Rappers Beck Motley and Bon Voyage make up The Airplane Boys, and they’re sweeping the internet with their new mixtape Where’ve You Been blending rap and hip hop with electro beats, rock and jazz for a fresh sound that has already got them the opening spot for industry heavyweights like Snoop Dogg. Find out more about them in their Kidzworld Q&A!
Kidzworld: How did you first meet?
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Bon: 11 years ago in Scarborough, Toronto, and I was writing on my bed and Beck said “hey you know we should rap, there’s a talent show coming up”, and I said “I’m down”, we formed a group with called Rat Pack with two other dudes and ever since we’ve been involved and going from there and eliminating people.
KW: Did you always know you wanted to make music?
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Bon: Music has always been a big part of our lives, music’s always been around, and we’ve always been interested in art and I’ve been performing since I was like 7 in church plays, and I loved the stage so much that I think from there it was just like “this is what we want to do,” but we had other things we wanted to do, like I kind of wanted to be a car engineer.
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Beck: I wanted to be an astronaut, and after that I just wanted to perform whether it was plays or whatever I just wanted to be on stage even if I didn’t know how to do it, I would just do it.
KW: How would you describe your sound?
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Beck: Our sound is honest, it’s true, it’s for the people and also for us, you know it’s a way to get away and get our thoughts out, our sense of escape. It’s just honest and from the heart.
KW: What did you want the feel of your mixtape Where’ve You Been to be like? What’s it about?
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Beck: When we made that mixtape we didn’t have any expectation, it was just our stories compiled into a body of art, just all natural music, and that’s what made it beautiful, how natural it was. A lot of people making a mixtape have time and a bunch of time, and we didn’t we really pushed ourselves and grew exponentially, just really pushing each other and working at each other in the studio. What we wanted out of this was just to get our story out, there’s was no theme.
KW: Do you ever get stage fright?
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Bon: Yeah, before we hit the stage we always get nervous and have to second and just pray you know, but once we go out and we’re on, we’re on and we’re calm.
KW: What is the best thing that you’ve heard since starting out?
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Bon: There’s been so many times we’ve heard walking in the street that people like us playing at so and so, and we’re just happy people are connecting with the music, you really want the people to relate so to accomplish that feels like you’ve auditioned for the world.
KW: What are some of your hobbies outside of music?
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Bon: There are none actually! This is all we do, we sacrifice so much, relationships, girlfriends, we’re so dedicated right now that we couldn’t even find the time.
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Beck: We watch a lot of movies and go on a lot of long drives. But all we think about and breathe about is music, everything is just inspiration to fuel our art, if we see something or go to an event its always going to find its way back into our music.
KW: Who are some artists that inspire you?
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Beck: Kanye West because he puts his art out there for people.Drake because he’s opened up the city of Toronto for everyone, we listen to Jamiroquai, Punk, Michael Jackson, he makes timeless melodies and is one of the best artists that ever lived. Lots of rap, and storytelling.
KW: Who would you like to work with ideally in the future?
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Beck: Like a Christmas list? Right now we don’t even have that train of thought, working with this and that, we’re just happy to be doing what we’re doing.
KW: What was it like meeting Snoop Dogg and opening for him?
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Bon: That was amazing, getting the word from Snoop and sharing the stage with him. Our first song we ever recorded was “Gin and Juice,” we had a song called “Orange Juice”, and it never comes to your mind that you’ll be on tour one day with someone like that.
Check out The Airplane Boys' track Born To Be below:
