Collin Covert

[RH Interview] Lil House Phone

When the name Lil House Phone is brought up in discussion what comes first to your mind? Another 'lil' rapper that's part of the new wave of music? That dude from the No Jumper Podcast? Or that hysterical guy dissing Pacsun and tossing burgers on Twitter?

Regardless, the LA native is making his own lane in the rap community. From serious tracks about depression and drug abuse, to lighthearted videos like "Juice", House Phone has a lot of new material to look out for in 2018. When speaking with the humble entertainer this weekend, he enlightened me on his perspective of the industry, what makes him want to make music, and about the three projects he will be releasing in the near future.

Check out the full interview below:

rubyhornet: Where does the name Lil House Phone come from?

Lil House Phone: It was a joke my friends had. My friends would tease me since I never had a working cell phone. I would always sell them or lose them and they had no way of contacting me, so they had to call my house phone. So it was like a joke from my friends and I kind of ran with it.

rubyhornet: Has that always been your stage name?

Lil House Phone: Yeah, when I decided to start rapping that was what I thought of. My friends were already calling me that. I thought it was so ridiculous it would stand out and be funny. Complex did a whole article with the 10 most ridiculous rap names, and I was all over that shit. I guess it was kind of a good thing.

rubyhornet: What’s your favorite late night food?

Lil House Phone: Some good LA street tacos from a small Mexican lady on the corner. Always a good go to.

rubyhornet: Your newest project has a lot of turn up tracks. Do you plan on making more songs like "Lil Sad Phone" in the future?

Lil House Phone: I am an emotional roller coaster of a person so it’s really how I’m feeling. A lot of the times I make music for me going out. I keep the turn up tracks in mind for performing. I’m all over the place though, so I definitely have to touch on where I am at the moment. I got some new shit, a new album that’s all over the place.

This kid got "Lights Off" tattooed on his knee (a song off my first album about depression). That makes me want to keep making music. That’s really what you do it for, to get that kind of reaction from people. I was honored.

rubyhornet: You have an A$AP Yams inspired Xanax tattoo on your knee. Do you believe the Xanax culture is more prevalent now than in the past, or are people just more aware now?

Lil House Phone: It’s a mixture of both, its more relevant and more in your face because everyone is talking about it. They are talking about the good parts, and not the bad parts necessarily. I feel like a lot of rappers just put in these words, like drinking lean, because it sounds good in the song. I don’t think a lot of these people are actually doing this like that. They aren’t thinking about the impact they are having on these kids either. They are making the kids more likely to try this shit. If I'm listening to a Juicy J song every day, and he's talking about dipping my blunt in lean, I'm going to get some lean and dip my blunt in it, not releasing shit doesn’t even work like that. Like that has actually happened to me. I dipped a whole swisher in an entire pint of lean and we tried to spark it and didn’t even light. It was all sticky and wet. At that point I was like maybe I shouldn’t listen to rappers.

rubyhornet: Do you feel responsible for what you say in your songs, or do you feel like you’re clearly just having fun and people shouldn’t take you serious?

Lil House Phone: I would hope people understand I'm just having fun with it and they wouldn’t take the same path as me, but impressionable minds are going to be impressionable. I talk about my drug consumption openly. I have kids that DM me saying, you make me want to try coke or whatever. I always DM back saying this isn’t the path you want to go down. This shit isn't cool. Even in my personal life if I'm kicking it with someone who hasn’t tried a drug before I'm not going to encourage them to do it. That’s not a path you want to take someone down.

As I'm getting older, I realize I have kids in high school and even younger looking up to me. I don’t think I'm a role model, but when these kids are looking up to you, you have to take some type of responsibility.

rubyhornet: How important do you believe your relationship with Adam & No Jumper was in getting attention to your music?

Lil House Phone: It all kind of happened at the same time so I never really got a chance to take a step back and adsorb what was going on. No Jumper wasn’t at the level, that it is now, when I started being a guest. It was really just me hanging out with Adam, his friends, and doing a podcast now and then. I started making music around the same time. Then No Jumper started getting to the level like where it is now.  Both were progressing simultaneously.

It went from people only knowing me from that dude on the No Jumper Blog, to people saying I rock with your music. I thought people only knew me from the podcast, but more recently a lot of people have been reaching out who know my music and have no idea I was affiliated with No Jumper.

rubyhornet: What is your favorite place to shop (besides Pacsun)?

Lil House Phone: I'm more of an in-house brand type of dude. I would rather find some random cool brands no one knows about and hit them up in Instagram. I'm really into random workmen wear like Carhartt. I'm wearing some tree camo wranglers right now.

rubyhornet: Any new music to let the fans know about?

Lil House Phone: My album Voice Mails 2 is on the way. I'm also doing two other side projects. I want to do this whole west coast style project called 310, since I'm from LA but I'm known for making trap sounding music. Nedarb and I are going to put out a 5-6 song EP pretty soon also.

by Collin Covert