Coolest Person in the Room: Alex Porat

I’m curious about Toronto. So many musicians are coming out of Toronto. What's your creative community like there?

There's a big entertainment industry here, but everyone knows everyone so it feels small in that way. If I go to LA for music, I'm always somehow linking up with other Canadians. For some reason I see more Canadian musicians, songwriters, producers and friends in the States than I do in Toronto. We're always like, “We’ll find each other.” And then when I'm here [in Toronto], I'm like, “I'm having a Toronto summer,” but I'm all over the place and confused these days. I haven't really settled into summer because I've been running around, but I think I'll settle into the summer now that I'm here in Toronto [for a while].

What have you been running around doing? Are you already back in music making mode?

You've been doing music since you were a kid, posting covers on YouTube. Do you ever spend time reflecting on your trajectory?

Every time I’m about to hit a rock bottom, I force myself to think about my past. It's the only thing that reminds me that life is actually so short. When I was a kid, every adult used to tell me, “Life is short. You have to do what you love.” In North America, people really push this dream of, “You can do anything you want,” which is not the same thing that people chase all around the world. A lot of different places push more conventional [trajectories], like “study and become a doctor.”

My parents are super educated and very smart. They're the wisest people I know, and I go to them for everything. They always supported me going through an educational route, but for some reason, when I expressed how much I loved music as a kid, they really supported me in that. So looking back, I feel really lucky to have had a family that was so supportive of me doing music, even though they are both also immigrants who sacrificed so much in their lives to build a life here. Sometimes I don't even know who I'm doing [music] for. Sometimes I'm doing it for me, but I also feel a lot of responsibility. I do it for all the years of sacrifice that people have spent [on my music career], like my parents taking me to auditions. Or even for the times where I could have been hanging out with friends, and instead was taking dance classes.

Also there are kids that are young now that are looking up to people in entertainment and being like, “I want to be you.” And sometimes I think, You gotta really love it, because it is torture sometimes. But also encouraging people to go into this insane industry and build thick skin is important, because otherwise, we're never going to have art anymore. As I get older, I realize that the slow burn is the best route, because I feel so prepared. I don't know when I'll have a moment where I'll be like, “Oh, I made it.” But even if it doesn't come, I'm just enjoying the journey, even though it's paired with suffering at times.

Can you take me back to when you were blowing up online and were then transitioning into making your own music? The YouTube world and the music world can be very different.

So different. I was doing the YouTube stuff as a last resort. I started doing it as a kid, and a lot of the videos are private now. My mom would come and film me on a camera, which I literally still have and use today. It's my favorite digicam. I was 12 years old, posting videos on YouTube, and then at a certain point, I was at university. I was just feeling like if I stayed in university, finishing my degree, and then going to something like law school, I would have regretted not trying harder.

I always knew that YouTube and the internet would be the way I was able to reach people. To be a creative nowadays, you have to be so delusional. [You have to be like], “I don't even care. I gotta keep going, because, one day it's gonna work.” I did that for so many years with maybe 50 views on a video, and I just never stopped. That is a testament to the idea that if you just keep going and keep trying and are consistent, one day, something will hit. Even when I was getting 50 views on video, I was so happy with that, which is crazy, because eventually it all started snowballing and then I had videos that hit 10 million views. And those videos ended up pouring into other videos. And then I don't even know what the numbers are now, because I can't even believe that happened.

But it was great, because I was unmanaged and didn't know what to do, so I just kept doing it. And then my amazing manager found me, and I love her so much. Before I met her, I was doing original music. I just had no idea how to go about it. And being an independent artist... it is hard out here. Like with any creative industry, it's never clear what you're supposed to be doing.

What does your day to day look like? Do you have a routine?

I don't have a routine. I've been reading a lot recently. It’s the only thing that can get my mind to not think about music or social media. Coming from a YouTube background, I love social media so much. I’ve seen the waves of us loving and hating it, but I have so much belief in social media, because I think it connects people in ways that nothing else really can. You can reach the other side of the world and we’re so lucky to have that. So knowing that there are tools right at my fingertips that I can access at all times of the day has made it really hard for me to not feel bad about putting [my phone] down for a second. So when I wake up, I try to have a coffee and refocus. I love making lists, so I'll make an insane, giant list for a day. I'm a Capricorn. And because I'm independent, we have a really small team — it's myself and three girls on the management side. We have people in the support roles, like agents and distribution, but the management squad is really zoned in on these little things. There are so many little tasks that have to happen. I never thought as a kid, I would be like, “One day I'm going to track down an invoice for my managers.” It’s little things like that.

