We recently connected with Ari Phillips and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
I think that I’m happy with when I started releasing music. I started writing songs when I was 14 so about 7 or 8 years ago would be my initial start. As such a self conscious kid that constantly worried about what people thought I really think it would’ve eaten me alive to come out with music. In comparison to today I have my own internal doubts or insecurities, but I’ve just learned to accept that the best I can do is be myself because there’s only one me. Additionally with my social anxiety I think I wouldn’t have been able to handle all the attention that I get now. The navigation of emotions and expression while simultaneously being known or perceived as approachable is something that I see as daunting. Nevertheless, I understand that putting myself out there is the only way this will work so I do it.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
For new people I’d like to say first “hey, I’m Ari”. I’m a 21 year old film major and I make music. I always loved music from a place of respect for it. I always wanted to dabble in it myself. I would often write poetry and little skits for my family to see. I believe it really manifested its way into music after I got a guitar at the age of 11. I have no idea how to play the guitar but having it in my hands turned something talked about a watched a reality. Ever since then I had the bug. The bug being this nagging voice in my head telling me to make songs and to just try anything. In the summer of 2022 I would write a song a day to really work at my craft. I would perform them for my mom or my sister in our basement and ask for advice. This gave me the confidence to be persistent and also allowed me to work my way into a rhythm of making songs. I finally tagged along a studio session of some friends of mine with a notebook and studied how to record. Eventually they offered me a go at it and it was like taking a drug. I loved it. I knew it was for me. Ever since then I’ve just been full steam ahead at putting out whatever I can and trying to really cultivate my own entity as a musician. One thing you’ll learn about my music is there’s something you’ll like. If you don’t like rap I’ll sing. If you don’t like singing I’ll give you a great instrumental on my outro. If you don’t like my outro I’ll put a massive beat switch in my intro. I want to make it so you have no excuse to not at least hear one song.
How did you build your audience on social media?
So I actually used to post basketball Tik toks a lot. It would start off really simple with just captions like “who do you think is the goat” and I would always keep it interactive so people would stick around or want to stay on my page. After about 6 months straight of that I gained about a thousand followers and that’s when I started posting funny videos about nba players or just basketball humor. This got me to 10,000 followers. Then everything really took off after I had a video go viral. It landed me on big pages like House of Highlights, Overtime and ESPN. After that I stopped posting. Then I took everything down and with my now 30,000 followers I post my music. Which definitely left some people like “where are the basketball videos?!” but at the end of the day if they stay they stay and if they don’t they don’t. It made it feel like I have an audience already to show my music to rather than starting from scratch.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I think something that’s the most rewarding is evoking emotion from someone. I used to get made fun of growing up because I often didn’t seem like I had any emotions. So a way to express how I feel and to see someone not only find a home in it but in turn say it’s reciprocated is the blessing.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ariphillipss?igsh=MWVlYmFhdmp5eTM1dg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7flugosFEEjupToLDE2mUU?si=HMYqTtClQd6WGyBfv_rDFQ
Image Credits
Naseem Rogers