For our 27th Clapper Sounds Interview, we’re highlighting Lil Nucleus!
Lil Nucleus (@LilNucleus on Clapper) is a musician who’s been producing his own music for nearly 7 years. His style is a mix of pop and hip hop, his inspiration pulled from the music he loves. In this interview, we talked about his artist’s journey, the kind of content he enjoys creating the most, his advice to new artists, and more!
Clapper Sounds is meant to be an intimate musical experience, and we want that mission to translate into our written interviews too. Listen to his music as you read to get to know Lil Nucleus and his unique sound.
Let’s start from the beginning. What is your first memory of being involved with music? How did you start your artist journey?
The first memory of me doing music was around when I was 9 or 10. I would just play on the piano and make random songs. But I really started taking music seriously around, late 2016 or early 2017. I’ve hundreds of songs already, it’s just crazy how much I’ve made. I have a bunch of different styles. I’m multi-genre, so I do pop, hip hop, and a bunch of different things. And I’ll listen to songs from those genres to get inspired.
Tell us a little about your name! How did you decide on Lil Nucleus? Were there other names before that one?
There were plenty of names before that – I had so many names! How I got Lil Nucleus was, I had a group on Xbox that I called Nucleus. So it basically started with that, and then it was Nucleus Batman for some time, then after that it was Nucleus Music. And now it’s Lil Nucleus. All this started when I was in school. I was really big into science, so I wanted think of a good name for the group and I was like, “Nucleus would work.” I thought that would be a cool name, so that’s kind of how it started.
What are your thoughts on content creation as an artist? How do you feel about artists having to balance their social media presence while still being committed to their art?
I think it’s cool idea if it’s executed in the right way. Meaning if they do like a funny skit or do a certain thing to promote the song. If it’s an album, an EP, or whatever it is, social media can help. But it’s kind of hard sometimes to find ways to push your music more. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter too much to me. I just like making music, it’s just a hobby of mine. For my own content, I do covers of songs, music reviews, me just singing one of my songs, or you’ll hear my songs then you hear it in the background of stuff.
Do you have any side hustles or hobbies other than music?
I enjoy watching TV and movies for the most part. My absolute favorite show right now is Bluey, for some reason! But I do watch anime like Demon Slayer and Spy Family, and I watch Marvel and DC stuff. Recently I picked up learning Spanish, so that’s kind of cool. Whenever I get really fluent in Spanish, I think I’ll make a Spanish speaking song. And I play video games. Mainly right now it’s Call of Duty; I play Zombies and stuff on there.
What is your favorite song (by any other artist) of all time and why?
It’s Whoa (Mind in Awe) by Xxxtentacion. He’s my favorite all-time artist. I would say he’s inspired a lot of my sound; he does different genres and I get inspiration from him. But that song in particular…I just don’t know what it is. At first, I was questionable on it, but then, as time went on I was like, “Man, I love this song.” Years later it’s still really a good song, in my opinion. He absolutely is my favorite artist. I just love his rapping style. I’m very influenced by him my music is kind of based off of his a little bit.
Some other inspirations are Eminem and lot of the underground scene. There’s this genre going around called ‘raid trap’ that’s been inspiring me. Hyper pop is another one! Plus Tyler the Creator, Ice Cube, Lincoln Park, Nirvana – there’s a lot of different artists.
Deciding to be an artist can have its ups and downs. What advice would you give to that young artist who is just learning to play guitar, or starting singing lessons and whose dream is to be a musician?
Watch what you pay for and watch what opportunities you do. Because you might not know it’s a scam or not, or if somebody’s just trying to steal your money. That happened to me before and you just gotta watch. I would not pay to promote your stuff, because you really don’t need to when somebody could just find you and promote your song for free. That’s just in my opinion, how I feel.
And know that it’s gonna take a long process to learn how to make music. I pretty much make all of my beats and instrumentals for my songs. And it took a while for me to kind of get the gist of what the BPM is and the metronome and how to follow that. It took a little bit but it’s like a learning process. It’s kind of learning Spanish: it’s a different language.
When it comes to making your own music, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to make sure the mix sounds clean on the track. If it doesn’t sound good, I’m not releasing it and I’ll make another track. I really try to perfect it so that it sounds good. I’ll record it so many times because I want to make sure it sounds perfect.
Make sure to check our recorded live session on our account Clapper Sounds and in our reels on Instagram. Enjoy the Clapper Sounds Live Session with Lil Nucleus!