An inside look at artist PartyNextDoor’s first ever cover shoot
21-year-old Canadian recording artist, PARTYNEXTDOOR has been away from the limelight since the masses were first introduced in 2013 with his debut self-titled mixtape. While the OVO Sound multi-instrumentalist finally revealed he hasn’t been shying away from the public but just perfecting his craft and using the most of his private time while he can before the imminent mainstream success and blow up happens.
In his first ever lengthy interview, PND sat-down with FADER to discuss his humbled beginnings as a Myspace artist to pursuing dreams to work with the some of the greatest minds in the game currently – Drake, Noah “40” Shebib, and Oliver El-Khatib. At the time, he was on the road and wasn’t in his comfort zone being surrounded by entourage, groupies and media but made the most out of his first ever interview.
Take a look at excerpts from the discussion below after you watch the Brooklyn photo-shoot above.
Click HERE to read PND’s entire interview with FADER
Critics often lump PARTYNEXTDOOR in with fellow Toronto-born, OVO-nurtured singer The Weeknd, but the comparison is lazy if not inaccurate. Though both artists sing songs that dissect the emotional tolls of sex and relationships from the perspective of the endlessly desired, The Weeknd’s music is considerably more detached, if not altogether devoid of the soul one finds in Party songs like “SLS” or “Let’s Get Married.” “People throw that [Weeknd comparison] over me because I came at a time where people assumed I was there to fill a void,” he says, alluding to The Weeknd’s departure from the OVO fold in 2012. And though PARTYNEXTDOOR’s music includes touchstones of the “dark” aesthetic The Weeknd became known for—mentions of drug use, screwed-up vocals, gloomy sax riffs—Party considers the idea an affront to his versatility. “A lot of things that came out of Toronto were darker at the time. But me? I’m all about colors. I’ll flip samples where one’s a completely dark song and the next one is a complete sexual song. People think my whole thing is a dark thing, but I don’t.”
Party and The Weeknd also both shared an early aversion to press, turning down interviews in the hopes that their music would speak for itself. But as Party sees it, his silence wasn’t part of a personal calculation for greater notoriety, just an extension of how he is. “I would never call myself mysterious. The word I use is ‘private,'” he says. “I’m not hiding from pictures. When you see me, I’ll say whassup. I just don’t wanna live in this fantasy where I act like everybody cares, and then I look like a jackass with someone filming me in the airport.”
“I make 99 percent of my music sitting down, in boxers, when I’m comfortable in my computer chair,” Party says. “Cause I do everything myself. I hold my mic [when I record]. I held my mic for every song I released. I just wanna feel like I pick it up and I just talk. I say what I have to say.”
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