The Daily Orange sat down with EDM artist Dillon Francis after his headlining act at Juice Jam. Here’s what he had to say about his music and his new album.

The Daily Orange: What do you think makes you unique from the other artists out there?

Dillon Francis: I put a lot of hate into my music; I don’t know if you can tell by the happiness in it. The difference between me and other artists is — I don’t think it’s much in terms of my music. I guess, I do make Moombahton, which pretty much doesn’t exist that much anymore from a lot of the other artists that were making it. The main big difference, though, would be social media — stuff like Instagram, the videos I make and the stuff that I post on there. I like to have fun and I guess that’s in my music as well.

The D.O.: Taking into account social media, what has it been like trying to connect with your fan base?

D.F.: It’s so easy. I mean, my fan base pretty much makes a lot of my content that I put on the Internet. It’s just really fun, interactive ways to get people to make art and be a part of the whole Dillon Francis thing.

The D.O.: I was talking to some of your fans today, and apparently you have several alter egos. Could you tell me more about them?

D.F.: I like to do them. I don’t have any of them with me because I just have my backpack without any props. DJ Rich-as-F*ck — I made it because I was on Instagram one day, and I saw a bunch of people posting picture of private jets. And I was just like, “I don’t f*cking care about private jets and I’m never going to want to look at a picture of one ever, at all, and I don’t want to see you in front of one.” So I just got really angry, and I was like, “I’m going to make a stupid character called DJ Rich-as-F*ck, and all he cares about is private jets, and planes and money.” And that’s kind of how it happened.

The D.O.: When you remix songs, what’s the process that you go through?

D.F.: Usually, it will be an artist contacting me and I’ll see if I like the song, or I’ll contact the artist, like recently, this song that I remixed called “Morning Sun” by Strange Talk. I heard it on (“That Awkward Moment”) — that movie with Zac Efron. But there’s this bar scene that they have, and the song comes on, and I thought it was such a good song. So I immediately found the song on the Internet, listened to it and then sent them a tweet saying, “Hey, if you want a remix, I’d love to do it.” And they hit me back and sent me the stems. That’s usually how I do that. I don’t take many remix requests anymore, unless it’s something that I really want to do, because I’d rather use that time to make my own original music now.

The D.O.: What’s going on with your upcoming album?

D.F.: The album was pretty much made from Twitter, which is kind of cool because that’s how my whole career was kind of made, actually. That’s why I met Diplo, Flux Pavilion, Brendon Ueri — who’s on my album, Martin Garrix. But yeah, the album’s done; it comes out Oct. 28.

The D.O.: What can we expect from that album in terms of music?

D.F.: So, it’s like, everything. I wanted to try to touch all different types of fan bases, and try to bring everyone together, and make everyone stop being like, “Oh my god, genres” and just listen to good music, and that’s it.

The D.O.: What would you say are the differences between playing a really big festival or show, like a Vegas show vs. a college campus show?

DF: Well, the college campus show, there’s definitely more fans. Vegas is interesting because, you know, for people that live there, they are not going to come and see you that many times because I play there once or twice a month. And with Vegas, it’s just massive amounts of different people there constantly. So here, people know most of my songs. That’s the difference between playing Vegas and festivals.

Published on September 8, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Clare: clramire@syr.edu