Talking Drake, Depression, and Drugs with Eric Dingus

Eric Dingus in the flesh.

If you had a physicist for a father, how would you tell him you want to drop out of school to make rap beats for the kids on the Internet? Pro tip: Before you do anything, ask Eric Dingus. For the past 11 months, the self-taught rap producer has spent nearly every waking hour layering synths, lining up cacophonous drums, sampling Japanese horror films, and creating a variety of dreamy ambient productions that have been earning attention from a diverse collection fans, bloggers, and rappers.

Eric’s production credits include work for Gangsta Boo, Main Attrakionz, and Ethelwulf and Chris Travis of Raider Klan, with many more in the works. He also counts reigning laptop pop prince Ryan Hemsworth amongst his supporters. An auto-didactic pianist and drummer, Eric is remarkably prolific—he has nine full-length projects under his belt and releases new songs nearly every other day. His remixes of popular rap and R&B tracks alter and amplify in a way that leaves most songs with a drastically different tonal edge. Highlights include his reworking of Cassie and Rick Ross’s “Numb,” transforming it into a grim, ghostly jaunt, or more recently, his remix of Drake’s “Worst Behavior,” which imbues the Nothing Was the Same standout with a powerful sense of longing and was premiered by Oliver “the Parisian gangster” on the official October’s Very Own blog.

Anyway, we talked to Eric about how he’s lived his entire life on the Internet—among other things. Noisey: I heard you used to play in a surf band with your dad. What that like?
Eric: We just put some songs on MySpace, it was pretty lowkey. We didn’t do any shows or anything, but it was just fun to jam. I played drums and he played guitar. What drew you to hip-hop?
I started listening to N.WA. and Ice Cube. One of the reasons I started making beats was because of the sample of “Footsteps in the Dark” by the Isley Brothers in Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day.” It really got to me, and I wanted to know how to do that. Also, watching the scene where they make beats in Hustle & Flow. The peak DJ Qualls moment.
Yeah. Where do you like to record?
I have a home studio that I use to record some of my friends who are rappers, but mainly I make beats on my laptop at this coffee shop near my house. Coffee keeps me wired and able to focus. I make, like, 80% of my songs on headphones at this coffee shop. Do you ever get so into making a beat at the shop that you start wilding out and get strange looks?
Not really. I think I’m able to hide it. I see the same people every day. Everybody at the Irie Bean—that’s the name of the coffee shop—knows that I’m a producer. It’s a great place to work. It’s like your Cheers.
Yeah. I’m a shy, quiet person, so I don’t talk to a lot of the people, but I do talk to some of the people that work there and the regulars, they all know me. You’re still a teenager and you’re incredibly prolific. What’s an average day like for you?
I usually get up at 7 in the morning and walk to the coffee shop. I don’t have a job and I don’t go to school. I’m basically working on music and networking all day. Sometimes I see friends, but I don’t really have that many friends, so that’s a little more rare. I’m just on Facebook, SoundCloud and Twitter all day, making beats, or working on mixing, or other music stuff.

I drink a lot of coffee. I don’t do any drugs. Never have. Even though my music seems drug-influenced.

Was it a difficult decision to leave high school?
It made sense. I was pretty miserable, so my parents were all for it. I didn’t care. I mean, I wanted it at the time, so I wasn’t contemplating it too hard. I don’t regret it at all.

You produced a song for Gangsta Boo, of Three Six Mafia fame. How did you link up with her?
Well, I’ve worked with a lot of people who used to be in Raider Klan, or are still in Raider Klan. I gave Amber London of Raider Klan a few beats and she told me that Gangsta Boo was going to get on one of the beats. And I had no idea until the tape dropped that it was going to be on Gangsta Boo’s tape. I thought it was going to be a Gangsta Boo feature on Amber London’s tape, so that was a pleasant surprise for sure.

Some of your songs and your videos have a hazy, trippy, drug-influenced aesthetic. How would you describe the feeling you’re going for in your videos? Is it weird not doing drugs while making music that fits the drug vibe?

It’s just a vibe that I call ethereal. That’s just what I have to classify my music as when people ask me. Ethereal or dreamy, or whatever. That’s just my taste. I like that sort of trippy, drugged-out visuals, and it fits the music very well. I made all the videos that are on my YouTube channel, just edited them with weird footage.

What kind of music does depression cause you to make?
I like to sample a lot. I’ve gotten to the point where I can flip samples into a more somber vibe. And I’ve gotten better at reverb and effects for that sound. So I’ve sampled a lot of 50s vocal jazz, like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday, but also K-Pop or Soul. A lot of jazz stuff. I try to flip them in a completely different way so no one can tell what they are, and to just create a different mood so it’s more original music.

Word. How has growing up with the local music scene infrastructure of Austin influenced or helped your career?
Well, Austin is definitely a musical town, but it’s not really big in hip-hop. No big rappers have come from here yet. And honestly, I’m not really involved with the local music scene. I don’t go to a lot of shows. I don’t know a lot of musicians, aside from my friends who I met before that. I haven’t met a lot of music people. My parents used to be in a band, so we had a lot of musical equipment around the house, so that’s how I picked up that. They wrote music. And they foisted that on me, I suppose.

Austin hasn’t made a big difference on my musical career, because I don’t go to clubs a lot or anything. I only go see shows when it’s someone I really care about. And I only go once or twice a year.

What’s it like meeting people you’ve worked with but only communicated with through the Internet?
I’ve gotten used to just being friends with people on the Internet. Sometimes I feel like I’m a little lost in the Internet, just like, living in it.

Yeah. I feel that way, too.
It’s very influential in what I’ve done so far with my life. How have things changed since your “Worst Behaviour” remix came out?
Well, I’ve been getting a lot more blogposts and plays on my SoundCloud. People are recognizing my stuff more, which is cool. Were you planning on doing the remix for a while?
I made it the day before I posted it. Have more people been hitting you up as a result?
Well, my SoundCloud has been getting notifications every two minutes. I’ve been getting a tonne of followers. People have been seeing it and really responding.

Have you heard anything from his camp?

Not really. They premiered it on their blog so they’ve obviously heard it. They posted it on their

Instagram

so I know they like it. I’m still waiting to hear something else from them, I guess.

Word. Have you done any shows yet?
I’ve done two shows. How’d they go?
One of them was cool. The first one was really good. The second one was just not the right crowd. I was opening for some spoken-word rappers that a friend had booked me for.

Is it weird for you to be in front of an audience since you’re a shy dude?
Yeah, for one thing I don’t know how to properly perform. No one has taught me how to use my software in the live setting. I know how to use it for the production stuff, but I’m really not comfortable yet in the stage presence, or knowing how to perform.

Yeah. Well, we were talking about spending a lot of time on the Internet and feeling like you sort of “live in the Internet.” Do you ever worry that you spend so much time on the Internet that you’re missing out on stuff in the real world?

Yeah, I think about that a lot. I haven’t lived the normal teenage life, going to parties and stuff like that. I’ve never had a girlfriend, I’ve never done drugs, and I don’t play most sports or anything like that. So, these teenage years have felt like I’ve sort of…just lived in the Internet. At least mainly the last year. Yeah, I think about it sometimes…but also, I don’t hate it. Do you think producing will help you with girls?
Maybe. [Laughs] I don’t really know. That’s not what I do it for.

Jordan hopes that Birdman will attend his wedding and give a speech in the form of a nonsensical eight-bar diatribe. He is on Twitter: @jordanisjoso.