Translator: Selene Agüero Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
This is my bedroom.
My temple.
It could be your bedroom.
Your temple.
Or that of any boy or girl in any part of the world.
Why a temple?
Because it’s sacred.
Because in your bedroom,
worlds are created.
I created my world here.
And today I’m here to talk about how I fitted my world into the world.
That is where it gets a little complicated sometimes.
It starts when you’re young, in your bedroom,
you start listening, seeing,
thinking, feeling.
You begin to develop what for me is humans superpower --
Imagination and self-projection.
To see yourself, to feel yourself, and to imagine where you want to be.
You start watching movies like Spider-Man
and kiddies believe that they’ll sling webs --
I remember I used to like Hulk very much
and I used to feel that I’d turn green at any moment.
That is powerful.
You start trying things.
I discovered skateboarding first.
I loved it --
I’ve loved urban culture since I was very young
and my mom would always take me to the skate park.
I’d ask her and she’d say “If you want to improve,
hang out with those who are good.”
So I always acted straightforwardly,
I went up to the professional skaters there.
I’d buddy up with the one who took pictures,
we got along well.
I was the kid who always hung around
with the older guys because I admired them.
But I struggled a bit to succeed at skateboarding,
which was kind of my first self-projection,
to be a professional skater,
because I was afraid to do certain tricks,
well, it’s an extreme sport
and I couldn’t succeed at it.
But I also realized
that if I’d been really passionate about the skateboarding world,
not only there are professional skaters,
besides the pro skater,
there is the pro photographer,
the pro designer of skateboards,
the shoes pro designer, and someone who sells them.
So there are many worlds in a world,
in case I’d wanted to succeed in this world.
But, well, you’re young
and you keep trying other worlds.
I came across a very nice world,
that of comic strips, comic books.
In that time, I spent a little more time
in my bedroom, drawing a lot.
I was astonished at
how universes like Marvel, DC are created.
I said, “I’m going to create my own universe.”
CC comic, PC comic, whatever.
At my school I got the kids who drew and told them,
“We’ll start something, I write the script, you draw.”
I went to drawing classes
and I’d telll them “Help me out.
We’re going to create a world.”
And they’d kind of laugh at me,
but, well, it was fun.
One time, my mom took me to a convention
on my birthday.
A Comic-Con, that’s how comic conventions are called.
My mom always let me do my own thing, she left me there, I went forward --
I got there and the first thing that caught my attention was a section
where all the pro comic artists and writers were signing autographs.
There was a long line and I wasn’t sure about joining it
because I felt some distance in that small second
when you drew neare to get an autograph.
So I stood to the side watching a bit, because I admired them.
And the contrast amused me the tables were to this side,
all the people waiting for an autograph.
and on the other side they were working
really hard, signing a million autographs
and their children were around
Some were with their children who had been to a thousand Comic-Cons --
and the difference between those energies kind of made me laugh
I thought, “They’ve been to many conventions, how amazing!”
So I walked around the Comic-Con, where there are all kinds of things.
Amazing.
At a given moment I came across the son of one of the artists.
I’d recognized him, he was my age, so I said, “What’s up, man?
Your old man’s work is awesome.” “Thank you.”
We hit it off.
We hung around, we walked around here and there, and we hit it off;
and after a while he asked me if I wanted to go to a bar
to meet his dad and the other artists.
I said, “Sure, let’s go.”
All of a sudden I was there, eating sandwiches
with all of them.
A guy from Marvel who had worked in V for Vendetta
was right there, doing his thing, sketching.
And in no way was I a prodigy who had shown them a drawing,
I’d found my way to sneak in, see.
And that was a very nice experience.
It was also a great learning experience,
because it helped me a lot
with the next adventure I embarked on which was music.
A few years after that I transferred to a public art school.
All my friends in that school were musicians.
We began to hang around a lot here in my bedroom.
I’d play rap songs all day.
They preferred rock, you see.
I’d rap all the songs so they’d know them.
They’d say, “it’s good, it’s good.
I tolerate it because after all you’ve got rhythm when you rap.
You should rap your own songs rather than somebody else’s.”
The friend who said this to me was a drummer and I really admired him.
Since he said this to me,
I began to rap my own songs, what I felt ...
Something started to grow, a projection that slowly became very strong.
I also started watching rapper interviews
to see what’s up, what were their lives like,
how they’d made it;
and many mentioned the same things
like the right place and the right time.
They talked about developing and recording and spending
a long time inside creating what makes you unique.
But also, once that’s been developed,
goi out, show it, find it.
They talked about reaching the right people to listen to it,
all those things.
When I was a little kid,
I’d go to the skate park and hang out with the pros.
I always found my way at drawing as well.
I mean, that’s it, it’s about recording, pouring out everything inside me
and then I’ll figure out the rest.
My, that’s when my self-projection expanded largely and I started recording.
In Mar del Plata, in my bedroom, I began making my first record.
Right after I begun recording, three months later,
I was making my own record. I made the instrumental,
all the productions, the voices, I edited it, I made the cover,
I uploaded it to YouTube.
Besides, it was all in English.
It was crazy, my records were in English because that’s what I like.
I was like, “When I drop it, something will happen.”
It had 10 views the first month.
