind of mistake wouldn’t happen again. When I was working in these audio softwares, I kind of just starting tooling around with making beats, and it just went from there.
br: Were there any artists or albums that inspired your career?
A.C.: 100%. I think as a producer, Until the Quiet Comes by Flying Lotus was a big one. I was really trying to create a lot of beats that sounded like his from that album. I also really loved Late Registration by Kanye, I had a soul-sample phase in my production. For lyrics, Goblin by Tyler, the Creator was a big one for me, too. It was so relatable because he was writing about all of the things I was having trouble with at the time, like girls, school, rebellion. Other Odd Future members like Earl and MellowHype are also really influential to me. I used to not like the Internet for a while, but I finally got into their music kind of recently.
br: How did you get the nickname Pretty Boy Aaron?
A.C.: It was at the time when I wanted to be a producer more than a rapper, I believe. When I was making soul sample beats and getting deeper into production, I had the name Brotha Man. I wanted a stage name with my actual name in it. I wanted it to be in the of like Tyler, the Creator, because everyone calls him Tyler. I didn’t want people calling me Brotherman without saying my actual name. As I mentioned earlier, I was making short films back when I was in school. I was messing with this one song that I wanted to put in it and made a remix of the track, and kept repeating, “pretty boy”, “pretty boy” on it. I thought it sounded pretty cool, so I thought, “Why don’t I add my name on the end of this?”
br: What can you tell me about Hooligan Island?
A.C.: Oh, s--t, man, how the f--k did you hear about that? I remember those days. It was this rap group with my friends, Ray, Wesley and Joshua. We ran around and did silly s--t, hence the name “Hooligan” island. We were basically rapping over these Madlib-inspired beats that we found on Soundcloud, and that’s how I was learning about ways to record my voice. All the songs were on my SoundCloud for a while but I ended up taking them down.
br: I hear you’re known for putting on some good live sets, would you say that you prefer live rather than working on new songs?
A.C.: That’s a good question. I think I like performing live more. It’s fun to perform your music, but at the same time you’re getting paid to do it. You’ve got the audience cheering, dancing and bringing good vibes, and it helps the artist get into the moment even more. That’s not to say I like creating new music, too, I just have more fun playing shows.
br: Tell me about playing Smash Bros with Luna Luna before shows?
A.C.: Basically, it was me, Ryan [Gordon] and Danny [Bonilla] from Luna Luna, plus a good friend of mine, Trey, playing Smash before any show. Everyone on that tour loved the game, so it would always be a good time. Danny would usually win, he’s really good. Trey would sneak in a couple wins here and there, but I’d say Ryan and I were tied skill-level wise.
br: Can you describe your process for making a song?
A.C.: It depends on the song. I always start with drums, and then experiment with other sounds from there. It’s rare that I’ll have a demo and I’ll want to flesh it out more. It’s usually me making the beat on sight, and then I’ll have Ryan from Luna Luna come up and play bass for some tracks. I think I make most of my tracks because I’m just inspired by something I’ve heard before. On my song, “Comb My Hair”, I was super inspired by Mac Miller’s album, Swimming. I wanted to create something that evoked the same emotion I had when I was listening to that record. Other songs could be made because I’m really sad about something, or I really like this girl.
br: What do you focus more on, lyricism or production value and instrumentation?
A.C.: I think, again, it really depends on how I’m feeling. I take a really long time to write verses sometimes, but I also want to make sure that it sounds good, too. I’m going to bring up “Comb My Hair” for this question, too. I’ll admit, the verse isn’t anything special, but I really wanted it to sound fun and enjoyable. I wasn’t trying to oversay what I wanted to say, I only wanted to make a cohesive story. Like we talked about earlier, I love Earl Sweatshirt, and his lyrics are super complex. I’ll usually spend an hour or two just reading through all his Genius annotations so I know what everything means. I like doing that sometimes, but I think I want to make something so that a listener shouldn’t have to study what every lyric means in detail. No disrespect to Earl, though.
br: What songs are you most proud of making? Are there any fun stories behind them?
