That moment in your career when your favourite website starts knocking, when management starts calling and labels start asking about you…
This is the position the 21-year-old NYU student Sam Lassner finds himself in. With years of musical knowledge under his belt – thanks to an electric guitar he acquired after proving to his parents he could learn 10 songs in two weeks – Prince Fox now finds himself making many difficult decisions that will soon shape his career… Along with the rest of his life.
With a name derived from The Little Prince, a novel which held a special place for him growing up, Prince Fox has followed what felt right to him in making music and settled with a perfectly tailored style. It’s all starting for this young man at the moment and we’re thrilled to have him featured on one of the sites that he followed so religiously on his journey through dance music.
With his remixes for the likes of 3LAU, Sam Smith, Route 94 and even Deadmau5, this young gun has sure proven his sound is unique and unlike anyone else in the game right now. Remix after remix we’re dying for an original, and – finally! – it’s coming.
His remixes on his Soundcloud page should be enough reason to have him on your radar. Likewise his recent debut headline show in LA… Not only did he play to a sold out crowd, but also stacked the club over capacity with people lined up outside to get in!
For good measure, here are three more reasons why Prince Fox should be on your radar…
He’s educated, passionate and has always known music was for him.
“I became completely obsessed with how the guitar sounded at a young age, so when my parents bought me an electric guitar I started recording myself and manipulating the sounds. Then the summer going into my senior year of high school I went to this program at NYU, which was a summer course version of music technology program that I currently attend, and I fell in love with production.
After standing in the bass music tent for the better part of the day, I instantly became intrigued…
Around that time of summer program my God-Grandmother became really sick with cancer and her passing away early during my freshman year, caused me to slow down a bit on guitar and submerge myself further into production. Additionally, it was around then that I had my first electronic dance music live experience. I went to Electric Zoo and after standing in the bass music tent for the better part of the day, I instantly became intrigued with the production of electronic music.”
He’s explored different sounds and stayed true to the music that feels right to him.
“When I first began the Prince Fox Project, I put out two moombahton/nu jump up style remixes and those did better than anything I released under my real name previously. Then I fell into producing trap and twerk music for the better part of 2013. It just seemed like a very quick fix in putting things out and getting a bunch of traction on social media, but it didn’t feel like the same open outlet that music normally was for me.
I very much missed writing songs, chords, harmonies, and melodies. I then went nearly radio silent, cracking away at an EP of all original content for about two and a half months. It was at that point that I became nervous again that perhaps my silence would affect my social media presence, so I quickly thought that I should put out a remix that would be in a similar style to the EP.
It was then that I put together my remix of 3lau’s How You Love Me, which ended up being a huge help for my social media. I sent it around to my blogger friends and it really took off. I knew I had to follow up with something just as good so I put together the Route 94 & Sam Smith remixes which also really helped my social media, and industry presence. That’s really when more industry figures started contacting me. It all happened really fast. Now I’m sitting on around 15 originals that I’m waiting to finish with a few vocalists on and really trying to be selective and find the right home [release/ label wise] for the material. It’s all very exciting but it’s coming with a lot of really hard decisions.
A lot of people are calling my style future bass. But my ultimate goal is to take future bass and future house, mix it with a bit of progressive influence and add a more indie/pop type of topline. Maybe we’ll call it future pop, that’s what I’m going for.”
His musical influences come from across the board, which definitely play into his unique sound.
“As strange as it sounds, my musical influences have always been pretty similar. Even when I was making trap music if you asked me who I could listen to any day of the week at any time it would for sure be John Mayer, Mark Ronson, Diplo, A Trak, a good portion of Skrillex and James Blake. Pretty much across the board. When I was making trap I was obviously referencing other people’s work but as far as what I was listening to, it didn’t change that drastically. Oh and Flume! He’s a huge influence for me especially recently. His drum work is crazy. No one has the samples he has and that’s crazy because so much of electronic music comes from a few very similar sample sets, yet nobody has his!
I also really respect what Porter Robinson has done. I’ve been a fan of his forever. He was another person that got me into trying to master these crazy sounds back in the day and the fact that he sort of took a step back and came forward with this album, essentially saying “this is what I’ve always listened to and this is who I actually am. This is a direct reflection of what I like and what I hope people will like.” And I feel like that’s where I’m trying to be with my stuff right now so I definitely respect him for that.”
Fresh out today, here’s Prince Fox’s latest endeavor… A remix of Florence And The Machine’s You’ve Got The Love. Keep your ears peeled for this guy, we expect big things from him and can’t wait to hear what’s next.
