INTERVIEW: IRVIN RIVERA

Alex Aiono belongs to the list of multi-hyphenate rising stars with an impressive resume at such a young age. He currently has 2.1 M followers on Instagram, 5.8M Youtube subscribers and 10M+ Spotify streams in 2019. He will appear in the Netflix film Finding Ohana directed by Judy Weng. He is a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, producer, and actor, creator with a huge social media presence. He may be among the new wave of influencers but he is no stranger to the social media and influencing scene. Alex has been creating youtube videos and inspiring people since 2012.

Alex Aiono just released his album The Gospel at 23, a soulful blend of good vibes, emotions, and powerful vocals packed with relatable stories.

In this exclusive interview, Alex spoke about The Gospel At 23, his creative process, social media, music, his career, and The Alchemist.

Talk to us about “The Gospel at 23”

What is it about and how different is it from the other music you released?

I think the answers to both those questions go hand in hand. I think, how is it different? It’s way different, solely because I'm telling my story in the truest possible way I have so far, and that's also what the album is. It's me telling my story, who I am, what I've been through, what's led up to me at 23 years old, which is when I wrote the songs, and how that's made me who I am i.e. my gospel. Which is why I called it The Gospel At 23.

So each song represents a story in your life?

So each song - it's not really like, this is what happened when I was 15 and this is what happened on 16. It's more so like little bits and pieces, so it'll be anything from a certain lyric like in old AF. It's like being young is pretty easy to forget when you're 16 and 18 years old and 19 years old but then there's also songs that have no real time frame, no real setting to them. Like, without you is an ever-changing relationship with my faith you know, so it's not as much each song is about a specific part of my life but it's more so if you listen to the whole album, by the end of it, you should have a pretty good grasp of who I am.

Favorite song/s from the album?

My favorite song from the album changes all the time and I love each of them. You know it's like my kids, I guess. It's like you can't tell me and I don't have kids. I don't know that's - I need to clarify that. But if I did have kids, I'd imagine it's like my songs. Which is, I feel like some days I wake up and all I want to listen to is Happy Ending or some days I wake up and all I want to listen to is Rolling Rain because I'm feeling a little bit more dark. But each song had a real story behind not only what the song's about but how it came about. I remember writing rolling rain and I did not want to work that day. I felt dark and I felt like I didn't have anything else to say, I didn't really have anything else to talk about and my co-writers and everybody around me was like that's what we got to write about. We got to write about the dark moments, the moments where you don't feel like anything. Where you feel like dirt, which is why we came up with that lyric, rolling rain falls to the earth and it turns me to dirt. And so each song's got its own little quirk about it that makes me love it but some days I wake up - today, let's see, today it's Sunday so I'm going to go with Love People because it's kind of like my worship, myself love, kind of a feel-good song. 

How's your creative process like?

The creative process for me in songwriting specifically, is a little bit all over the place. Sometimes I have a melody, sometimes I have a chord progression. Sometimes I have the subject matter and which I want to talk about. Sometimes I just have one line. I remember when we were writing Happy Ending, before we wrote the rest of it, the only line that came into my mind was, all my skeletons hopped out the closet and the dancing with my sisters to the cha-cha slide, and I don't know why? I just love that. I was like oh, it'd be cool,  because I have skeletons in my closet but now because I talked about everything, they're out and they're chilling with my sisters. And then I was thinking like oh, it's funny if they were all doing a dance together. So it varies throughout the whole process but for this album, other than that song happy ending, a lot of them came from hey, I need to write a song now that is the perfect alarm clock. Because a lot of the times when I wake up in the morning I need something to tell me to stay motivated, to chase after something today. To get up and go and work out or get up and go and get some work done and that's what ended up being good morning. And so for the creative process of the album, we definitely took a lot of - it definitely was what do we want to write about today and that's where most of the songs came from.

Does music run in the family?

Music definitely runs in my family and not even just like - obviously my mom and my dad grew up, they raised us to love music and we're such big music connoisseurs and my sisters all sing and there's nothing that I love more than singing with my sisters. But even if you take it to the extended family, my cousins, I have insanely talented family members that are not in the music industry and they just love singing with the family and making memories together through music. 

Have you ever done a video featuring the whole family?

