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Mike Shinoda - Post Traumatic Tour

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Amy: Hey! I am Amy, ALT 99.7. Mike, so great to have you on today. Where are you currently?

Mike: I'm doing this on my phone, so I apologize for the wobbliness. [smiles] I'm on a little vacation here in California.

A: Oh, very nice! We're in South Carolina. I think it was just like a pollen monsoon for two weeks so I think we're on the other side of that, happy to be towards more summertime weather, for sure. So much to cover with you today! I know we have a limited time, we're going to jump right into it. Obviously, people best know you as the founder and of the voices of Linkin Park. Do you have moments where it all feels surreal, as you look back? 

M: Yeah, for sure. I think that the big moment when that happened was probably after *Hybrid Theory*. *Hybrid Theory* and towards the end of *Meteora*, the second album phase. And since then it's been about just rolling with things and kind of riding the wave. I find that these days I look for things, for ways to engage with, almost like - it sounds silly to say, “give back to your community” because that's such a corny phrase. But I'll give you an example, to be more specific. Since quarantine [started] I've been streaming on Twitch, I've been streaming music. And it's not live shows and stuff like that, my thing has been that I'll make a new thing from scratch every day. So last year I was making almost all instrumentals and then this year I started finding fans and brand new musicians on social media, getting in touch with them asking if I can produce their song, and then producing their song live on Twitch from scratch, which from just basically a vocal and some chords. And then handing them back a fully mixed and mastered song and stems that they can release on Apple, Spotify, Amazon or whatever.

A: Wait a minute. So I listened to and I loved the podcast *Broken Record* with Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell, and I listened to your episode on that and I was like, “What an incredible opportunity for artists!” We have this discussion like - there's now less of a middleman, right? With the way people are able to create, they have access to better tools and how to disperse it. But also it levels the playing field a bunch too. So how do you decide? I'm sure a lot of people are reaching out to you, how do you decide which tracks or which artist you're going to pick up?

M: It's a gut thing! I mean, it's always for anything, as an artist or a creator, it's always like - you just go with your gut. Some days I'll pick somebody just because I feel like something about what they do is exciting to me and I feel like I haven't produced a song like that before. There's a ton of variety in the stuff I'm choosing, so far this year I've done 22 songs…

A: Wow!

M: And they've ranged from kind of danceable R&B to EDM to hardcore to boom bap hip-hop... There was even a guy, I produced a song by this guy Dusty, his song is called “Space Boots And Jet Fuel” and his vibe is that he's a space cowboy. It's like indie rock and bluegrass with a space theme, it's so wild! [smiles] It actually reminds me a little bit of MGMT or The Flaming Lips. And I feel like I did that back to back in the same couple weeks as a really soulful Adele-style track and a british hip-hop artist. [laughs]

A: When you're going in to produce different things like that, how do you... I'm a fan of Shangri-La and the whole Rick Rubin kind of hippie vibe, and I know his own studio, he does - it's like all white and then artists can go in and do whatever they want to it, and then when they go out, they clear it out, it gets all painted white again. Do you do that like mentally almost, when you're trying to go from one different genre to the other? How do you access different creative points for each genre?

M: Having worked on multiple records with Rick, I feel like Rick was one of the people to me that, in my experience and my trajectory... I didn't even really realize I was a producer until Rick told me I was. I'd always assumed that I was just the primary writer in the band, because most of the demos came from me. At one point, on *Minutes To Midnight*, the first record we did with Rick - up until that point Brad and I had made all the demos, we would make all the demos and we'd bring them to the band, the band would choose which ones they really loved, and they would play the parts that we wrote for them, and then we'd improvise on stuff as a group and add stuff together. With Rick, on the first record with him we did 150 demos, all of the guys wrote demos. So this is the first time that everybody wrote demos and at the end of the day the band themselves chose - 11 out of the 12 songs were mine. And so it kind of went back and forth between this like, “I want to try and write and whatever,” and then experimenting with it and experiencing it, and then coming back to like, “but we like my stuff.” I feel like that was a big vote of confidence for me, and Rick said at that point, “Well, you are the in-band producer,” and I was like, “Oh, I am?!” And then he ended up giving me a production credit on that record and on all the records we worked with after that. With that said, Linkin Park sound or sounds - we jump from sound to sound a lot between albums. And even within that context, I was doing a lot of different styles of songs that didn't even make the record. I've always been into so many different types of music and so it's kind of hard for me to stay nailed down. I’m doing tons of different styles on my Twitch streams. I put out three instrumental compilation albums last year, off the Twitch streams. I just love variety.

