We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rio Frank-Bantell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Rio, thanks for joining us today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
Like most artists I started off uploading my music to SoundCloud. I adopted some of the flows and topics that most artists would thrive on. Artists such as: ski mask the slump god, xxxtentacion, and smokepurp. But I quickly found out that the lines of dark humor and profanity was not for everyone. So I decided that I would keep the songs that had a more SoundCloud style, on SoundCloud. Now, most of my songs that display my clean artistic talent are on all other platforms such as: Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal.
Rio, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I got into the music industry by meeting my best friend Israel in a chemistry class, in high school. Him and I would go onto make tons of music in the SoundCloud genre/era and build up a specific audience that we could provide for. Some thing that I am most proud of, is the fact that I started making consistent money from making music. I was told many times that the music industry was not the place for me, but all I did was upload my music no matter what, and my audience found me.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
The best way for society to support the artists and creatives of our communities would be to give some Time, and have some patience. You only need a small amount of time to engage in an artist and find out if that type of music/art is what you were looking for. Society should have patience in our artists because it can be very difficult/stressful to provide quality music/art to their audience.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being a musical artist is dropping music and getting the feedback from fans that love what you are putting out. I have had fans DM me or text me talking about how my music changes their mood, Helps them work out, gets them through depression, or helps lighten up a room filled with friends or strangers. That to me makes putting music out worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://unitedmasters.com/cto-chop
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cto_chop/
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/CTOchop
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCrXaP-A_gu7FHIe0MiNGcKw
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4Yg7FlrTPZeDATmHASYGsb?si=OOuolvL4RmqvM9NSBIFp6Q