Do you have a uniform that gets you through your day to day?

You mentioned your new EP, crushed! I'm curious to hear a little bit more about that experience, and if there was a moment in creating it that felt like a creative breakthrough?

crushed! is the first time I've written anything remotely happy. That has a lot to do with me being in a healthy relationship for the first time ever. My exes would hate to hear that, but I’m understanding what it's like to feel happy again in my personal life. It's always so hard, working in the music industry, which is so emotionally consuming, when your personal life is not doing the best too. It feels terrible. Anytime I would walk into a session, all I could pull from were these experiences that just shattered me. But when I was doing crushed!, I really drew from my real life … like having this insane crush on my now-boyfriend, who is my drummer, which is really hot tea. He's the best. He's the most stable, grounding person, and I feel so lucky to have him on stage with me, too. It's such an interesting dynamic that's played out. But a lot of the songs are about him. It’s so weird that he has to play them behind me. And I'm like, "This must be so awkward for you."

But crushed! was definitely a breakthrough moment in that I was writing happy songs for the first time. Like, Oh yeah, I actually can do that. Because for a long time I didn't think I could. So I'm having so much fun. And I'm actually living that on stage, because I love performing, and feel so happy when I'm performing. I was misaligned [performing] a lot of the old music, because I was actually really happy and I was performing these songs where I was ripping into people.

You’ve been spotlighted by Asian powerhouse collectives like 88rising and Gold House, and Spotify has featured you on a billboard in Times Square for AAPI Heritage Month. How do you view your role in representing Asian artists in the pop space?

The Asian North American Experience is such a specific one. Also being half-Asian, I'm having a very specific experience growing up in North America, because there are privileges that I benefit from. A lot of times, people just don't know what [ethnicity] I am at all. That anonymity caused an identity crisis and made it difficult to know who I was as a kid. Now as an adult looking back, I wish there was some way I could have known that it was all going to be okay. I wouldn't trade my experience for anything. But I definitely felt very alone as a kid: being in North America with no one that looked like me, and no Asian people in the spotlight on TV, or on the radio. The industry has come so far. Having really honest conversations with other Asians in North America that work in the industry has been really helpful. Our experiences are unique in ways, but similar in so many ways too. And those ideas apply to so many people in North America, not even just Asians. It’s like, wow, our differences have brought us all together.

But it's definitely been a struggle from the get-go. That's why I turned to YouTube. I was not having any success. I was auditioning for so many things as a kid, commercials, singing TV shows, singing competitions. It was “no’s” left, right, everywhere. I was coming out crying from auditions. It was just so much rejection that I faced as a kid. Over time, I was like, I just can't do this anymore. The only place where I'm going to be given a platform is the internet. Because I just wanted to express myself. That's all I really wanted to do. I didn't care about views at that point. I was just like, I just want to be able to sing to people. So I turned to YouTube, and I also sang a lot in this Asian mall in Vancouver in the food court. I would just go sing karaoke every weekend, and I just took every chance I got to do music. And that really helped. But I did feel very alone in the sense that nobody would accept me in the industry. And thankfully, that's getting a lot better. And I think the conversations that people are having are making it a lot better.

Are you manifesting anything for your career’s next chapter?

There are so many things I’m manifesting. I really want to have a really great headline tour in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia... all the continents. I would love to go everywhere. Canada is happening, but the US and Europe will be next. And then I would love to have a couple collaborations, either with new music or with some of the stuff that's already out. I love working with friends. There's just so much. I’m non-stop thinking of new and fun things to do.

This article is a collaboration between Urban Outfitters and PAPER.

Photography: Diego Villagra Motta
Styling: Dennis LaRay
Makeup: Porsche Cooper
Hair: Dom Forletta
Set design: Eric Vidmar

Styling assistant: Truc Minh Vo
Production assistant: Rob Plonskier
Videography: Bri Mancini

Chief creative officer & CEO: Brian Calle
President: Jason Ve
VP of brand partnerships: Jamie Granoff
Managing editor: Matt Wille
Senior strategist: Aires Amor
Producer: Aya Sloan
Story: Tobias Hess

All clothing by Urban Outfitters