A: Yeah. I want to go back - you brought up *Hybrid Theory* and it was last year, right? 20 years of *Hybrid Theory*?

M: Yeah. 

A: Now that means... I also run a Classic Rock station and so I get excited because we're like five years from going to Classic Rock with *Hybrid Theory*, right? [laughs]

M: [smiles] That's funny. Yeah, I hear some of the stuff on the Classic Rock station and it's like... growing up thinking that classic rock was Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, and then all of a sudden hearing Nirvana on it and I'm like, “Okay, sure!” [smiles] It's just always weird for people as they get older. It's gonna be really funny when it’s gonna be like, “Next up on Classic Rock: blackbear and Machine Gun Kelly!” you know what I’m saying? That's gonna be really funny. [laughs]

A: [laughs] Yeah. Do you think it'll be like - for the transition from talking about MGK and blackbear - there's a huge conversation currently, specifically on the radio side of things, what is alternative music? Because, as the people and the artists progress, as the generations progress, obviously the sound changes. So, what is alternative music to you?

M: Well, it's funny because I don't care about genre very much. We talk about it just as a functional thing. It's like, if I'm producing a song on my channel or elsewhere and I say, “I want an alternative guitar,” that could mean a thousand things, right? It could be a flangey-twangy Lana Del Rey alternative guitar, it could be a loud and obnoxious Linkin Park guitar, there's so many different things you could do. All we're trying to do with these words, all anybody's trying to do with these words is communicate with their hearing, and truth be told, the best way to communicate is just to do it and to listen to it. I think right now I love what's happening in - just to speak on guitar - I love what's happening with artists like Post Malone and The Kid LAROI, iann dior, 24kGoldn... There's a lot of artists... actually I just named all guys, what about there's artists like renforshort or K.Flay or...

A: I’m a huge K.Flay fan.

M: There's all these artists using live instrumentation and mixing it with other things, whether that's a trap beat, or maybe they do a lot of synths and then they do live drums. I think at this point people aren't pushing it to be part of a genre, of course. Now it just feels great to me, because they're really just trying to express themselves, in the same way that we did 20 years ago, and find a nice way to create a melting pot out of their favorite sounds.

A: You've done some solo things in the past, your first post Linkin Park project under your own name, *Post Traumatic*, and then *Dropped Frames Vol. 1*, which I want to get into - are we getting volume two?

M: Oh no, there were already three! [smiles] 

A: There's three? Okay!

