ONLYSMALLBITES - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us about onlysmallbites.

ONLYSMALLBITES

onlysmallbites is an amalgamation of all the passions I’ve had pretty much all my life. From content creation and my love of music to my drive for art. It really is a blend of all the things I love but done in a fresher style. When making my channel, my main goal was and still is to make music fun. And I like to think I’m working towards that with every video.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What got you into animating YouTube videos?

ONLYSMALLBITES

I've been animating on YouTube for a long time. My first animated videos I did were stick animations back in like 2008 in this program called “Pivot”. A simple program, but people would make the craziest things in it and I would just watch these videos all the time.

That plus my love for drawing and making comics at an early age just cemented that for me. I also used to watch a ton of YouTube animators growing up, Eddsworld was a big inspiration for sure.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Talk to us a bit about your 'basically in 30 seconds series.'

ONLYSMALLBITES

So the basically videos were… basically a way to share my love for albums but in a short, funny and more shareable way. Up until then, my channel was just me talking about whatever was relevant at the time.

But I found things weren’t working out the way I wanted so, after sitting on it for a little while, I thought of how I could showcase some of my favourite albums but in a different take, rather than just a review or reaction, using what I know about animation. And that’s when the idea came in.

Just picking an album and mashing up lyrics to make a story. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s REALLY funny.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Recently, you've been taking a new direction with your content, publishing several essay-style videos about various topics like album rollouts, unreleased albums, mixtapes, etc.

ONLYSMALLBITES

Well, I just love talking about music. Some of the stories and things artists do with it, and the more I learn about it, it’s something that’ll always get me excited. I could chat your ear off about any of the artists I really love.

I was already kinda doing that on my channel anyways, my Daft Punk and my posthumous music videos I made are in that vein. The basically stuff was kind of like a detour more than anything. But I’ve always wanted to talk about this stuff, crazy stories and whatnot, cause it's just so fascinating to me what really goes into creating all of our favorite music.

And I figure if I found this stuff interesting, someone else would too, right?

So I’m really just going back to my old stuff, just with a different coat of paint.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What projects have been on your radar this year?

ONLYSMALLBITES

I’ve been going around listening to a lot of stuff this year. Utopia and Drake's album were there of course. KAYTRANADA and Amine's collaboration tape was a nice surprise for me. And a lot of people online were on that Danny Brown and JPEG collab project.

But really I've been using this time to just catch up on music that I've wanted to but never got around to, like going through discographies. ooh- Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter 6" should be interesting for sure.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

In your video, 'listening to new stuff is hard,' you talked about how you had a record exchange in which a friend gave you music to listen to. 

What was your favourite project you found out of that exchange?

ONLYSMALLBITES

Ooh, there were a lot of good ones but one I still go back to from time to time is Tools 10,000 Days. Going through their stuff was a trip but it was "10k Days" that just cemented them for me. And it's funny, I remember seeing the cover of it when I was younger but I never listened to it.

Guess I came full circle.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Is there a particular artist whose work you gravitate to?

ONLYSMALLBITES

Oh man, there's a lot but if I had to pick any off the top, it has to be Kanye West. Something about that man's discography just makes people really believe in things, it's weird.

Not many people can do that.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Doing so much research for videos, do you have a particular thing you've learned throughout this process that has made you fundamentally change how you view music?

ONLYSMALLBITES

Yeah, that it's never enough!!!! I find whenever I post a video there always seems to be something I missed or something that just slipped my mind. I always try my best when it comes to research, but in the darkest depths of the internet lies a crucial piece of information that will turn your video upside down and bring it from an 8.5 to an 8.6, and it's your job to find it!

Or else you'll never hear the end of it. It's cool though, ultimately it's just people who are super passionate about this music stuff, just like me. But there's so much music out there and it's impossible to cover absolutely everything there is to a topic.

So my approach has been to talk about what's interesting to me or I know of, and if my viewers know of something that's equally as interesting, they put it in the comments and I just go down the rabbit holes. I learn a lot from my viewers, really.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us a bit about the package delivery guy...

ONLYSMALLBITES

He's just this delivery guy that shows up from time to time. I don't get what his deal is, I don't even know his name. He can never just leave me alone. I swear, one of these days he's gonna get what's coming to him because he can't do this forever, can he?

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What's next for onlysmallbites?

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Well I have plans, like a lot of them, and I'd love to do them at some point in my life.

Collabs would be nice, merch, livestreams you know, typical creator stuff. I wanna show people that music doesn't have to be all serious all the time.

It elicits such an array of emotions and I wanna tap into all of them and make it fun and interesting along the way. Hopefully the people riding with me feel the same. I truly believe music on YouTube has been in this dormant state for a while and I just wanna toss my hat in the ring.

But it all depends if the people are messing with me like that. There's stuff I wanna do, stuff they want from me so it's really just about finding that balance. We'll see where this train takes me.

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LINKS: YouTube - Instagram