1 Interview with Gerelle Porter (Automatic) Henry Bump
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Interview with Gerelle Porter (Automatic) Henry Bump, Interviewer May 3rd, 2021 St Paul, Minnesota (interviewer) and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (interviewee) Conducted via Zoom Henry Bump (00:01): All right. It's uh, May 3rd, 2021 it's 8:45 PM. Minnesota time, 9:45 PM. Pittsburgh time, obviously here with Gerelle Porter from my, uh, high school, you know, um, how we, we met playing football right. Gerelle Porter (00:18): Yeah definitely playing football Henry Bump (00:18): Class or something like that? Gerelle Porter (00:21): Yeah uh didn't we I Don't know. Henry Bump (00:24): Maybe it was like gym or something. Yeah. Both of us were probably, we were kind of tidde at hoops. I remember that. I know I was, 1 Gerelle Porter (00:33): And I don't know man. I just trying to do a little bit of everything Henry Bump (00:37): Swear now. Obviously the rapper music maker. That's why we find ourselves here today. And, um, so I'm doing my, a little COVID-19 project and it's like how, sort of the pandemic has changed the way that you make music. And obviously in the live performing industry, a lot of things have been rattled. And so I just wanted to talk about a few things like that. You just want to sorta first off, introduce yourself, tell the people what you like to make, stuff like that about yourself as an artist. Gerelle Porter (01:06): All right. Uh, well, uh, I, as you say my name is Gerelle. Uh, my rap nameI was going by automatic. Um, I've been rapping for probably about two years now. I rapped started probably like the senior year of high school, 2019. Um, I was probably closer towards my graduation though, when I really started to like branch off into the music, uh, phase of my life. So, um, I really got fond of, you know, trying to be as versatile as possible, you know, trying to open up and, you know, do as much as I possibly can, you know, uh, try to do, you know, the, turnt up party songs, you know, do the emotional songs, you know, hit the heart hit the soul, you know, I try to do the relationships like the songs, you know, I wanted to get a vibe basically that was what my thing was. Yeah. Henry Bump (01:54): That's what's up. I remember the time that I like first started listening to yourself or was like, really like peeping it, and whatnot, it was whenever you were making those trillers. And I think what was the one that you first made? It was for like, I think it was for levels. Right? Was It that? 2 Gerelle Porter (02:09): Yeah it definitely was levels. Henry Bump (02:12): Yeah. Right. I think it's like crazy now because a lot of what people do on social media is like marketing their music. Do you think that way, when did you start realizing that? Like, okay, I gotta use social media as a way to platform and branch out my music. Gerelle Porter (02:27): I mean, for me it was a little different, like, because I have been doing like a lot more different things in like the social media world and like the advertising world early on way before I even did music. And like I was doing like affiliate marketing and stuff like that. So I already knew that like how to run ads to, you know, how to generate that and how to generate that income, you know, monetize out certain things, you know? And then, uh, with like really getting into music, I seen that social media was really how people was doing it. Now you have to get that attention. You have to do something that's, you know, eye catching something. That's going to grab that attention. Yeah. Henry Bump (03:03): You think it distracts at all away from making music at times. Gerelle Porter (03:07): Yeah. Uh, it was, you could get distracted a lot and some of the things like, uh, you really got into it, you only get what you put in, so you gotta be willing to put that time. And even when you do get distracted. Yeah. Henry Bump (03:22): 3 Sorry. I remember you were always a big reader and always like posted the books on social media and everything. Trying to give everybody else the keys. Do you think that's like an important part of using it. Gerelle Porter (03:33): Uh, yeah, for me personally, I feel like, you know, expanding your mind as much as you possibly can, will help you in all phases of life, you know, and all, you know, branches, you know, just gaining as much knowledge as possible as an asset, because you never know where you might be in five or 10 years. You know, I'm doing music now, but who's to say, come two years from now. I won't be doing real estate or, you know, going to be in another field. So it's just good to try and get a basis for everything. Henry Bump (03:59): Yeah. Well, first, what made you first want to get into music then? Gerelle Porter (04:03): Uh, honestly just, it started off as a joke. Like it was started off as a joke. We were, um, playing on this app, uh, rapchat. We was like dissing each other. Like we used to diss each other, like every day, come to school, you know, come back to dice. Um, show each other are rap and stuff like that, but just be dissin. And then one day I just decided, just try just a random beat on YouTube. And it was better than I thought it was then, uh, I ended up going to my friend Hardy's house and, uh, like to talk, like, I think it was like a day or two before we graduated, I went to his house and somebody else in the city had dropped, uh, had dropped a song and I had tried to make a song like to they beat, but I couldn't find that one beat. And he had found that beat. So I went over his house and I ended up like, we in there rapping, a bunch of stuff in the way of saying like, we might as well just rap. Let's try it. Like, let's just see what happens. And here we are now. Henry Bump (05:00): 4 So it was YouTube started doing it together. And then now you guys are still like making the same videos and stuff together now. Gerelle Porter (05:07): Yeah. It's been two years now, but, Same thing. Henry Bump (05:13): Did you guys know each other before dice or did you meet him at dice? Gerelle Porter (05:17): Oh, no. I've known him probably since like, I dunno. Probably be like seventh, eighth grade. I mean, I did know him through like a little league because we played little league football and we used to played each others team and stuff like that. Uh, okay. Okay. Henry Bump (05:32): Do you think like working together has been something that's like kind of like catalyzed, both of it like pushed you guys both a little bit to go harder. You think? Gerelle Porter (05:41): Oh yeah. Most definitely. I know for a fact us being there and us being around each other, uh, it definitely did a lot for us because even this year we had went through like a rough patch. We wasn't talking. Right. But we were still, you, you know, just take a bunch of just support just to make sure, you know, like, okay, we're not talking. Why not we communicating? Even if we're not cool. We still want to see each other win, you know? Yeah. This was the during the pandemic, a couple of little things happened. We had like some inner turmoil and stuff like that, you know? So, uh, we just ended up, you know, just not talking for about a month , sometime like that. And eventually we just got back. So, but it 5 was one of the things like we knew we had to handle business. Like this is not, we want to be professionals at the end of the day. So we understand that even if we fighting each other, we still gotta understand that we gotta work together. Henry Bump (06:36): So when did you start? Like when did it, when did it change from being like something freestyling for fun? That you're like to something that you're now looking at as a career. What flipped it? Gerelle Porter (06:49): Was so weird. Like the jump from, for fun to like, okay, like let's really do this where it's like, the change was so subtle, but it was so quick because I remember like we didn't even get into the stu for like the whole first month we was just making songs on our phone, just recording off our phones or like off the laptops we had in our house, stuff like that. Henry Bump (07:12): Yeah. Gerelle Porter (07:13): Excuse me. But, uh, uh, one of his friends had called him and said, uh, I got a studio session on the south side.