M: To be clear - *Post Traumatic* was basically just... The whole idea of *Post Traumatic was* to create and put out an album and do a tour where I could go commune with the fans and just get through that really dark time with the fans. And after that I took a little bit of a breather. I'm glad I did it but it was exhausting, it was a really emotionally super hard thing to do, every show was difficult. And then, when quarantine started last year, long story short - I got into streaming on Twitch because I wanted to have some kind of regularity. I just wanted to have weekdays and weekends. [smiles] Like, “Okay, on weekends I'm off, on weekdays I stream. I'm gonna do 10 a.m to noon and I’d make a new thing every day.” And most times last year that new thing was an instrumental track. Part of it was just like an educational process for fans, but there were a few things going on at once: one, just fun for me to do; two, it was social in a way that I think a lot of us needed; and three, it was educational for both me and them. I was constantly trying things that I had not done, but also they would challenge me to do certain sounds or do certain styles and - for those watching all the time - I'd be teaching them how I do them. So, whether that's a 90s hip-hop boom bap beat or John Bonham-ish live Led Zeppelin drums - whatever the thing the sound was, I was showing them how I made it. And I did three compilations of those instrumental tracks. I mean, I wrote over 150 tracks, I only put out 30 or 40 of them, there's a bunch more that I just haven't done anything with. And then, at the beginning of this year I started doing a thing where I started producing fan songs. So, now I'm doing a thing called *#ShinodaProduceMe*, where fans will tag their demos with that hashtag and we go scraping through social media and look at those and listen to those, and the ones that I like, I produce live on Twitch. I've done 22 of them so far.

A: Is there any difference when you're doing your solo stuff, even though you were the producer for Linkin Park, is there a difference in how you approach your creative sides when you're doing something solo, under your own name, as compared to when you're in a group?

M: There's a lot of different ways to approach writing and recording a song, almost infinite ways. Even if you recorded a really great live drum track and then the next day you came back and tried to do the exact same sound again, you wouldn't get it. It's really hard to do, and when people talk about the magic of recording, that's what they mean. With that said, I approach the Twitch recordings differently than I would approach writing a song for an album. And then I would approach the song for a solo album different than I would approach a song for Linkin Park album or different from a song I'm writing with or for somebody else.

A: Where do you think you're at creatively, or musically, in your journey now? Is there something over the last few years that... You know, with “Happy Endings” out now - is there something that you're looking specifically for? Or does it just kind of flow through you when you discover it as it happens?

M: Well, I'm in a bit of a research and development phase is what I always tell people. I'm not just trying to make a song to put out. So, I'd say “Happy Endings” is like an anomaly, and part of that is because so many of the people on my team and at the label were just such big fans of it that they were like, “We've got to put the song out, it’s so good!” And “Happy Endings” is really a song that is so 2020. I mean, it's all about 2020, it also was written via Zoom. [laughs] And we were having a great time on the Zoom. It’s like a “complaining with a smile on your face” kind of thing, you know? [smiles] That's kind of the vibe of the song. In the bigger picture, I don't know if I'm headed towards doing an album because I feel like I've done enough albums so that almost doesn't feel the right kind of ambitious right now, if that makes sense? I love ambitious projects, and albums do take a lot of time and care. But also, there are so many opportunities to do something new, and fun, and surprising, and something that either people haven't thought of or that I haven't thought of, and do it in a way that's just very specific to me. So, we'll see. We'll see what that means. I know that's kind of a non-answer, but I am still kind of investigating in a way of what's the best way to get my ideas across.

A: Do you think the way that people consume music - because it's changed so drastically, you don't have to go out and buy a whole album now - do you think that would change how you release music? If you decide to release them just as singles instead or EPs, a few songs at a time, a lot of people are streaming music, compared to dropping a full album and all the hoopla that goes along with it. Does it change how you distribute music? 

M: It’s that kind of what I'm getting at is like everybody's so used to like “single, single, album” you know? That format is fine and yet there are so many other things you could do. I look at it like - there's movies, and TV, and gaming, and platforms, and live and not live, and VR and AR, and other technology. I've been talking to a few people that basically are building platforms and then also people that are building things for platforms. For example, there's Audius which is like blockchain music, and in the last few months they've jumped from 2.5 million users to 4 million.

A: Oh wow!

