There are a lot of motto’s in the music industry, words to live by, recipes for success. Twitter is crawling with them right about now. One scroll through your timeline and you’ll find street-corner to corner-office philosophies coming from artists, producers, industry vets, and anything in between. Party Supplies, the enigmatic singer/songwriter/producer from Queens, has a motto of his own as well. “No mystique, big mistake,” he proclaims, citing a documentary about the 80’s hair metal band, Anvil. “You can even quote that,” he confirms. “No mystique, big mistake.”
Party Supplies speaks in a scratchy voice and at a fast pace. “I’m sorry, I’m talking a million miles a minute,” he tells me at the end of our interview a couple weeks ago. I was on the phone to get more info on Party Supplies’ upcoming album with Action Bronson (Blue Chips), his forthcoming debut album with Fool’s Gold (Breakfast of Champions), and a few other topics. Needless to say, things didn’t go quite as expected during the interview and Party Supplies had a lot more to talk about than first imagined. It turns out, dude is not playing when it comes to this whole mystique thing after all.
Over the summer of 2011, Party Supplies kind of broke out when he released Fireworks, a mixtape full of his remixes to songs by Edward Sharpe, Kanye West, Fitz And The Tantrums and others. The mixtape was coupled with a slew of youtube videos featuring Party Supplies going nuts with a drum machine. So, he understands if you thought he was just a producer. And he’s not mad at you for it. “I understand,” he concedes. “People want to see me doing that cause I have all these videos of me doing that.” He’s also been able to make a nice bit of change making beats on his MPC, then showing up to clubs at 12:45 AM and just spazzing out. Therefore, it would make a lot of sense for Party Supplies to go that route. But, where’s the mystique in that?
“I can keep perpetuating myself as that type of act, and I’ll continue to get more gigs like that,” Party Supplies recognizes. “But this is a boat right now and I can steer this any direction that I want. I want to incorporate the MPC into my set, but that’s not who I am as an artist.”