Can you tweet that you were going to change your name so you could do a little collaboration with your boy Snoop? Snoop Lion?

Yes, Snoop Lion. Most definitely.

Mikey Novak here for Young Hollywood at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where fans are streaming in to see Derek Smith, aka Pretty Lights. I am here with the man that is Pretty Lights, Derek Smith. How are you?

I'm doing good.

Thank you very much for talking to me today. We're at a very small little venue, the Shrine Auditorium and you're performing here tonight, as I can see by your awesome setup behind us. I don't know, man. The West Coast is picking up on the Pretty Lights sound. Well, let's yeah, let's talk about that because you have your career is sort of taken off, but it's taken off at an exponential level. And electronic music is sort of becoming so much more mainstream. Do you think there's a day that like let's say the Academy Awards were here. Do you think there's going to be a day anytime where electronic music, like you would be performing there?

Oh, yeah. I'm going to take the mic from you on that one. Definitely. I mean, I came from a different world than electronic music. I came from the hip-hop world, but I like fuse them together. Kind of like the dude who represents hip-hop in electronic music and so many artists in the scene are trying to push the envelope in all kinds of ways from the production of the show, to the way that it's performed, to the styles and genres of music and even the approach.

So your album's coming out later this year. Um, and then you said it was sort of going to be like there was going to be some live tracks on it. Give me some sort of like an from the tour, give me an idea a little taste of what fans can expect.

Um, I've been talking about this a lot lately, and um, we're actually filming um a documentary about the making of this record because it's so completely different and unique and uh basically no one has ever made a record like this before. And I could talk about it for hours, but to really sum it up, it's like I'm making a electronic hip-hop record in 2012 with all equipment from like the 1960s, early '70s. It's like it's insane the process that, you know, I went through to create this record. It gives it an extremely unique sound. I you know, every piece of gear was from that era. We recorded it to tape. Pressed everything to vinyl before even starting working on the album, you know? You know, even the synthesizers were like those old school wall size synthesizers that looked like telephone operator, you know, boxes. Find all this stuff. Like the synths, I built it. I built it, man. It's been a very purist idealistic record where everything was kept old school, vintage, analog, warm, but I produced it in a 2012 style, you know, like pushing the envelope with the with the genres and the beats and the music and it's fresh and, you know, it nothing sounds like it. So that's all I can really hope for.

Let's say you could have your ultimate collab, anybody in the band. Who would be in that band? I know Snoop Lion would be in that band because you tweeted about him.

He would definitely be an ideal collaborator. Uh, but, you know, I've been working on a new record for uh, the last couple years, actually. It's been a massive project and I've worked with so many musicians and I've met a bunch of really cool cats in that process that, uh, that would make up a ridiculous Pretty Lights live soul funk electro hip-hop band.

Who are your inspirations growing up? And how did your style sort of come of that?

Well, you know, I listened to hip-hop that was big when I was in middle school, you know, like the Wu-Tang Clan and a lot of underground stuff, but when it came to hip-hop production, hip-hop instrumental electronic kind of music, it's actually really cool because my biggest inspiration is the artist that is playing with me tonight. Uh, opening the show, DJ Shadow. And, uh, he's been around for a minute, and he's been making incredible music for a long time, and, um, and, you know, his record in 1996, Introducing, is definitely what got me what got me into the game of of producing music, you know?

You you've kind of been known, like, in the past, you sort of gave out free music to your fans, and it kind of upset the music world a little bit. You've sort of turned your you're constantly sort of turning the music world upside down. Is there going to be more of that to come?

Well, I mean, I just started giving my music out for free at the beginning of my career because I wanted people to hear it. And I kept doing it. It eventually worked and I kept doing it because it, uh, kept the the momentum going for for the live shows and for the touring. And, um, created an extremely loyal and respectful relationship between my my fans and and and myself, and I realized that I can make a living and and live comfortably and make music and play shows, you know, I could give my music away for free and it would just accelerate that, you know? There's no way I'm going to move away from my from my roots, I guess you would call it. The the distribution model that that that I pioneered, I'm going to I'm going to, you know, keep giving my my music out to my fans if they want to listen to it, you know? I may ask for people to to support me in some way if they can, but if they can't, I ain't going to keep it from them, you know? Is I'm making music for people to enjoy, you know?

Thank you so much for chatting with us, Mr. Pretty Lights. Have a great tour.

Thank you for chatting with me. This is Derek Vincent Smith, Pretty Lights, on Young Hollywood. Peace.