M: Formally, [this amount of] users is tiny compared to other platforms, but their growth is insane! And the idea and the way they're doing it is - they don't intend for it to be competitive with Apple and Spotify at this point, that's not the game they're playing. In a lot of this explosion of blockchain related stuff, I think the emphasis is on the new technology, as it applies to artists of all kinds, and that you have this really interesting direct relationship with fans where you can sell a thing, they can consume a thing, you can release something that's gamified in a way, it makes it fun to consume it. And, if you want to, you can also allow to be what they call “price discovery” - it just means that, with music you've always been like, “a song costs 99 cents, a song cost this much, an album costs this much,” there's always, across the whole board, everybody's thing costs the same. But you would never do that with clothes, you would never do that with art, with paintings, you know what I'm saying? You wouldn't say the painting by the brand new artist who just got out of college is worth the same as a Damien Hirst, and yet a song by the brand new artist is worth the same as Beyoncé. [smiles] Just the idea is you're gonna buy more of them and artists are going to get a small percentage of that. It's a weird system, if you think about it. It doesn't make total sense, it makes great sense for certain parties. So that's the kind of stuff that when I say that I'm thinking through some of the ways that… I'm not looking to make a platform that changes the world, I'm looking for what's a fun way for me to get involved in projects right now that feels appropriately cutting edge and creatively rewarding.

A: Mike, thank you so much for your time.

M: [laughs] That got really deep!

A: [smiles] No, I really like it, honestly! But I gotta wrap it up, I could probably talk to you all day about this kind of stuff, so thank you so much for your time. “Happy Endings” out now, and we'll talk to you
soon, man!
 
M: I appreciate it, thanks so much.
 
A: All right, later!
 
M: Bye!


Mike talks about Linkin Park, helping his fans produce their own music, and how tech is changing the landscape of music

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Mike Shinoda for ALT 99.7

Ai dela Cruz: Everyone welcome to this exclusive interview, I'm VJ Ai from the number one music channel in the Philippines, MIX. And today we have one of the most creative minds in the industry. Of course, he's Linkin Park's multi-platinum Grammy award winning singer-songwriter and producer. We also had the honor of having him as our MIX Headliner back in November 2019, and now he has a brand new single entitled “Happy Endings” featuring genre-bending platinum-selling artist ian dior and Arizona pop disruptor UPSAHL - please welcome, Mike Shinoda!
 
Mike Shinoda: Hey, thank you!
 
Ai: Hi Mike!
 
Mike: Hi! How are you?
 
Mike: I'm good, how are you doing? By the way, thank you so much for being our MIX Headliner back in 2019, we were so stoked to have you in the Philippines!
 
Mike: [smiles] Thank you.
 
Ai: And also, just a few months ago we had Joe Hahn on the show as well. Congratulations on *Hybrid Theory*'s 20th Anniversary! And we saw your video as well, reacting to kids reacting to Linkin Park songs, can you tell us a little bit about that, how was that experience like?
 
Mike: Oh, that was a while ago. First of all, I love that format of those shows, the kids react and whoever reacts, so it was a real pleasure to do that with them. And I knew we'd get some really funny reactions to the band and the new single at the time and all of that. So yeah, I love those videos.
 
Ai: We love it too and I hope you realize how much impact your music still has on the youth today. So now that we're talking about that - do you remember your last visit in the Philippines? What's your favorite memory from your filipino fans?
 
Mike: Oh man. I remember... where the heck did we go?.. we went walking around a little bit... I'm so food oriented, it's so funny. It’s like, one of the first things I think of is where did I go and what did I eat, I don't know why. [smiles] I think it's partially because we do have really good food in LA and so we get to sample a nice cross-section of foods from different cultures, and besides there is actually a really big filipino population in LA, so we have good filipino food. But I do remember, when I've gone out in Manila, for example, I don't remember the names of the restaurants but I remember just being like, “I could live here just to eat the food.” [laughs] I love the food so much, it’s so good!
 
Ai: Well, we now know what we have to do with you when you come here, when you come back in the Philippines.
 
Mike: [smiles] I know it’s ridiculous, it's really ridiculous. And by the way, the fans are amazing, the people are amazing, that's part of it too. I've always had great experiences there.
 