I don't think I've ever done one specifically like, yo, I want to make a video. But you can definitely search up Aiono family on YouTube or something and I bet you you'll find a video of us singing somewhere.

Speaking of YouTube and social media, how did it influence your life in general?

I like to think of YouTube - as I look back at YouTube, because I've been now on YouTube for eight years. And as I look back at it, YouTube really tricked me into learning a lot of things that I didn't even realize I had learned. You know I learned production by making mash ups. If you go back to my earliest mash up it was simply like [inserts sounds] and now if you listen to my mash ups there's full productions going on. You have strings, you have sims, you have samples, you have so many different things and so that's only one piece of how social media not only - we can look at it on the surface, social media was an incredible platform that I’ve been able to build a fan base on, connect with human beings, tell my story, have people join me in my journey. I think that answers given so I've been recently diving deeper into how social media really has changed me and one of the biggest ways it's changed me is by teaching me so many skills and so many lessons just by posting on it that I didn't even realize I've learned. From production to video editing. Even to learning how to stand for what I believe in and learning about what's going on in the world and really helping me shape my opinions and my views on how I think the world should be to be its most successful version of itself.

We love how you highlight other artists with 'Tuesday Rising" in your channel.

You know it's something I remember when I was starting my YouTube channel and I don't - it's not even to call out anybody else but I do remember reaching out to big names and being like can I work with you? Let me know, I would love to and very rarely hearing back. And so I always had that chip on my shoulder of whenever I make it, which you know, whenever I get millions of subscribers or whatever I'm always going to turn around and help everybody. And so Tuesday rising is honestly just my way of expressing that this is how it should be that when you lift other people, you also are lifting yourself. When you lift other people you're also showing who you are as a person and I just want everybody to know who I am as a person in all things that I do.

It's really amazing 

Where do you get your inspirations from?

I mean, musically, obviously with the gospel at 23, I just went into my dark closet of stories and weaknesses and the things that keep me up at night, and I wrote about that but I get inspired every day. I look at influencers on TikTok right now that are creating movies in their bedroom and building massive amounts of fans from there from their tiny bedroom. And I've always loved that because it proves that the same way that I did on YouTube, building a fan base. I was living with my parents in our one-bedroom apartment making YouTube videos in the living room. I think that's what inspires me a lot. It’s that continuous message that it does not matter where you come from, it does not matter where you're starting, it doesn't matter how many people you know in the industry or how many connections you have or how much money your parents have. I'm constantly inspired by the people who have maybe none of those things or just one of those things or maybe two of those things and don't let that limit them at all. If anything, they make it their reason to be better and so I'm always inspired to wake up every morning, wake up early because I know that there's somebody who is out there who might have more or less of an advantage of me and is going to be working their ass off. So I got to get out and do mine too. 

What are the highs and the lows that you've experienced in your career so far?

I think honestly, a lot of the highs are from - you know both (highs and lows)… I think the answer is expectations. A lot of my highs are from when I remember setting my expectations so low. I remember I did this concert on Hollywood Boulevard, it was a pop-up shop where I was selling a piece of merch and performing a few songs. And I remember being like nobody's going to show up, nobody cares about me, and then I pull up and there's 500 people wrapped around the building - buildings hitting capacity, I ended up doing two performances. That was one of the highs for me because I had set my expectations so low and I think the vice versa you know, I remember putting up videos thinking to myself, oh man, this video is going to go crazy. This video is going to get millions of views and then it doesn't. And I remember those trigger definitely lower points for me and I think in terms of setting my expectations that's something I've been working a lot on recently is making sure that it's not about thinking everything's going to be terrible. But for me, when I think about what gives me the high and what gives me the low, it's often because I set my expectations a certain way and I'm wrong with that expectation. And so, in terms of the highs and the lows, the highs are definitely moments in which I didn't think something was going to go crazy. My one dance mash-up obviously is a massive high for me because I put it up and I was like oh, just another YouTube video. Here we go and then that one ended up being you know, getting 50 to 60 70 - I don't even know how many millions of views it has now. Same with, I spy video. Lows can definitely be moments in which I had my expectations, that I really wanted something to go a certain way and it just didn't.

How do you manage that now?

