With that in mind, it was with a hint of trepidation that we posted Bobby Duque’s remix of Zedd’s Shotgun last month: Bobby Duque, you see, being brother to none other than Skrillex. The reaction to Duque’s tune was an unsurprising mix of “Not another Skrillex”, “Family whoring” and “I don’t see more deserving producer getting this attention”. Bobby Duque himself also responded to the article with the defense: “No, there’s not coat tails being ridden. Different sounds, different label, different artists. The only similarity is similar looking faces.” So before the ITM readership writes Bobby Duque (that’s Dew-kay) off, we thought it was only fair to speak to the producer directly and get the first-hand account of his career.
First up, it has to be said that that both Bobby Duque and his elder bro share a pretty similar musical style: call it complextro, brostep or (if you want to go that far) dubstep, the similarities are arguably there.
But 21 year old Duque maintains that his career is coattail-free. “I mean, we’re two different individuals,” he begins. “There’s really not much to say about it. He has his emotion that goes into his music and I have my own world and I put that into my music. Every artist has their own feel and though they may sound similar, it all comes from the heart. Mine does and his does.” Comparisons are, however, inevitable. “I mean, it’s just not necessarily that [comparisons] are frustrating. People know and people are gonna find out that we are biological brothers, but we kind of just do our own thing.”
Listen to his Track after the JUMP
It’s also worth noting that both Duque and Sonny Moore share similar musical beginnings. It’s now fairly common knowledge that before he shaved half his head and became Skrillex, Sonny Moore was the frontman of the hardcore band From First to Last. Similarly, Bobby Duque’s musical initiation was with the rock group Little Sleep.
But what was perhaps the most interesting revelation from our conversation with Bobby was that he and Skrillex didn’t actually grow up together. “We were raised in separate families,” Duque explains. “But we have the same biological parents.” In Rolling Stone’s compelling feature Skrillex: Eight Wild Nights and Busy Days With the Superstar, Moore revealed that he learnt as a teenager that he was adopted, and hasn’t seen his biological parents in years. “I don’t have time to fixate on who I was,” he told Rolling Stone. “I don’t ever want to analyse what I should be or shouldn’t be compared to someone else who wasn’t in my life.”
Bobby’s coy when it comes to what exactly that means for his and Moore’s relationship. I ask how his brother feels about him producing and he responds with a laugh: “I don’t know. He does what he does and I do what I do.” Would we ever see a Bobby Duque/Skrillex collaboration? “Um, you know, like I said he does his own thing and if he’s ever into it we’ll do it,” he answers. “But I don’t know.” That’s not to say he bears any ill will: “I’m very proud of what he’s accomplished, but I made my own path into the music world.”
So what is coming up for Bobby Duque? “I’m working on new music, just honing my skills and my art and pushing myself and getting myself known. I’m just trying to get any show I can get. Eventually I want to get on one of those cool festivals everyone seems to be playing. I just wanna have fun with it.”"
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