Ai: Thank you so much for saying that! How have you been, you've been enjoying Twitch and Zora so far, we've noticed you've been very active there, how's the hashtag *#ShinodaProduceMe* going so far? 
 
Mike: Yeah, that's related to Twitch. When LA started quarantining because of COVID, in the beginning it was very repetitive, I'd wake up every day and I wouldn't know what day it was.Things got kind of boring and kind of bad, I just didn't like it. I felt like a ship lost at sea where you don't have a direction. And then I just started doing things with the fans every day online and I ended up going on Twitch and starting to produce music. I started to do instrumentals. My whole thing was - I'd make a brand new thing every day from scratch. And I started to make all these instrumental tracks in two hours basically, and whatever I made in two hours would be where we'd end, we'd stop. And I put out three compilations of those, it’s called *Dropped Frames* and they were just instrumental tracks. And then, this year I wanted to go take it up a notch and do something that was more exciting for me and for the fans. And with the help of the chat, the community on Twitch, we came up with this idea, with the hashtag *#ShinodaProduceMe*, which is that fans who use that hashtag submit demos of their work, usually it's a vocal and one instrument, or stripped instrumentation, one or two things. And when I hear something I like, I reach out to that person and then I produce their song on my channel. So some of the fans who I have produced - they've only got a thousand followers, or in one case I think they had hundreds of followers. And I produce it on stream and then I give it back to them and they get to release it however they want to release it. Or if they don't want to release it, that's fine. But all of them so far have wanted to release their stuff, they're all so happy. And it's a really fun process, I think that I'm getting a lot out of it, they're getting a lot out of it. It just feels great to do.
 
Ai: It would be crazy not to release something produced by Mike Shinoda! [laughs] Let's talk about A&Rmy, it was so clever! Of course, as someone from the Philippines, your filipino fans are wondering, are you still doing *#ShinodaProduceMe*? Can someone from the Philippines send their material in or can you work with them?
 
Mike: Of course, yes! There is no end to it, it's not a contest, it's just a thing I do. And we're doing it all the time, I'm doing about two songs a week and I'm constantly finding and reaching out to new artists to add to the queue. So if you've got a cool song or you know somebody who's a great singer… If it's not in English, put the song up but then in the description underneath put the english translation so I can understand what the words mean. I've done everything from experimental hip-hop to pop songs, electronic, I did a blues kind of track the other day, I've done a bluegrass alternative song... I told the fans I really would love to do a dancehall, a futuristic dancehall track that'd be like a reggae style track, that would be really cool. I’m looking to do more hip-hop in the future. I just did a track (this was actually today) I did one track that has a bigger audience, it’s a duo called Brevin Kim, that was really fun. I'm not done with that one, I'll be live on Twitch tomorrow to finish that one up.
 
Ai: Oh, exciting! I love it, that's how you keep your creative juices flowing. Because, you know, some people are wondering, and that's probably one of the secrets - you're very active online, you work with different people every week... Now, you said that there's no end to this, and speaking of endings - let's talk about “Happy Endings,” how was the song created? And those are very relatable lines that you put there!
 
Mike: [smiles] It's funny, I wrote it with some friends over Zoom, it was a video chat writing session. Samantha Ronson had reached out to me and left me this really long text about writing together, and my response was, “Did you write that with thumbs?” It was such a long text! [laughs] And she has a co-writer named Pete, and we set up a date. And then, after we talked, randomly this other person was like, “Hey Mike, have you ever heard of this girl UPSAHL? She's really good and maybe you should meet her, maybe you should write with her,” and then I got a text from Samantha and Pete and they were like, “Have you ever heard of UPSAHL? We've written with her and she's really good.” I was like, “Okay, this is such a weird coincidence!” And so we put her on the Zoom too and we wrote the song. And the more we played it for people, the more they loved it. We ended up getting ian on it. And we just shot and released the video, the video came out today.
 
