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Connor Price on Finding His Own Sound
For Connor Price, everything starts with a beat.
“I’ll hear a beat that works, and the music will come flowing,” he says. “It might inspire a word, a phrase, a feeling, an emotion, a melody, and everything will stem from there.”
The Toronto-born rapper’s creative process is a lot like the story of his online explosion: simple and free-flowing, with nothing guiding him but his family, his friends and his instinct.
Price first rose to prominence not as a musician but as an actor. Starting as a child, he had memorable roles in major movies like Cinderella Man and Good Luck Chuck.
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He always had a passion for music, but rarely let the world see it – often freestyling in private, sometimes even entering contests under a pseudonym.
Then, the pandemic hit. Acting opportunities dried up, and Price needed an outlet. So, he started releasing his music. His wife, Breanna, inspired him to put it on TikTok, where he accompanied his music with original skits that featured Price playing multiple characters and eventually involving his family and friends too.
His songs and his skits exploded with billions of streams on Spotify and TikTok collectively, and his viral power grew. He started a series called Spin The Globe, which sees him spinning an actual globe and collaborating with an independent artist from the country he lands on. It was an instant hit, with each song garnering millions of streams and views within days of release.
Despite that, and despite offers from record labels, he’s kept everything within the family. His wife is his manager, his best friend GRAHAM is his producer and collaborator, his brother-in-law Christian mixes and masters his music while Price engineers it himself. His two-year-old son Jude has even become somewhat of a social star with his adorable cameos on Connor’s TikTok clips.
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“Being independent to me is just having full control,” Price says. “I can do what I want, when I want and how I want to do it.”
Rather than waiting on label approvals or rollout schedules, Price is able to make music when inspiration hits, adapt based on audience response and strike while the iron is hot.
Often, he’ll even record on his tour bus, where he has a mobile tech setup that lets him pick up whenever he feels a bar coming.
At a tour stop in Toronto after his biggest ever show at the nearly 4,000-capacity Rebel venue, Price walks us through the process.
Connor PriceLane Dorsey
First – the beat.
GRAHAM will send a beat pack, with 10-20 options for Price to listen through. Some are drum-heavy ‘90s boom-bap style, others hard-hitting and minimal.
But what makes a good Connor Price beat?
GRAHAM and Price both have the same answer, and say it in unison: Simplicity.
“The people are not listening for the beat,” says GRAHAM. “They want to hear his vocal. So I want it to sound good, but not be fighting with Connor.”
Some of Price’s favourite and most popular songs are made with that mindset, he says, including “Violet,” “Spinnin’” and “Straight A’s.”
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“They’ll have a unique melodic section that’s mandolin or flute or glockenspiel and then just hard drums,” he explains. “But there’s so much space for me.”
When a beat inspires him, he’ll put it through the production software Logic and let it play. Then, he’ll do a scratch track or topline: basically a gibberish verse, improvising or humming a flow without all the words worked out. Maybe he’ll find a one-liner, and rap around that. Or, maybe it’s just a melody or a tone.
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“I'll just hit record because I want to make sure I'm recording my first instincts,” he says. “Then, I'll listen back to it and see what catches my ear.”
Price’s mobile tech setup is all built around his laptop, which means he doesn’t even have to connect to a power source as long as his computer is charged. He can record in his bedroom, on tour, even in the park if he wants to.
“I've only recorded one song ever in a proper studio, and that was when I did the Spotify Singles at the Spotify studio,” he says. “That's the independent mindset. It's giving yourself the opportunity to create wherever and whenever. And I’ve been doing that since the start.”
When he’s finished recording, Price sends the music to his Christian to master, then gives it the “car test” – driving around with Breanna to hear how it sounds on the stereo.
His friend Tegan creates the artwork, he uploads the song to the distribution platform DistroKid, which services it to all the major streaming platforms, and that’s it. Within days of hearing the beat, an idea that was in his head is out into the world for millions of people to stream and interact with.
Price has a song called “Chuck Taylor” named after his favourite shoes. And just like those iconic Converse sneakers, his music is classic, simple and effortlessly original.
You can shop the classic Converse Chuck Taylors featured in this story now at BrownsShoes.com.
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