Today we’d like to introduce you to Harry Mack.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Harry. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ve been a musician my whole life. I started playing violin when I was seven and then in 5th grade, I knew I wanted to play the drums so I begged my parents to buy me a drum set and they finally agreed. Around the same time, I started really getting into hip-hop music and me and my friends would listen to whatever they were playing on the radio back then. It was the early 2000s so a lot of Nelly, Ludacris, Ja Rule and Ashanti but also some legends like Nas, Jay-Z, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and we just fell in love with the music.
Brady got some turntables for Christmas one year and that was it. Every day after school we would go hang out at Brady’s, he would spin records and we would try to freestyle. I was actually really shitty at freestyling when I first started. Brady would call me out for always using the same lines. We kept practicing and got better and better. It wasn’t hard to practice all the time because we loved doing it so much and we didn’t have other responsibilities because we were kids. This was all in Portland, OR where I grew up.
In 2008, I came down to Los Angeles to study jazz drumming at USC. It was dope and I got to learn from some world-class jazz musicians like Peter Erskine and Bob Mintzer. I was obviously practicing drums a lot at this time for my major but I was investing at least as much time in my freestyling as well. Every night in the dorms, me and my homies would freestyle for hours. They would test me with little games: rap about this subject, tell a story about this time in your life, etc. I even had a band back then with my buddies from the jazz program. It was all instrumental music and I would freestyle the verses. Those were fun times.
When I graduated from USC, I was trying to make it as a jazz drummer and to be honest, it was a struggle. I was scraping it together by playing shitty bar gigs and teaching drum lessons but I was barely making rent and the gigs I had weren’t creatively fulfilling. We were always being told to play quieter.
Then one day, my friend Jacob Mann, asked if I would help him with a video for his YouTube channel. He wanted to film me freestyling over his beat while driving down Sunset Boulevard. We did the video in 20 minutes, I forgot about it, and then a few days later I woke up from a nap and my roommate said: “bro you’re going viral right now!” Turns out that little video we made was up-voted to the top of Reddit Videos and got 100K views overnight. This was really eye-opening for me. It lit a fire inside me and made me say damn I didn’t know there’s such a big audience for what I do. I need to make a real push to be an emcee. Since then, I haven’t looked back.
I’ve been super blessed to rap in front of some of my favorite artists like Kendrick Lamar and Joey Bada$$, and I even got to be on the Ellen DeGeneres show. I dropped my debut EP “Contents Under Pressure” in January 2019 and I’m currently working on more video content and music.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Making a career in the arts is never a smooth road. There have definitely been ups and downs for me. But honestly, the biggest challenge has been overcoming my own fears and insecurities about putting my art out into the world. For years, my friends would tell me that I should do something with my rapping but I was always too afraid of the potential for failure. I’m sort of a perfectionist and in my mind, I’ll never be as good as the legends who have inspired me. I’ve learned that I have to push past these insecurities if I want to have a career in music. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling insecure about my own art, but I do know that goods things happen when I’m creating and sharing my work.
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
I’m most known for freestyling, which means improvised rap. I’ve always been really into improv. When I was a little kid, my mom would always tell me to make up songs on the spot. And when I started getting more serious about drumming, jazz music really appealed to my spontaneous nature.
I love the idea of creating something out of nothing and pulling music from thin air and I love seeing people’s reactions when they realize a rap is being crafted on the spot in front of them and even sometimes about them. The energy is really magical and all-around positive.
I first got noticed when my Venice Beach freestyle video went viral in February 2017. In the video, I was rapping out on the boardwalk about the groups of people passing by. I was able to form a crowd in this really organic way and I was rapping about everyone’s outfits and the things that were happening around us. I’ve continued to make videos in this style and currently have a series on my YouTube channel called “Guerrilla Bars.” I called it that because I wanted it to be understood in a similar context as guerrilla theater or street magic. It’s really cool to perform in front unsuspecting people and see their faces light up when they realize they’re part of something special.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Honestly, I would’ve started releasing music a long time ago. I don’t regret how it happened because I’ve had a lot of really incredible opportunities in these past couples of years. Because I spent so much time practicing before I finally shared my craft, my skill set as a freestyler was very well developed by the time my first video came out which may have helped me in some ways. But the truth is, all those years I was too afraid to put my music out, I could’ve been creating opportunities for myself and establishing myself as an artist. All I know is that I’m happy to be releasing music now and I’m really excited to keep going and to no longer be operating from a place of fear.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.harrymackofficial.com
- Email: management@harrymackofficial.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harrymack/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harrymack
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/harrymack
Image Credit:
Katrina Lofaro
Justin James
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