Adam BernardBeing 4’11” can sometimes mean being lost in the crowd. Chippy Nonstop, however, is willing to be bold, colorful, and jump on tables to get your attention. Despite having just turned 21 she’s already developed quite a reputation for herself in the LA nightclub scene, where she isn’t welcome in a number of places due to her exuberant antics, but that’s OK with her. Not only does she now live in the Bay Area, she’s also had addresses in Dubai, which is where she was born, Africa, and Canada, so she has no shortage of places that will welcome her with open arms, and doors.
Chippy is currently working on developing a sound that incorporates the many places she’s lived with her party lifestyle. She released her first mixtape, Global School of Twerk, earlier this year, and the follow up to that, Money Dance 101, last month. Starting November first she’ll have her first truly big stage on which to put her work on display when she hits the road with Kreayshawn, Honey Cocaine, and Rye Rye, on a tour that lasts until December 16th.
This week RapReviews caught up with Chippy Nonstop to find out more about who she is and the music she hopes to make. She also discussed her very first guest feature, which was with Stunnaman of The Pack, the pros and cons of recording entire albums in a day, and balancing the party half of her lifestyle with calls to the Canadian Consulate.
Adam Bernard: Your Twitter bio jokingly says you’re an MTV reality star. If you actually had an MTV reality show, what would you want it based on?
Chippy Nonstop: Me and my friends, the stuff that we do on the daily, and going out, going to festivals, and me playing, or in the studio. All my friends do stuff in the industry. It would be kinda like The Hills, but more articulate and more informative and more based on our aspirations as young kids doing things that we want to do without a huge budget like Lauren Conrad’s.
AB: So kind of like The Hills meets Power Girls?
CN: Yeah, something like that.
AB: Speaking of power, you’re on your way to earning your degree in media communication from San Francisco’s Academy of Art University. Do you look forward to people looking at you, judging the book by its cover, and underestimating you?
CN: I mean, not really, because I know who I am and what I want to do, so I don’t really consider what people think as much as people might think I do. I just know what I want, and how I feel about myself. People are gonna judge regardless, so I don’t really take that much of that into consideration. If people want to think nice things about me, that’s awesome. If they want to think bad things about me they’re gonna do it whether if I’m like Gandhi or Snooki.
AB: I like that scale, from Gandhi to Snooki.
CN: {*laughs*}
AB: Let’s talk about your music. You originally hopped on the mic because friends influenced you to.
CN: Yeah, well it wasn’t really a friend-friend, he was a friend, but I used to dance for this DJ, zAK-MATIC, in LA, and this producer who also co-runs Mad Decent, which is Diplo’s label, saw me on stage and said “why don’t you give it a shot?” At the time I’d rap randomly, but not like take it seriously or anything. I mean, I still don’t really take it super seriously. All my songs are like party songs. He just was like “why don’t you try it out?” We went to the studio and made some tracks. That was a year and a half ago. After that Stunnaman from The Pack hit me up to make a song with them, and after that a bunch of people started hitting me up, “can you do my hook for me,” “can you do this?”
CN: After I made the song with Stunnaman we made the video and I had a lot of fun. The whole process was really fun. Then I tried to make solo songs and it just didn’t really work out. I couldn’t hone in on what I wanted to go for. I left LA and moved back to the Bay area, and I still had internet buzz around me for some reason. I didn’t know why because I hadn’t really put out anything except little features on other people’s songs. Then I started working on Global School of Twerk with a producer named Nanosaur. After we put that out it got really good feedback. After that I was like oh shit, I feel like I can really do this. That was when I was like maybe I can do this as a career.
AB: You recorded each of your mixtapes, Global School of Twerk, and your latest, Money Dance 101, in under 24 hours in what must have been mammoth day-long sessions.
CN: The first tape was a little more than 24 hours, it was like 32 hours, but the second tape we did in under 24 hours.
AB: What are some of the pros and cons of recording in this way?
