King Princess: They certainly did. Growing up there, I was really interested in being in the studio. All I cared about was just being around music from as early as I can remember. At the same time, my mom would always have instruments at her house, even though there wasn’t a recording studio. So both my parents definitely influenced me. There was no pressure, but they saw that I was interested and wanted to leave instruments around for me. I think the biggest thing for me was just watching people record their music and becoming obsessed with these older musicians. There were trunks, people sleeping on couches, rock bands recording — and I just wanted to hang out with them because I thought they were cool. Usually, they were really nice and let me hang out.

I feel like all I wanted to do was just sit on the couch and watch everybody.

It was definitely at times very inappropriate, at times really fun and at times kind of depressing. My dad is a recording engineer. The way I’d describe it, it’s like, okay, you’re at the fucking Audi factory or the BMW factory. You have the people who design the car, that’s the producers. And the engineers are the people that actually go to the garage and build it. Like build it from the engineers, from their designs. So it’s actually a more blue collar profession than being a producer because you’re physically plugging everything in and patching, and it’s manual, and it’s intense. From my dad’s perspective, he was not involved in record label politics at all. He was a freelance studio owner. We would watch records that left the studio sound really amazing and then all of a sudden you’d fucking get the mixes back from the label and it would all be like, ugh, what happened? That’s the politics. So that was always informative. Yeah. Sorry, I’m rambling.

I smoked a lot of weed this morning. We got weed last night, it was fabulous.

It just is facts that the emotional warfare that occurs between women is way more intense than anything a man could do. I’m not talking about cisgender women, I’m talking about all women. The emotional intelligence that is within us. As a non-binary person I’m also oftentimes an observer to womanhood and an observer to femininity and yet I have sapphic relationships. I would consider my relationships very sapphic. They have been beautiful and chaotic and hectic and at times dangerous and at times desolate. That’s my experience and I don’t think it’s just my experience.

I think in Munich I was really like that typical teenage bedroom producer, where everything is in your head and you just dream up a world for yourself and communicate it online, but it’s all very imaginary you know. And Berlin really made me rooted in the club, I mean that’s to be expected haha. I was deejaying at OHM like literally every other Friday before it was so popular, now it’s so hard to ever have a party there. In Amsterdam I did my masters in design and fine arts. There things became very conceptual and theoretical and I was reading a lot and thinking a lot. Rather than making original music all the time, I was more working on sound installations and producing other people’s records. Then London was like laser focus on music, just being locked into the studio sitting there all night long writing an album.

Absolutely. I mean, it is so competitive. Obviously it’s an expensive city and you have to make things work so you just have to grind. But also if you see people coming up with new micro-genres left and right and new asthetics for their party flyers like every other week, you just feel a little competitive and you’re like, I want to be contributing something that feels as fresh or as absurd or whatever. So yes, I would agree with that.

I have to find out how to deal with that, to be honest, because I haven’t taken a break in… the entire process of making the record, and now I’m touring and promoting the record. It’s just sort of snowballing, the more you do the more doors open so it’s just more work. And I’m still probably used to the times where anything you can get, you should grab and do it. But yeah, I’m just finding out how to do that.

So I studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, UdK, and I graduated in Spatial Design actually in the end. So it was sort of like architecture, but less applied architecture. And afterwards, I studied what was called Design at Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, which is like the master’s department of Rietveld. It was a double degree in fine arts and design and it was basically very research-based. I always thought that was obviously cool and interesting but also a little pretentious.

I have been producing electronic music since I was 16. Throughout the whole university path, I was making music and that was always a bit of an issue. I was definitely not someone that attended every class, I always was a little bit absent from school. I made it work somehow, but I don’t think my teachers really liked me that much. I still feel good about having done it though.

Yeah, working in university followed this sort of assignment-based structure.

I don’t like the idea of having one person tell me what they think about it, like that’s just one person’s opinion whereas if you put it out that feels like a way more educational process. I’m kind of a stubborn and annoying student I think, so I did learn a lot but I just love to argue with my teachers.

The project, Mechatok, I mean it is pretty much like an audio-visual project. I have a lot of visual collaborators, but I still do the art direction of all the visuals and a lot of the graphic design is my own. I always view it as a visual project as much as a musical one, I mean for the new record we did five music videos. Both things emerge at the same time so I’ll make the music while I make the visuals. And there’s always movies running on screens while I’m making music. So it really goes hand in hand.

I feel like we should have done this a long time ago. Hopefully it’ll come out at some point this year.

It’s definitely a unity kind of thing. I’ve been recording with Ken my whole career, and it never feels unnatural or weird. We just push each other to go harder.

Opium is a family thing and a blessing and an opportunity and a responsibility and a job. For me, the main aspect is family, but the only thing that has changed over time is that it has become this huge thing in culture, so that for all of us, it is becoming a responsibility to keep pushing things forward. For me personally, it means staying on top of myself as an artist and staying in tune with what we’re doing as a label.

Hell no – I was Opium before I was Opium. It’s part of my life, and I wouldn’t change it for nothing. I signed with Opium for a reason.

If I ever felt like there would be any negatives to it, I would have never signed. Opium matches what I am as a person anyway

– people like to dumb it down to aesthetics or a certain sound, but for me, this shit is in my blood.

HS From your internal point of view, what makes something or someone Opium?

The only thing that is Opium is us – we don’t wake up in the morning and think about what might be the most Opium thing. That’s

a very internet way of looking at it. Yes, there is the sound, the swag, the vibes, the aesthetics – but that’s just us being us, and then

people want to take that and run with it. That’s their own labels that they put on.