I was convinced, but this was a slap to the face and the truth is
that I realized that uploading it, recording it was not enough;
I was also becoming aware of the other side of it.
I repeated, “It’ll happen.”
One day I got a message.
A producer in Buenos Aires had come across my music
and he said, “I want to introduce you to some producers.
They are your age.”
Without realizing, he introduced me to my present-day team.
With the first song we recorded together, I grew 5 years in terms of quality
because these guys were prodigies,
really great, and I used to do everything by myself,
putting my shoulder to the wheel, doing everything.
That’s when I learnt something very cool --
delegate.
Delegate in order to transcend.
I was making a record in this bedroom, but I had to go to other rooms,
the alliance is te force.
We recorded for like 3 years, but the connections I was looking for
weren’t turning up completely
because there wasn’t a very large hip hop movement in Argentina.
So I moved to Belgium; I was born there and my father was living there.
I only took my computer, ome tools, my backpack
and I moved to my old man’s attic.
I had a friend who was a bit engaged with the hip hop movement there,
which was a little bit more pro.
He’d tell me about every party, every weekend,
every hip hop party there was.
And I’d go to all of them by bicycle, sometimes I’d even ride for 2 hours
since my dad lived in the countryside, and I’d fill my pockets with USBs
with 15 demos and my Instagram; with that I’d proceed and go to every party.
I’d find the way to sneak in the VIP lounge, the backstage or whatever
and I’d go up to the popular rappers there.
I’d already know who they were and I’d go up to them.
“Hi, I’m Indra, I’ve just arrived from Argentina.
I record really cool songs, perhaps you’d like to record with me.
We can make really cool songs.
And these guys were doing their thing in their own parties.
I’d go up to them and most would laugh at my face.
But I was sure that at least one of them, because of me going up to them ...
When you’re an artist, when an artist with hunger comes up to you, it moves you.
If someone comes up to me in that way, I’ll definitely listen to them.
I had no doubt someone would listen to me.
I got back home and, after a few days,
I got a message.
It said, “Hey, the demos sound good, top quality, where do you record?”
In my bedroom.
“Drop by some time.”
He came once, twice, three times.
I ended up producing a whole record for that guy.
He told another guy and I recorded another whole record for him.
That guy told another. I ended up recording a few records there;
I even got a gold record
being an engineer, recording for other artists.
That occurred in an 8-month period between my arrival and when I got there.
I felt so eager, at the same time
while I was growing in Belgium,
my colleagues and friends here in Buenos Aires I’d met years before,
began producing those who rapped freestyle.
There was a huge freestyle movement here,
which is not the same as recording songs.
And when the world of super production merged,
my friends and the freestylers, the hip hop movement blew up here.
A revolution in Argentina.
The music was really powerful due to that merger.
I’d just moved to Belgium,
and in less than a year, I thought, it can’t be, I’m star-crossed
there was no movement, I tried to excite a movement there for 3 years
and then I moved across the ocean.
Well, the world tests you to see how much you want to materialize.
So in the attic, in Belgium, I started recording in Spanish,
I’d never done it.
I’d always recorded in English, my trip was in English.
I listened to rap in English
I asked myself how will I make people
that I don’t know to listen to me
by working with these big guys that my friends produced, you see.
So I made 3, 5, 10, 15, 30 songs in Spanish.
I sent them.
Duki chose one, Cazzu chose one, and Ecko chose one.
They were really big guys.
I had 100 followers and lived in an attic, and made songs for guys that had
millions of followers.
So we made it.
Planned how we’d drop it.
And we released this one first.
Somos estrellitas de rock Vale millones mi voz
Tu flow pa’ mi que es precoz Tengo salsita pa’ vos
After a while we released this one.
Yoh, ja, ja
And five days after releasing that song, we dropped this one.
Besa’, bésame, mi amor
No sé cuánto tiempo me voy Aprovechemos el hoy porque es hoy
Porque es hoy
And, well, these three songs are
Mojaa with Duko, Piso with Ecko,
Bésame with Seven Kayne and they changed my life.
Each of them got more than 10 million views.
It was something really powerful and this thing that I had eagerly sought for…
had materialized.
Five years had gone by…
When a thing this powerful occurs and then one more, and two more occur.
A few days after releasing the last song, my grandfather passed away.
In Belgium.
And the day after my grandfather’s passing,
I got a call from Argentina. They said, “Hey, you’ll do a whole tour
and you’ll play everywhere.”
And, to cap it all, “When does it start?”
The day of my grandfather’s wake.
So I had to choose between attending the wake or starting the tour.
And I went on tour, I did the tour. My family was angry at me at that time.
But they couldn’t understand this number thing, I’d gone from
having 100 followers to having 100,000 followers in a month.
People were following me.
They thought I was a hacker, that I’d made up those numbers.
No, those were real people.
But well, we made it and it was a big growth from here,
my bedroom in my mother’s house.
Then I went to my old man’s attic.
But besides this hard work involving hundreds of songs,
it was also about finding a place there,
going out, facing the world in order to find a place for your things in the world.
If you don’t do so, you’re just a madman, a madman who does things.
There’s a difference between a madman
and someone who has found what makes them crazy in the world.
So yeah, this was my story and I wish you the best of luck with yours.
Thank you very much.