CN: It wasn’t even the thought of “let’s finish this all in one day,” it was just kinda like the flow was so perfect. Every time I go into the studio my mood, or voice, could change up, so if we do one take one day, or one session, it has the same mood and my voice is the same, and my energy is the same throughout the whole tape. Once you start you are so hyped up you just want to keep going. I also really like working with one producer on one tape. It’s really hard when you just get beats and you just listen to them. You don’t feel the same as when you work with a person. It’s a much better process when you’re with a person and getting exactly what you want out of a song. I get a lot of beats in my inbox and I listen to them, and I’m “oh this beat’s cool,” but I don’t have the same excitement as when I’m in the studio being like “change this up on this track,” “if we add this…” It’s just a completely different process. The cons is I don’t spend as much time writing, so my lyrical content is probably not as good. I’m still working on that. I’m writing more now outside of the studio and then going into the studio and writing more.
AB: You have previously stated you are going to keep releasing EPs until you find your sound. In what ways do you feel your sound has been changing?
CN: You can feel the confidence more when I do verses, I feel like that’s definitely getting better. I like so many different types of music and so many different genres, I want to have some sort of sound that people will be like “that’s a Chippy song.” I don’t want to be all over the map, but I still want to make things of different genres, but I want people to be able to be like oh “yeah, that’s a sound that Chippy would make.” It’s hard deciding when you like so many things, especially in this generation, when everything is so easily accessible, you see so many different things, it’s hard to decide what direction you want to go in. I feel like I’m getting closer to that point, but I want to experiment more before I start work on an album, because I want my album to be more relatable. I feel like Money Dance isn’t that relatable to everyone, maybe Global School of Twerk is a little more, but I definitely want to experiment more before I jump into working on my album.
CN: I obviously like partying. I’m a young kid, and I am crazy, and I have that side of me, but I know how to be a human, I know how to have civilized conversations. Everyone’s super surprised, they’re like “oh whoa, you’re not jumping off the walls and twerking while having dinner with me.” I know the time and place for things.
AB: You’d be surprised how many people don’t know there’s a time and place for things.
CN: At the end of the day this is also a job at this point. I don’t have a manager, I only have Michelle (McDevitt of Audible Treats), who’s my publicist, so I have to actually take care of myself. Still, when I go out, I’m insane. It’s just that I have to do other parts of the job. I don’t have a bunch of people to depend on, so I have to kind of like get everything in order and still be me at the same time.
AB: That sounds like a lot to handle. With that in mind, what do you consider to be the greatest hurdle you’ve had to overcome to get to where you are today?
CN: This is kind of a weird story. I live in Oakland and it’s kind of crazy here. My house was getting broken into. Last night I heard crazy banging. Luckily they couldn’t get in or break the lock, but I got mugged a few months ago with my passport, and I’m not American, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to get a new passport. Not being American and not having a Visa is really annoying.
AB: That has to be terrifying, to lose your passport when you’re here. Do you have a plan of attack?
CN: Yeah, it’s really hard because I have a Canadian passport and the Canadian government is giving me shit because you need two forms of photo ID to replace the passport and I don’t have any. It’s just frustrating. I’ve been battling with the Canadian Consulate for the last seven months trying to figure this out. It’s pretty insane.
AB: So on the one hand you’re making dance/party music, and on the other you’re on the phone with the Canadian Consulate. Talk about having multiple sides!
CN: Yeah, it’s crazy.
AB: You’re literally fighting the power.
CN: Yeah, fighting the government. {*laughs*} But it will get figured out, hopefully.
CN: {*laughs*} Oh yeah, I don’t even really remember it. I guess I took a Xanax and I didn’t know that you’re not supposed to drink when you take Xanax, and I don’t know what happened from there, but someone told me I definitely jumped out a building, the second tier of a building.
AB: Was that a live and learn situation, like “alright, I’m never mixing those things together again?”
CN: Yeah, definitely. I don’t even know if I learned from it that well (though).
AB: Finally, you’ve lived in Dubai, Africa, Canada and America. Have you found there’s a universal commonality amongst people?
CN: Everyone has human emotions, that’s the most crucial part. Everyone has anger, jealousy, all that. People all around the world are kind of the same. Also a lot of the people I interacted with were people from all over, as well, because I went to schools where people would speak English, so everyone had a lifestyle like I had, and traveled everywhere, too. I did deal with locals, but it wasn’t really as much because I went to schools where everyone spoke English, everyone was living life like me, traveling everywhere, too.
AB: Do you feel like you’re ever going to want to have roots?
CN: Sometimes I do. When you hear A$AP Rocky songs where he’s talking about Harlem, and stuff like that, it would be cool to rep somewhere, but for me repping the whole world is more awesome than repping one place.