Lil Rae | Hit Song ‘Philophobia’ Puts New Zealand On The Map
Lil Rae is an 18 year old rapper born in Scotland and raised in New Zealand. You wouldn’t expect hip-hop talent to be cultivating in those parts of the world, but that’s why Lil Rae is an exceptional talent. He is popping all over his home country right now, and boy is it fun to watch. The dude has only been in the game for a year now, and he already opened up for UnoTheActivist and has a track on the way with Hella Sketchy. He is not a ruthless bar spitter , but the closest comparison for him would be a mixture of JUICE WRLD and Nav. He is adept at maneuvering catchy flows with smooth transitions through an entire track and that’s what makes listening to him so fun.
If you don’t believe me, check out this dope vid of a crowd singing every word and going crazy to his hit song ‘Philophobia’
His hit track ‘Philophobia’ featuring SadBoyCrush is doing numbers on Spotify right now sitting pretty at 452,000 streams, with other songs well over 50,000 streams. The song title its self, philophobia, is the actual diagnosed fear of falling in love. He playfully touches the topic of wanting a serious relationship in the opening verse, but as the song progresses- so does the story. His wants and needs of obtaining his soulmate diminish as the song carries on and he realizes that that the girl he thought he loved was really just a side chick that didn’t mean much to him. It is a highly relatable track if you are a baller, and if you aren’t- the lyrics will make you feel like one. Check out that hit song below.
Lil Rae makes his mark with his ability to display a a smooth, oscillating flow. His flow sways, and skillfully uplifts you with his cadence and then brings you back down from the high hitting every note perfectly on the way down. His track ‘Wavves’ is a perfect demonstration of that.
This track is seriously catchy and Lil Rae is ruthless at giving you no choice to singing his tracks. He doesn’t need your consent to make you fuck with his music, you’re automatically going to be bobbing your head like that was the only skill God gave you.
We are elated to deliver you this exclusive interview with Lil Rae, here at Rap Fiesta.
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Lets start with the basics. Why don’t you tell us your name, your age and a little bit about where your from?
My names Lil Rae and I just turned 18. I was born in Scotland and been living in New Zealand for the past 13 years.
You got a cool story already. What’s it like living in Scotland and then moving to New Zealand?
Well, their on complete opposite sides of the world. All of my family is from Scotland, I’ve only got my parents and a couple cousins in New Zealand. It’s kind of weird not having that much family around.
There aren’t many rappers on the scene from New Zealand that we hear about in America. What’s the hip-hop scene in New Zealand like?
It’s starting to get a lot bigger. People all around New Zealand are making good music but just not getting enough exposure. You can see from the artists numbers that it’s slowly climbing all around, and I’ve got a feeling that the scene in New Zealand is going to blow up in the next couple years.
Do you have your own individual artists that you guys fuck with over there or are you listening to the artists that are popping in the states?
Personally, I only started making music quite recently. I grew up listening to a lot of different genres. Mainly Travis Scott was the biggest influence for me, but when I discovered New Zealand artist’s it was kind of a big deal for me because they’re from the same place as me.
What makes a 17 year old kid from New Zealand want to start rapping and become Lil Rae?
It all started because me and mate used to smoke a bit of weed and freestyle as a bit of a joke. My dad’s a musician, and he gave me all this recording equipment that’s been laying around my house for years and then I just made my first song, released it and It was fucking shit and i got clowned on it. People were clowning on me so I felt like I had to dedicate myself to this and redeem myself. Then afterwards, I released a track that caught a bit of attention and then it was like “Yeah, I make music now”.
Yeah man, throw it in their face! I like that. I know you mentioned that you mix and master your own tracks, and that’s very unique. In my opinion it gives you an edge over other rappers and adds diversity to your profile. What made you want to engineer your own songs instead of taking it to a professional?