A.C.: “Comb My Hair” was fun to make. I was sort of required to finish that song. I teased the song on Twitter way before I was done with the song, and everyone was digging it. It was fun to kind of mess with my audience and say, “well, this song isn’t gonna be good”, or “this song isn’t ever coming out” and stuff like that. It really took me a while to really be satisfied with it. At live shows, I would play around with different revisions of the verse to see which one stuck best until I finally found one that clicked. A lot of songs on the EP were made in one sitting, and I would just post them on SoundCloud. “Blac Demarco” for example, I was hanging with this girl and we were walking around, and the next day I sat down and wrote the song based off the emotions I had felt that night. I also have a song called “Rox” which I wrote in Hawaii. I was looking off a balcony at the ocean and trying to figure out how the beat and verse was going to pan out.
br: Do you have any other projects in the works right now? If so, can you tell me a little bit about what it’s going to have in store?
A.C.: I’m working on a project that’s going to have a few of my newer tracks on it, plus a few more. I wanna warn you now, a lot of the new stuff is going to be a lot like “Comb My Hair”. Because of the success it had, I have so much more confidence with the other songs that are in my vault. They’re just as good-- if not, better. I think I’m trying to make each song on the project feel like a single, but I also want to have an overarching story, too. I’m also working on a project with my frequent collaborator, BRUHNICE. We made music in college together, and we had a project where I was mostly producing and he was the rapper. We switched roles a couple times, and I think we have such good chemistry that we do well on both aspects of a track. It’s probably gonna be different from this sing-rappy type stuff that I do on my tracks now, we want it to be a full-fleshed rap outing. It’s been fun working on that as well.
br: What do you want people reading this to know about you and your music?
A.C.: I just want everyone to know I’m doing this for fun. It just so happens that it’s becoming a career for me, and I never expected it to have gotten such a big break. I’m not trying to be a legend or a great, my only hope is that people can like me and my music, and be able to relate to it.
br: What music goals do you have for the future?
A.C.: To be honest, touring more is one of my biggest goals. I think playing any kind of big festival, maybe something like Coachella, is like a stretch. But I can dream. Hell, even getting nominated for a Grammy, as rigged as they are, would be cool, too. I’d also love to work with other artists on tracks, and maybe one day produce and album a la DJ Khaled, where it’s all just features and me working behind the scenes. With my own music, I’m really just fortunate to have had the success I’ve had. It’s just so weird how the internet is playing out right now. It’s almost like a wild west, you can never plan for what’s going to happen with your music. Nowadays, music is controlled by the fans, not the artists. For example, I never thought I’d end up on a curated playlist on Spotify, but the curators dug deep and were able to share my music to an even greater level. I guess you could say this was like all these songs on say, TikTok, that have blown up recently. Did any of those artists plan for them to blow up? No, they were just making music for fun. I think this is a really interesting twist to the music industry, and it’ll be fun to see how that plays out in the future.
LIGHTNING ROUND:
What is one album that you find as overrated and one you find as underrated?
Overrated- Illmatic by Nas
Underrated- City Pop by Benny Sings
What are some of your favorite films? Toy Story and Toy Story 3, Dope, Kill Bill: Volume 1, Django Unchained, and The Big Sick.
What was the first album you ever bought? Wolf by Tyler, the Creator
If you could put together a band with any four musicians, living or dead, who would it be? I’d play keys, but I’d have Solange, Kaytranda, Matt Martians and Anderson .Paak.
I'd like to thank Aaron for giving me his time, and we had a great time talking! I'd love to him back on a bazzcast in the future! In the meantime, go check out his tunes, and keep on tuning in for new bazzreviews content!
To hear Aaron's music, log on to https://soundcloud.com/aaron-is-pretty
Comments