Artist ‘NotKevinBacon’ started the year off right with the release of his mixtape “ThaFootlooseTape Volume 1”

Exposed Vocals just sat down with an amazing musician for an exclusive interview. Check it out below!

Kyle Jeffery Bacon, who goes by NotKevinBacon as his stage name, drops his first ever mixtape titled “ThaFootlooseTape Volume 1” right on January 2nd to start the year off with a unique vibe. Even though itʼs only the first half of the tape released only on SoundCloud & YouTube so far, it still consists of a solid 9 tracks lasting just over 22 minutes. The 18 year old Canadian born artist hasnʼt even been making music for very long at all, releasing his first song less than a year ago in July of 2018 while he only started writing music for no longer than 6 months before then. Having hundreds of music influences & inspirations –

Such as growing up his entire life listening to a range of hard 80s rock like AC/DC, LED Zeppelin, Pink Floyd etc and multi platinum producer Murda Beats since he grew up in the same hometown as him, Fort Erie, ON, NotKevinBacon seems to give off his own sort of alternative rap type vibe with some of the beats having very unique piano sampleʼs such as Snake Bite (if that makes any sense), but also have a range of other different type of beats such as harder dark 808ʼs that sound similar to Ronny J in tracks like Fuck Your Clout.

With tracks as diverse as the ones in the first half of ThaFootlooseTape Vol 1, Kyle
hopefully plans on releasing the 2nd half sometime in late February, beginning of March on all music platforms. Though Part 1 of the tape isnʼt released fully on platforms like Spotify & Apple Music, three tracks released before the tape (Footloose OnYourHoe, SmallTownBoolin & Scooby Snacks) are available on all platforms with other music as well by the artist you can still go peep.

Growing up and other interests and things about NotKevinBacon

Kyle was born on May 3rd, 2000 in a small town outside of Toronto named Midhurst, ON. Staying in Barrie, ON for most of his toddler years, he then moved to Fort Erie at the age of 5 & basically grew up there his entire life until present. With lots of hobbies & interests growing up because of his short attention span to certain things, they went from drawing maps to playing lots of video games & making gaming YouTube videos to even Skateboarding & Scootering and the list can go on.

Throughout his childhood he had lots of different music inspirations from various genres like Rock, Metal, Alternative Rock, Hip Hop, R&B, Pop etc. Each genre he constantly listened to at some point in his life, since he claims he had certain music phases like everyone does throughout their life, but overall music has always been a big part of Kyleʼs life and in his family. But even though music has always held a place in his heart, he sayʼs he never would have thought heʼd ever start making music if you would have asked him less than 2 years ago.

Exclusive Interview

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

I was originally born in a really small town just right outside Barrie, ON but moved to Fort Erie when I was five since it’s closer to family so I consider myself more from Fort Erie.  I honestly never thought I’d ever start making music, but I feel like as I got older I started to appreciate more music & genres & get heavily influenced by a lot more artists than I did before which steered me into the direction of one day trying to actually write to a beat myself and it was a lot more fun & relaxing than I expected. I feel like what made me actually decide to become an aritst is after I first tried writing to music I started to do it a lot more as a hobby because not only did it get more fun the more practice I got but it was one of the only ways for me to be able to express how I was feeling and helps me really open up to my problems and is one of the only ways I can open up about my thoughts and how I really feel. I feel like when I realized that my music started to develop more of a meaning behind it because of how I express myself on my tracks it made me want to become an artist and make music for the pure joy of it.

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

To be honest I’d still consider myself as “starting up” since I’ve only had one gig before and have less than 3,000 all time plays on SoundCloud, but my one tip is if you are very underground and want to book a venue/gig somewhere and you’re worried about how many people are going to show up, stop overthinking. Your first shows are always going to have a very few select for the audience but no matter how many people are watching you still perform from your heart like there’s a thousand people watching because either way it’s your concert.

Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?

I have had mistakes and so have countless amount of aritsts have them too during sets. Not being able to rap my whole verse without losing breath can get annoying and screw up my performance, but what helps is only spitting no longer than 4-8 bars at a time then pausing for 2 to 3 bars to catch a breath but you stay in sync with the music still so it helps a lot.

Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?

I have never toured, nowhere near exposed enough for that but hopefully one day.

Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?

At the moment we always cook up at my buddies crib since he has a studio setup in his room but I’m planning to make a studio in my room for this year if not by the summer then by the time I head to college

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

I try to post it on social media as much as I can, promoting it on Instagram sometimes can help depending on what you set the promotion setting as but other than finding people to publish your music on music blogs through Fiverr I just post my link to SoundCloud on my story or post it for people to get to from my account

Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?

Man there’s so many artists & places to choose from but I know for a fact my two dream places to perform would be Vancouver and my hometown just because both atmospheres would be a vibe. It’d either be with Billie Eilish or Murda Beatz id perform with. Even though there’s so many people to choose from I chose Murda just since he’s made a huge impact on me with his come up on how he’s from the same hometown as myself & almost everyone doubted on him when he was trying to chase his dream and him coming back to perform in his hometown would be like a huge fat “I TOLD YOU SO” to all his haters. I also chose Billie since she’s one of the first artists that sings that hugely inspired & impacted me musically and on so many emotional levels and her music has uplifted me out of my darkest times so performing with her would honestly be a dream come true.

Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

ThaFootlooseTape Volume 1 Part 2 will be out sometime in mid to late February on all platforms but for now Part 1 of the tape is out on SoundCloud for all of y’all to go and peep.

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

Go to college for Film & Production like I already am doing but if I wasn’t making music I still feel like I’d still somehow be involved in the music industry by filming & editing music videos or even doing interviews.

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in the next year or so?

Just a shit ton of new music & visuals for the culture.

Exposed Vocals: Any Shout-outs?

Shout-out to the brother Ri Ri3500 who also has SoundCloud and is literally a young legend in the making right now and we’re doing this music shit together. Shout-out to Jordan Abbott for all that studio time we be grinding on that’s free of charge and inviting us to his crib to make mad music for the absolute fun of it, he has SoundCloud as well which is his name. Shout-out to the homies Big Jaaee, Lotus Flow and the rest of the family that supports me doing this music. Thanks again for having me!!