Trap legends Flosstradamus will provide Madisonians a perfect excuse to ditch midterms and turn up on a Wednesday.
On Nov. 16, Chicago natives Josh Young (J2k) and Curt Cameruci (Autobot) unleash the Hi Def Youth tour to the Orpheum with some prestigious support from Slushii, Towkio and Whethan.
A part of their Hi Def Youth Tour, their concert in Madison is set to be one of the biggest since the group’s inception. This year, the trap legends are going all out by acquiring big names as support. Curt described the show as “that one level of Mario Brothers where everything gets giant.”
Since DJing mainly at local bars and parties in Chicago around 2006, Flosstradamus has amassed the peak of success in their field by headlining festivals around the world, including Coachella and Electric Forest, embarking on several nationwide tours and cultivating an extremely dedicated following entitled, HDYNATION.
The origin of the phrase that envelopes all things Flosstradamus began with the origin of the artists themselves. Many artists in the Chicago area had ‘boyz’ at the end of their names, and because the duo often wore hoodies while performing, their name HDYBOYZ emerged, from which HDYNATION took its inspiration.
Three months ago, the duo released the anthem, “Came Up,” featuring lyrics from Post Malone and collaborations from Graves and FKi 1st. Paired with a music video depicting Flosstradamus’ rise to fame, the song explores the world of the young artists as they tried to construct a different music scene in their native Chicago.
He explained that at the beginning of their journey, the duo wasn’t thinking of music as a career — they simply enjoyed bringing their unique sound to local parties and bars. However, at some point Young and Cameruci felt that they had fully tapped the party scene and decided to begin producing original music around 2011.
“It stepped us up to a different level,” Young said.
In a genre completely dominated by the internet today, the duo are pioneers of using the world wide web to its fullest advantage. They are both 100 percent self taught, and explained that they learned everything they know about producing, designing and mixing from YouTube tutorials, something they claim many people can learn from.
“Yeah, I think most producers now are sort of [teaching themselves]. There are some kids that go to some of the music schools, but I feel like a lot of people are doing that,” Cameruci said. “Even our photographers and videographers that we have, everyone’s learning stuff from the internet.”
For their next venture, the duo created their own label under the moniker Hi Def Youth in order to facilitate younger artists and the numerous demos they receive daily. Currently, the only release on the label is an EP from Party Thieves titled Undrafted. Rather than focus on their own music, Flosstradamus is fully prepared to commit to the role of label heads and anticipate more music from upcoming artists in early 2017.
Above all, the group has managed to remain relevant, somehow steadily growing in overall popularity and premise even with the immense success from early on in their careers. This tour, and specifically this show at the Orpheum, with support from Slushii, can be seen as a culmination of more than a decade of dedication to the craft of DJing and production as well as one of the best EDM concerts to come through Madison this semester.
“We’ve just been grinding non-stop. A lot of artists have a pretty quick, meteoric rise to fame because the internet moves things along so quickly now, but we’ve been in this for 11 years and it’s been a journey from step one to where we are today,” Young said.
