Buboy Hits the Big Leagues: On a Sold-Out NYC Debut, a Shifting Sound, and the Power of POC Representation in Indie Music
“I bet that Checkers service is ass, huh?”
Surely getting so much recognition for your music that you get noticed by fans in a Checkers drive-thru isn’t exactly a metric many artists expect to use to quantify their success, but it’s moments like those that make Buboy aware of the breadth of his impact.
On Sunday, I sat down with Buboy ahead of his second of two New York City tour dates, this time at the Bowery Electric in Manhattan. We perched on a stoop of an apartment building on Bowery street next door to the venue, listening to the chaotic city traffic and greeting friends who arrived as we spoke. Buboy is a 20-year-old, Filipino-American indie artist from Gainesville, Florida. He began music during his freshman year of high school, and recalls teaching himself guitar and picking up songwriting in the midst of the bedroom-pop takeover of the early 2020s. He cites Clairo and Mac DeMarco as early stylistic references, but notes that his favorite band is The Cardigans; “Their energy is funny, playful, and very energetic – I really strive for that sometimes, but they can also be rock-y, dirty and grungy, which I also really love.”
I’ve been lucky enough to catch Buboy all over the country this year. After discovering him through the Gainesville music scene in which I also spent my college years, I was able to catch him at the LA stop of his ‘Wasted Fridays’ tour this spring.
“Going across the country, going to a different time zone and hearing people feel so passionately and sing words that I wrote back to me, it’s just like… when people are starstruck at me, I feel starstruck back.” The turnout for his shows has been quite the feat. Not only can Buboy fill a room with fans, but he can fill it with energy. Within the first few songs of any set, he’s sure to have fans jumping around and screaming his lyrics back to him – especially in his hometown of Gainesville.
Now having toured out of state, he’s been able to witness just how far his impact can stretch. “Being able to go out of Florida and out of my hometown… it can be scary to feel like you’re just a big fish in a small pond, but going outside of the state makes me feel like, maybe I really am reaching people.”
When I ask him of his most memorable interaction with a fan on the road, he pauses for a while, then laughs before telling me, “It wasn’t like a sentimental one, it was kind of a strange one… It was after we opened for the band Roar in Tampa, and we went to a Checkers after the show… and I got a message on my phone from a fan that was like, ‘I bet that Checkers service is ass, huh?’” On a more sentimental note, however, he also speaks on the importance of seeing fans’ art. “I really like seeing when people draw things. When people feel inspired enough to create art inspired by my art, it’s really cool.”
On November 21st, Buboy is releasing ‘Chew’, his first single since dropping his debut EP, Sixteen, this past spring. He tells me of the song, “We did a little bit of like, lo-fi production, so it’s a little bit different than my past music, but I think it’s really fun. I think it’s really catchy.” The song was recorded in a slightly different fashion than he had been used to with his previous EP. Citing live drums and auditory distortion as new elements of the recording and production process that he tried out during this go-around, he explains this new era of his music as a more exploratory chapter. “I am continuing to try and do things that are just a tiny bit more experimental, bit by bit, and seeing what sticks with me.”
After the release of his EP, the singer-songwriter fell into a sort of creative rut. “In the summer and the fall after [the EP release], I was feeling kinda dead with my music… I wasn’t feeling super inspired. I was trying to write all the time but it didn’t feel good.” He recalls grappling with feeling uninspired and unworthy, and finding it difficult to stir up material to craft music. In order to get the ball rolling on songwriting again, he began by trying to see how he can “repurpose old things and make them feel new again.”
Buboy cites collaboration as something that really helped open up the creative process as well. “We’re playing these shows with The Nancys, who I love. Me and Ella from The Nancys, I’ll always go over to her house and just chat. We’ll write and play guitar together, and just talk about songwriting. I’ve been really glad to have a nice network of friends and talented peers to bounce off of.” He tells me that, if he could say anything to artists wondering about expanding their creative horizons: “In a nutshell, I hope that they can take away that you can feel so chopped, and so bad at what you do, but give it some time and… I played a sold-out show last night in Brooklyn!” I laugh, and he concludes, “Chopped is so temporary.” I laugh again.
At this point, Buboy is trying to continue experimenting with music and seeing what pushes him forward. He tells me that he aims for people to find something more in his music than just a catchy beat or satisfying production. “I’m trying to push the boundaries of my comfort zone a little bit and do stuff that excites me.” When asked what excites him about his own music so far, he says, “As a Filipino-American indie artist in a totally white-dominated space, it’s a real privilege to exist in this space. My sheer existence as an artist and a person of color is inspiring to people.”
This has long been a driving force behind Buboy’s artist project and creative process. We discuss the ways in which we have seen the music industry challenge artists of color, and how they aren’t platformed in the same way as their white counterparts. “I hope I’m able to be a form of representation for kids of color that want to get into their scene, but might feel intimidated.” Recalling starting out early in his career and exploring the Gainesville music scene, Buboy points out that the bands and crowds he was witnessing were almost entirely white. He mentions his bandmates, Ahmik, Nigel, and Jason, whom support him at all of his live shows, “Playing with my band, me and 3 other musicians of color… I just think it’s a responsibility in some way. To push back against how white-dominated indie music, especially, is.”
As for the visual side of his projects, Buboy has always had a strong hand in all of his visuals for his projects. He has directed all of his music videos and edited a lot of his promo work and cover art. As a student studying film at the University of Florida, he tells me how proud he is to be able to incorporate his studies into his career, even so early on. “It’s cool to be able to keep trying new things visually, and find ways that are fun and subversive to represent my music visually… sometimes it can feel egotistical to want to be in control of all of it, but i’m super particular and I love imagining things cinematically.”
Looking into the future, Buboy is excited to continue “growing up” with his music and alongside his fans. With releases spanning back as early as October 2021, Buboy is no stranger to creating work, but he feels as though his newer songs are indicative of personal growth and development. He references older projects within his discography feeling less mature, but reasons with himself: “[those songs] still matter to me because they’re reflective of the time that I was making them.” He expresses that he feels excited to continue to see what his music says about himself as he continues to grow and express himself through song.
“The music will show me how I’ve changed.”