You know what it is - is like, I remember when I first started my YouTube channel and I was just excited or lucky or grateful or it was a high for me to get a hundred views. And I think what happens is, we live in this world of more and more, more that, the more views you get, the more followers you get, the more that you expect. Where in reality if you just keep your expectations that - I'm just lucky that I'm a dude who gets to make music and post on social media and spend time with his family and I get to tell my story. That's enough. The issue is once your expectations exceed that and you go well I need to, I want to do that but I also want millions of dollars in this and that. Those are all byproducts, you can't expect those things and that's what I'm starting to learn. Is learning what I am allowed or what I should allow myself to expect and learning what I should allow myself to just be grateful for if it happens.

How do you adapt and keep yourself relevant?

Relevant, that's a - I hate that word. I'm not going to lie. What is relevant, I remember having that, talking about lows highs and lows, I remember when my mash ups started getting less views than they did before and you start thinking, I'm irrelevant. And like who says that? Who's the relevant governor? You know what I mean, like who's the guy or girl or person who says hey, you're relevant, you're not relevant, you're this, you're that because, at the end of the day, we all decide ourselves who's relevant. I decide, I think I'm relevant as hell, you know, I think I'm super relevant and I keep my relevance because I know that I wake up and my family loves me, my friends love me. So adapting to me and staying like, I kick out staying relevant because I'm like I'm going to do what I love to do and if you set those expectations like I said, then you're going to just disappoint yourself. But the way that I adapt to the ever-changing media which is today's industry is by watching it, being a fan. I watch hell of TikToks, I watch hell of YouTube videos and Instagram. And I just see what I like. If I see somebody who's doing a certain kind of video and I'm like oh, I like that. I just give it a try and if it works, dope but if it doesn't work, then I just keep trying. But the idea - I think it's really, actually, quite an ankle weight if you will. By saying like I need to post so that I'm relevant. I need to post so that I'm this. It's like I just focus on connecting with people and making sure that I'm keeping up with the times more than trying to be super relevant because I know people who are like that who just try and do whatever is the most popping thing at the time and it's just like cringy to me. It's just kind of - I don't know, I want to do what speaks to me more than anything and sometimes what is relevant is what does speak to me.

It's like doing what makes you happy and speaking to your truth.

That's the most important, that's how you become relevant is by being happy. Happiness is relevance to me. 

Any advice you can give to individuals who want to break the industry?

My advice, what is my advice? If  you look at the world right now, you look at Charlie Damelio, look at the Addison Raes, look at these influencers. This newer wave of influencers are so popping and they make videos in their bedroom, like that's my advice to you. There's no excuse. Take the excuses out of everything. There is no excuse for why you don't have a certain amount of views. There's no excuse for oh well if I had this then I could be that. Because TikTokers are making videos in their bedroom and I was making YouTube videos in my bedroom, with a borrowed microphone and my dad's computer. It's like, I think you got to just look at what you actually have. Don't focus on the things that you don't have or you would be better if you do have. But look at the stuff that you have, make the most out of that stuff and just work your ass off. To me that's just [it], and I still do that. I consistently, I wake up and I look at my team and I look at what I have around me and I say, okay what do I have, how do we make this work?

I'm going to debunk the whole fashion thing. These are all a bunch of clothes I actually just own already and because of the pandemic, we're doing photo shoots with the clothes that I've probably already shot in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. But I'm just going to switch up the combinations of the outfits and I'm going to work with what I have instead of saying like oh well I can't do a shoot because this store is not open or that brand's not shipping anymore. So I think doing those two things and then outworking everybody all the time, no one will ever be able to beat a hard worker. You can't beat a hard-worker. The most talented person in the room won't be able to beat a hard-worker, unless they work as hard as them.

If you were a book, what book would you be and why?

If I was a book, what book would I be? I would be The Alchemist.  I would be The Alchemist because that book is I think one of the most - and not because I think I am the character in the Alchemist, but the Alchemist is such an overarching story of what a journey really is and a quest really is. When you quest for something and the universe conspires around you to achieve that thing or receive that thing, and I think that my journey has been and will continue to be ever-changing and I'm going to want and have goals for certain different things. And I think the universe is going to conspire around those goals to help me achieve them. And I think that's what life is in general and so I'm going to go with that one.