The more I grow as an artist, the more I try to become even more connected with myself. There are a lot of outside factors that can get in your way and make you think differently about certain things. So for me, there is an urgency to always stay true to life. To who I am as Bobby. The further I go down this road, I know that’s what got me here. I want to make sure I stay true to that forever. I don’t ever want to wake up one day and look in the mirror and have to think: Man, what the fuck am I doing? It’s important for me to be with my family, be at home.

I try to be as timeless as possible. I believe in longevity more than anything, but I go through phases of myself. One album or a couple months of the year, I want to sound or look like this, and then maybe right after that, I want to sound or look like something else. But it’s all just evolved versions of myself and what I see in my head. But the big umbrella to it all is timelessness and longevity. I still want to be Destroy Lonely when I’m, like, 65.

I try to tell my story or a version of my story that’s in tune with what’s going on with either my life in the moment or just the mess of youth. I aim to keep it broad enough so a lot of people can relate to it. And then I feel like with that, that’s how you break through with timelessness. Because if somebody can relate to it now and it’s easily digestible, then maybe a kid in 20 years would also still be able to relate to it. I experience that myself. I’m currently going through a phase of finding a lot of old music and old musicians – rock stars – that I’m just now learning to love. And these records were made decades ago, but they’re still resonating with me today.

Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Marilyn Manson. A bunch of different acts, but always people that stayed true to what they loved and what they wanted to present to the world.

It just grew in its own timelessness and today there’s people like us from Opium. Everything evolves. Energy can’t be destroyed. When you have something as legendary as rock’n’roll, it’s always gonna come back as something new. It will be the same with rap.

I agree. It’s because there’s just not a lot of pure, natural inspiration anymore. That’s at least my take on it. I don’t want to be pretentious or self righteous, but I feel like after the boom around the likes of me and Ken and other artists from our specific generation, it just turned into everybody wanting to be this. And everybody wants to be famous and everybody wants to copy whatever already worked and just do it as quickly as possible. It does a disservice to the culture and the genre. I remember when I started, it was just purely inspiration. I just wanted to share who I thought I was to the world. Not for money, not to look cool. It was just what was in me. Whereas I now feel like a lot of artists, new and even established, don’t even care about the love for making music no more. It’s just simply about a check or a show or a brand deal or to sell clothes or shoes. Everybody looks at it more so as a business now and there’s just no inspiration or love for artistry anymore.

No, not at all.

Definitely. I feel like social media single-handedly, completely murdered art. I hate what social media has done to music or art in general. And I am saying this even though I don’t think I would be as prominent or exist as I do without social media. But there definitely are a lot of negatives that come with how fast everything moves.

We just don’t want to over-saturate. I don’t want to be in everybody’s face all day. When I have something to show, I want my fans to dive into it. Other than that, I feel like being present online is pointless.

I still get to do things such as seeing my fans in person – after the shows I’ll talk to them, I’ll get to meet a random kid who will tell me about themselves or their day or what they want to do. And then maybe I store that in the back of my head and it might give me motivation to create something. I might feel like creating a specific song for them. And then that ends up reaching millions of people later. Having this wider view of what’s going on also makes a lot of things easier, whereas when you’re just starting, it’s only you and whatever is inspiring you and you just go off yourself.

There is a weight on my shoulders, but it’s not a bad weight. I would compare it to carrying your favorite designer bag that you almost don’t want to carry because it’s so precious, but you also love it so much. You’re just concerned constantly because you don’t want to mess it up. In my head, I definitely have a lot of back and forth of making the wrong moves or setting myself back or even just leading people the wrong way sometimes. I don’t look at myself as a role model but I also don’t ever want somebody to feel like I influenced them to do something bad. So I always take into account how I carry myself and how much that means to a kid that looks up to me.

Super spiritual. More spiritual than anything.

To simplify it: Throughout anything you do in life, you get out what you put in. I always make sure I stand on the good side of the universe, I always strive for positivity. There are a lot of times where I could think myself into the darkest place, but I just have to look at the end goal and make sure I get there and not let the noise make me crazy.

I believe in a lot of different things and a lot of different ways of life. So I don’t use the universe as a replacement for God. But I feel like the universe gives you certain things and then God gives you certain things. It just depends on how you play the game.

I think the darkness is just a certain reflection of me. The Opiumish things that people like to see are just resonating to how I feel on the inside. I always just like darker things, I like rainy days over sunny days, I like nighttime more than daytime. That’s just who I am as a person. But there isn’t necessarily too much to it. There are people who like to wear pink shoes and rainbow clothes and we just like black.

Everything has been done before and everyone has already dipped and dabbled into everything under the sun. So I don’t even look for the most uncanny or obscure. I just look for the most comfortable and most genuine. If something speaks to me it speaks to me, and I’ll be running with it.

I usually love movies, but there hasn’t been any movie made within the last ten years I truly would have loved. Same for video games, actually.

Oh, yes, that actually blew my mind!

That’s definitely different, yes. There is no other place on earth where you can be so yourself, no matter who you are.

Yes, and for that specific reason, it blew my mind. It’s individuality, it’s great music, it’s a crazy sound system, it’s people doing whatever the fuck they want. No rules. People like to dumb it down to the erotic side of it, but it’s so much deeper than that. It’s individuality and freedom and everything that comes with that is whatever comes with it, but this is what is the purpose. And I’ve been in a lot of rave places, but nothing is like Berghain.

I love it. I love music, genuinely. I take bits and pieces of it and put it into my own music however I can, wherever I see a fit. All genres of music speak to me.