‘The dynamic between me and Sky Blu has changed’

Party rockers LMFAO started off in 2006 and by 2010 they had David Guetta's Gettin Over You and Party Rock Anthem under their belt and everyone was talking about the uncle nephew duo Sky Blu and Redfoo. 2011 saw them announcing that 'they were on a haitus' and the EDM DJs toured India separately this year. While Sky Blu (Skyler Austen Gordy) took over Delhi in March, Redfoo (Stefan Kendal Gordy) took on the Capital on 10 May at the Kingdom of Dreams. We caught up with the artiste for a quick Q and A and here's the lowdown.

Well to take over the world is one of the reasons, another reason is because we never wanted our fans to hit the back-to-work syndrome after a good long vacation. Sky and I went to Miami in 2007 and we’d never seen those types of parties before – so many people getting along having a drink, dancing to house music in the summer time. It was one of the best experiences of our lives. Good music, celebration – we decided we needed to be kings of it.

A lot of factors played parts, you know, the late, great DJ AM was a big part in really introducing us to a style of music and something we really fell in love with. We went to the Winter Music Conference in Miami [WMC], and really from there, from that trip, it changed our lives. It was a week of partying and vacationing, and you know how like most travellers, they go on vacation and then they have to go back to work? It's like, 'Aw sh*t, back to work.' We were like, 'You know what? There is no back to work this time. We're going to make this way of life, our new way of life, and make money doing what we just did at the WMC and just partying, playing music, you know… jump around like crazy fools onstage.'

Create, make and sell! Organise before you advertise. Understand what you're promoting. It's really deep to me. Although it seems to many people that I'm making silly music, I'm really serious. There are words I don't want to say in my music. Some will say: ‘Don't forget me.’ I prefer: ‘Always remember me.’ I'm very wordy and psychological. To me, they're all serious, meaningful songs. Let's Get Ridiculous is a serious song. It's just not about: ‘You broke my heart and why are you treating me like this?’ I can write those songs. But I'd have to get depressed every time I sing it. I'm not about the past. I'm about the future and focusing on what you want in life. I'm not an artist that vents through my music. I don't do it to relieve stress. I do it for the purpose of entertaining.

You just have to be in the club. And you have to understand where it's going and that's what we did. We were DJs first and we saw where it was going. We knew that the slower tempo of hip-hop, everybody was kind of dissatisfied about it. You would hear people talking about, you know, hip-hop was dead, and it's slow, and it's boring, and it talks about drugs too much, and blah blah blah, you know, and all those things people were saying. Everybody's looking for something new and the DJs found it first. They found electro, coming from overseas, coming from the Justice, and the French, and we all found that stuff as DJs. And it was really a race to who was going to write songs to house and electro music and we just put heads down to the grind, and said it's like betting on a stock, ‘we feel like this is going to be the next thing so let's see ahead of the curve, so when they come running around the curve, we're going to have the Gatorade and the water bottles waiting for them.’ 

So now, we're there, and you hear a lot of stuff on the radio, and there's still a lot more to go because in a pop song, before we did this stuff, you never heard a build-up in a pop song. You never heard a jump-off, so to speak. Where there's a big climax, and it jumps off, and it goes into a dance kick, and that's one of the things that we were determined to do and just hopefully inspire the whole game... Go towards fun party and dance music, and so we got to keep doing that and keep pushing the envelope, and keep experimenting.

Michael Jackson, Rick James ... even Eddie Murphy, because he did stand-up comedy and he did music. Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Tina Turner, Tina Marie! Everything you've heard, OK, I've mixed and mastered. It's on the laptop, we record everything at the house, we record our own vocals. I think we're the only artist that masters their own stuff.  The shuffle (an LMFAO dance move) kind of originates from the Charleston (dance) and the big-band jazz and swing jazz. That hadn't been used in popular music for a while. The you-point-your-finger-in-the-air type thing, that was in the Roaring 20s. We like it. So we put that in our music. 

I used to do stand-up comedy. The thing we did with LMFAO, we wanted to be ourselves or exaggerations of ourselves. We're funny people. We might satire here or there, a couple of lines, but it's not like a joke band. Not like Spinal Tap. It got mixed up in the beginning 'cause people thought that we were making fun of maybe hip-hop or electro. No. This is what we do. We don't follow a model like traditional song writing. Some people say: ‘So when are you going to start making some serious music?’ We say: ‘I'm dead serious. This is how we communicate - with a little bit of funny.’

All of them! Doesn’t everyone just party hard on every single!

Shots, Let’s Get Ridiculous and Sorry For Party Rocking

Direction is more important than speed. You can go fast in the wrong direction. The music industry teaches you about life. You can be No.1 across the world but there’s always a punk out there who wants to say something negative. You have to understand that and realise what matters is how you feel when you look in the mirror. Are you achieving your dreams and ambitions? Then what people say doesn’t matter.

I could easily say, ‘Okay, sure, in the future we'll come back together.’ But really, the most accurate way I can say that is that time will tell. It's not about just the music. It's easy to get in the studio and say ‘Hey, you put a verse over here and we can just put a label on it and call it LMFAO.’ That's easy - that's what we did the last album. You can hire producers and they tell you to insert a rap here and you put a sticker on it. That's easy to do. 

There's a dynamic between Sky Blu and me that has changed. There's a personal dynamic, and energy dynamic. I can't really speak for him, but I am very protective of that. We didn't have to come together and do LMFAO, but we wanted to. It was like, ‘We hang out every day. We're best friends every day. Instead of you trying to help me do my solo thing and I try to help you do your solo thing, why don't we just both do a thing together.’ But now that isn't the case. We're not hanging out. So it doesn't make sense - the dynamic has changed. Now we would have to fly to see each other; we used to live in the same house! The circumstances have changed. The popularity is different. The money situations are different. If the dynamic can change, we can come back together. That's why we call this thing a break, a hiatus -- because we have the right to come back in the future. If it's fun, I'll do it.

We’re on vacation. Sky’s just released his solo album. We put in a lot of work and we did a lot of stuff and he’s got some creative ideas that he needs to get out and I’ve got some creative ideas that I need to get out

India is just on a musical high these days and we have a huge fanbase in the country. I’m looking forward to not just performing in India but exploring the country. I’m fascinated by Bollywood, the item songs, the vibrant culture and the beautiful women. Infact I’m a huge fan of Deepika Padukone, Manjeet Ral from Bhangra band RDB and Salman Khan and hopefully Sujit Jain is going to make this happen. I’d like to party rock with them when I’m in India. I’m definitely hitting the streets for some local cuisine and clothing.  It’s going to be one hell of a party and we are converting the country into a party planet, get ready!