Ai: Yes, exactly. It's a fresh music video. When I say “fresh” - it's like 10 hours young. [smiles] Can you tell us about the music video? Because here on MIX we play out music videos, fans vote for it to enter the MIX charts, so we're very much interested in the music video. Did you guys shoot this together? Because it seems like you were behind the same brick wall.
 
Mike: Pix3lface is the name of the director. I picked his stuff, I just love the way he uses, like... It's like this weird blend of very modern and also very nostalgic, throwback kind of animations and stuff. It feels raw, it doesn't feel like... I don't know, too polished or something. And that felt like the song to me, there's this kind of indie aesthetic to the song that I wanted to be in the video. There's COVID safety regulations and stuff, so we didn't shoot together, but the way it was edited makes it look like we're just there. I didn't see Taylor at all, I didn't see UPSAHL at all. We texted but I didn't see her in person. And then ian and I crossed, I finished my part and I was leaving, and he showed up just then, so we talked for a minute and that was it. There's only a crew of like... I want to say like seven people? It's like a really small crew. [smiles] Because you have to stay safe. They did a great job, I'm so happy with how it came out. And the animations in the video, we did them together - Pix3lface and his crew did some of the illustrations and the animations, and I did a bunch of them too, even some of the drawings I did on Twitch - I animated and then sent those to him for the inclusion of the video too.
 
Ai: I knew it! I was just about to ask. I'm not sure if you've seen the comments but I'd like to read out one of them. So the comment goes like, it’s by DarK: “Editor: Mike, how much vfx do you want us to add? Mike: Yes.”
 
Mike: Yes, right. [laughs] It's a lot, it's a lot! Yeah, I thought he did a great job. In fact, that was literally one of my comments after I saw the first cut of it, I was like, ”I love the effects in the beginning. Do those the whole time.” [laughs]
 
Ai: Your fans know you so much! I know I have just a few minutes left with you, so I'd like to jump to this one - in a recent interview I saw that you praised Olivia Rodrigo's “drivers license” so just wondering what other songs you listen to from new artists?
 
Mike: It was funny, I said that when that came out, when it was out for a day - I heard it and I was like, “Yep. That's a crazy song, that's a really good song.” And I think the reason it's so huge is because all of us did that, everybody said, “Yep, that's a crazy good song.” I don't tend to listen to a lot of really popular stuff so that was a weird one. And it's not that I avoid it, it's just that... I don't know what that is, why that's the case. But what am I listening to right now... There's a guy named Tobe Nwigwe, he’s so dope. He’s a singer, rapper, creator. His aesthetics are amazing, he does a lot of these performances in all mint color, it’s like - pale green walls, pale green everything in the room, he's wearing pale green, he's got gold fronts [grillz] with pale green insets in them... His aesthetic is very specific, and he's an activist too, he's very thoughtful, and I like what he has to say. That's one guy.
 
Ai: I just googled him, and he was in a mint polo shirt… [laughs]
 
Mike: He's a mint colored car to match! It's like a whole thing.
 
Ai: Oh wow!
 
Mike: One other one... What is it, mazie? Is that her name?.. I just sent somebody a note about this, yeah, that’s mazie, I'm listening to mazie. I just sent this, somebody said, “Give me three recommendations,” I said - Tobe, mazie, and then this dude named Teezo Touchdown. That's what I'm listening to.
 
Ai: Will definitely be googling them right after this interview! Now lastly, Mike, what is your message to your filipino fans? We miss you so much!
 
Mike: They are amazing, and I do miss coming out there. And hopefully I’ll get the chance to do so soon.
 
Ai: Thank you very much, Mike! And thank you everyone for watching this exclusive interview. Once again, I'm VJ Ai from the number one music channel in the Philippines, MIX. Thank you, Mike!
 
Mike: Thank you.