The reason I started making music is because I found ‘type beats’ online. Once I found type beats, I was like “Alright I don’t really need to produce”. Then while recording some music, I asked myself “Why doesn’t my stuff sound like good quality music that people hear on the radio?”, and because of that, I became obsessed with audio engineering for 2-3 months and watched hundreds of YouTube tutorials on it, non-stop and kept at it. It also helped that I’m in a group called Rush Gang and there’s 6 of us and at the time I was the only person in the group with a studio, so at the time I was mixing and mastering 6 different artists all the time. That improved my work.
Did you mix and engineer ‘Philophobia’ yourself?
Yes sir, I mixed and mastered the whole track. The producer is from New Zealand as well. I just did that in my room with headphones on. That song just escalated so much. That one release completely changed my life, it’s really crazy to talk about that.
So let’s talk about it! How does it feel to have a hit track on Spotify streaming over 400,000 views?
It’s a pretty surreal feeling. I released that around Christmas last year and it got reposted by this huge account with a lot of followers on SoundCloud and it just caught crazy traction. Everywhere I go now people seem to know me because I got a song out that good some good plays.
What does it take to get a track to go viral like that? Is there a lot of promotion to get that song on that level or was it your local fan base pushing that for you?
To be honest, me and my mate just released it. We didn’t really promote it that much, people just heard we were from New Zealand and the hype started in New Zealand. Wellington specifically. It spread around my school and then people from my school told people in other schools and it just spread. New Zealand is kind of a small place so talk gets spread around pretty easily. I put it on Spotify, and I just can’t really describe it bro because I don’t really know how it happened. It didn’t get added on any Spotify playlists. It’s all just natural plays from people searching for it and finding it. It’s awesome now because I have some fans in New Zealand and it’s really helpful for my growth. I don’t really do any other promotion than pushing the song on my Facebook and Instagram, and then I just leave it and people naturally seem to find it. I release it casually.
You definitely have enough popularity to garner some big names. Are there any notable rappers that you have collabed with?
I’ve gotten an unreleased song featuring HellaSketchy. Apart from that, I don’t really have features with big artists. It’s mainly local artists that I know. That can all change in like the next year. I have no idea what’s going to happen.
That song ‘Wavves’ is incredible man, I know ‘Philophobia’ is your hit song, but ‘Wavves’ has just as much potential to blow in my opinion. Why hasn’t that track blew up yet?
First of all, thank you! The way that ‘Philophobia’ blew up, It didn’t really spike and come down, it’s just been slowly climbing. It still is which is crazy. When I put it on Spotify, it took like a month to get 2,000 views. Recently, in the past 28 days it’s had like 40,000 plays. It really just takes time, ‘Wavves’ could just as well do those numbers. ‘Wavves’ got put into an editorial playlist by Spotify, and that’s been helping it get some exposure. Anything could really happen in the future. If a song is good, it’s just a matter of time.
Well, we did find a video of people vibing out to ‘Philophobia’ and it was insane. How did that happen?
Well, I’ve only done 3 live shows and the first one I ever did, I opened for UnoTheActivist. I had to use a fake ID to get into the club that I was performing at and I got to hang out with Uno. It was surreal because I actually listen to his music and a year ago I wasn’t shit, and now here I am chilling with somebody I grew up listening to. That show went pretty well and we sold the entire club out which was cool. After that we did a New Zealand tour with WARHOL.SS
How do you get in touch with these people? Do they reach out to you?
Were quite good friends with this group and they been helping us out. They have contacts in America and they got some good acts, so they will find some New Zealand acts to open for those artists and they found us. They’ve been helping us out. They got put on a VICE article for helping out younger artists which was really dope as well.
Your a cold hearted dude man, it seems as if a lot of your music consists of you breaking these women’s hearts. In your song ‘Phases’, you say “Only wanna fuck if she wanna be friends”, have you gotten your heart broken before? Put this into context for us.
I say some stuff sometimes because of how I’m feeling. You have to realize though that when I made some of those songs, that’s when I had no fans or clout. I didn’t really know the impact it would have, or how many people were going to listen. Now that I am a bit more mature and I’m more careful of what I say.
