INTERVIEW: YouTube prankster Kristen Hanby on his musical debut

Prankster Kristen Hanby is most known for his social media antics which has seen him go viral.

Initially building his platforms by creating funny videos with his friends and family, Kristen Hanby has now headed down the musical path, with his debut release ‘Drunk Love’. We caught up with Kristen to talk everything from creating video ideas, to his musical interests.

Hi Kristen! How are you?

Hello CelebMix, I am amazing. Working super hard and trying to takeover the world, my mission is getting closer day by day.

What is your favourite video you’ve made?

My favourite video, hmmm… funnily enough it isn’t one of my prank videos as strange as that seems! It has to be the day I played Kevin Hart and Chance The Rapper at beer pong in LA and I beat them both, it was one of my first days in LA and its safe to say it started that trip off well.

But if it had to be one of my crazy prank videos it would have to be the dare/challenge videos with my brother Jackson, I’ve had to get over 10 dumb tattoos for them, from my ex girlfriends name, a tattoo of a trash can and trash bag, random peoples names, to a camel on my big toe…they are by far my favourite ones.

How do you come your with your video ideas?

Video ideas are super easy to come up with, my little secret to planning videos is I tend to go onto Google and go onto a random word generator and the first word that pops up, I plan a video around it. Any word (well 99% of words) I can make something viral happen from it, which is super lucky considering I have to post 3 to 4 times a week.

Is it crazy to see your followers growing every day? How does it feel?

When I first started the feeling was insane, I still remember to this day when my facebook page hit 5,000 followers, was crazy! A feeling I can’t explain.. a good feeling that made me hustle and record a lot harder and before I knew it my page had reached 100,000. So to have more than 4 social media platforms now over 1,000,000 is crazy. To have over 5,000,000 and another over 3,000,000. You get used to the growth and instead you get a lot hungrier and just want to grow everyday.

You’re now heading into the music world, is music something you’ve always been passionate about?

YES! I wanted to make music way before comedy videos, I have so many songs and videos of me rapping way before the funny videos took off, I always used to be that kid free-styling at parties annoying everyone haha. I just never had the confidence to release music as I was scared, I didn’t want to get hate and bad opinions but since I have grown so much as a person, learnt to not care one bit what people think of me, and now got into a mind set of trying so many new things and not stopping until you make a lot of noise in whatever you are trying to reach the destination you aimed for.

Who are some of your musical inspirations?

I don’t really have any individual inspirations but I do have a very wide liking to music genres. One day I may drive around to Drake, the next day Justin Bieber’s acoustic album and the next day English Grime. I think that gives me a good variation of sounds which I can translate into the music I create and really believe in, and I think one time it’s going to be a success, my last song shows that, 175,000 streams in the first month on Spotify alone.

Can you tell us a bit more about ‘Drunk Love’?

Drunk Love was a super fun record to create as the whole song was a freestyle on a late night at my producer LexNourBeats house in Canada. We put the beat on and instantly had the vibe of a super chill vibe where I wanted people to get in there feelings and relate because at some point in life everybody loves to get drunk and fall in love right?

Do you have any upcoming projects?

My next project actually drops on August 16th, a track called All Alone which I have put so much time into and created a very powerful message towards people that feel alone and, I want people to realise they are not. I feel I make great music and think I can help people and really make a change.

How can fans keep up to date with your projects? 

On all my social media platforms, I’m Kristen Hanby on everywhere. Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, SoundCloud, Facebook etc.

Thanks for talking to us Kristen!

Kristen Hanby – Debut release ‘Drunk Love’

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