Mike talks about writing music during quarantine, #ShinodaProduceMe, and music video for “Happy Endings”

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Mike Shinoda for MIX Philippines

Mike Shinoda for MYX Philippines

Mike Shinoda and Anthony Fantano talk about music industry, Linkin Park’s DNA, and finding balance between art and commerce

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The Needle Drop: Interview with Mike Shinoda

Mike Shinoda, Joe Hahn and Brad Delson talking about Linkin Park's debut album

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2020 LINKIN PARK: Hybrid Theory - track by track | Kerrang!

LINKIN PARK: Hybrid Theory - track by track | Kerrang!

Mike talks about creating music during quarantine, connecting with fans and streaming on Twitch

thumbnail_Mike Shinoda for KROQ’s HD Radio Sound Space Sundays

Mike Shinoda for KROQ’s HD Radio Sound Space Sundays

*First performance*

Probably at the piano recitals when I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7, probably around there, maybe even younger. The first time I actually did singing or anything like that was with a youth theater group. There was a youth group that was just a group to hang out with other kids, and one of the things the group did was a musical performance. We did *West Side Story* and all this theatre stuff. And honestly, I didn’t love it, it wasn’t my favorite thing but I did it, it was fun to do with my friends. We’d rehearse shows, and obviously there’s a director and a little band of, like, four people playing this stuff live and we were doing the reading lines and singing songs.

*First song written*

First song I wrote was on piano. It was probably inspired half by videogames and half by movies about medieval stuff because I was way into *Dungeons & Dragons* and stuff like that. I actually should say, I wasn’t way into it but I would draw my own characters and I had a friend who put together little games, he knew more about how to do *Dungeons & Dragons*, those levels and whatever. But it was really loose, we weren’t using *Dungeons & Dragons* kits or whatever, and he would make up the stories and I would draw the characters. And I wrote this piece of music that was probably inspired by that kind of a thing and I entered it into this little contest that my piano teacher was having. I was probably 11 or 12 or something and I won first place. And other people in the contest were like 16-17 years old so I felt like I was pretty cocky. [laughs]

*How much was the prize?*

50 dollars or something so I bought a bunch of art supplies. Actually, I probably bought a video game. To be honest, I probably bought a Nintendo game.

*First drawing*

I know I drew characters that would fit inside the games that I loved playing, *Mega Man* for example. The format of that game, for people who have never seen it, is really simple. You’re this little blue character with a gun arm and every level that you go to - the level has a theme like Fire Man or Leaf Man, and if you beat Leaf Man - his weapon is a leaf and he fights you with it - and then when you beat him you get to have it, so you can select between your regular gun and leaf gun. So that happens for each level so that’s a great, that’s an easy concept. I started making my own something-men. I don’t remember what they were, I don’t know, Trash Man that throws trash… [smiles] I don’t know, I’m making that up but that’s the idea, I remember doing that.

*First album you bought with your own money?*

First album I bought with my money was Beastie Boys *Licensed to Ill* on vinyl. I don’t even know if cassettes were then... Cassettes may have been out, CDs weren’t out but I know I got it on vinyl because we had a record player at the house and that’s super old. I still have it though, it’s not warped or anything. I took good care of my record.

*First instrument you bought?*

The first instrument… We had a piano, an upright piano in the house and then at some point I asked for a keyboard. I was super obsessed with Dr. Dre, I didn’t even realize it till later that I had literally bought everything that he produced up to a certain point. So yeah, I wanted to get a keyboard so I can try and make sounds like he was making.

*First job*

I think the first job I ever had was working at my uncle’s produce farm. He had this warehouse in central California where they would grow and box up oranges and grapes, mostly fruit. I think there’s probably 15 or 20 people working there and I went out there for the summer and boxed fruit. Mostly people didn’t speak English, they all spoke Japanese or Spanish. I didn’t have any friends, just everybody was older. [laughs] I was a teenager and these people are like 20. They looked like 30 or 40 years old so I just worked 10-hour days and then went home with as much money as I could save.

Mike Shinoda for MYX Philippines - about his first performance, first song written, his first job and more

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