Check out our exclusive interview with viral sensation and creator of “Who R U”, JUFU!
JUFU
We got a chance to sit down and speak with JUFU, the creator of the viral songs “Who R U” and “Woahh”. Starting out as a comedy artist on music.ly, JUFU transitioned into creating music for TikTok and now shares his music on YouTube and Spotify. The 19-year-old creator is a rapper, singer, and music producer who is the next break out star off the platform after acts such as Lil Nas X. His newest song, “Who R U” has amassed over 25 million views across platforms, drawing the attention of Will Smith, Steve Harvey, and even Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro. “Who R U” has become known as the soundtrack for being who you are and being comfortable in your own skin. Jufu sets himself apart from other artists coming from TikTok by reaching everyone from all generations to fight social negativity and spreading a message to stay true to yourself.
Check out our interview with him below!
The Knockturnal: You went to the same high school as Joey Bada$$ and it was around that time that people like A$AP were running New York. Were you thinking about that when you were at school?
JUFU: It was very cool to me. I didn’t really think about it always, but I did tell myself that when I was leaving the school that I wouldn’t go back until I have the hallways crowded because of me being in the school. When Joey would visit like people would go crazy.
The Knockturnal: At the time, when you were in high school, was comedy still at the forefront? At what age did you start diving into music?
JUFU: Switching to music was 18, so literally like last year.
The Knockturnal: What brought about the change? What was it exactly that inspired you and motivated you to try music?
JUFU: It was partially just being in school and experimenting in recording through the music technology program, and I just felt like I’ve just kept getting better and better. So, eventually, I just started putting things out, and that’s pretty much how that worked.
The Knockturnal: When you were younger, were you an entertainer or into those types of things? When you were little, what did you think you were gonna be when you grew up?
JUFU: I played guitar when I was 9. I started when I was 9. That was the first form of like entertainment. I then stepped away from it for a little bit and got into the comedy realm, and social media became my life. And then, music became my life again.
The Knockturnal: In your upbringing, did you have any type of musical influences? Was your family supportive of the comedy and the music, and the risks of those careers?
JUFU: So, when I started Vine, I was 13. I kind of took a step back from everybody, the entire world including my parents. I’d just be in my room. I’m an only child so I’m just always by myself shooting in my room. My dad specifically just started coming to a point where he just was wondering “what is Julian going to do? Julian needs to figure this out because the social media thing is not working for him, it’s not gonna work for him.” So, that’s pretty much how I feel like my family felt about it. But my parents do remind me that from a very young age – actually when I was like first born, they felt that something was special about me. So they didn’t know what was gonna happen, but they knew that I was gonna do something big.
The Knockturnal: When did your parents get on board?
JUFU: My mom started tapping into social media around, I want to say, like 2017 when musical.ly was transitioning into TikTok, and my mom just like started telling me, “Get onTikTok, get on TikTok, get on TikTok.” I was already on musical.ly, which is TikTok. But then I took a break from it because I had a really young audience on musical.ly, and initially I was saying to myself like I want an older audience because I want to start making music. Then I came to realize like kids are a very, very strong piece of what helps artists prosper and I can’t just neglect that. So, I took my mom’s advice, went back to TikTok, and it was probably the best decision ever.
The Knockturnal: So why did you leave musical.ly? Was music something you were just experimenting with?
JUFU: To musical.ly I was doing comedy videos still, and I just felt like because my audience was as young as like seven and up and, pretty much I wanted to start doing like screaming type of music and like very ignorant, cursing music cause that was the wave, and that was I like this is not gonna work. I wanted a new audience so I was willing to just pretty much throw away musical.ly and just find a way to start over.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4nqPztF9oO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The Knockturnal: What do your friends do? Were there people around you who encouraged you to try music or it was something already in your head?
JUFU: A lot of people in my high school in the music technology program were doing music together. A lot of them were featuring together and making music as a collective. I’ve personally felt I wasn’t taken seriously because I wasn’t good.
The Knockturnal: Why do you say that?
JUFU: I don’t know. When I first started, I feel like just listening back to my old stuff, I’m like: what the hell was I doing?
The Knockturnal: It’s funny how you said that no one was taking you seriously, because you were doing comedy so it’s hard for people to take you seriously.
JUFU: Exactly. Right. So, I’m literally just going home every day. I bought a $99 microphone and was just recording and then bringing it back to school and showing people what I did. And then, they play their stuff, and I’m like “ehhhhh”. So their stuff was really good and, just like when I was making videos and isolating myself in my room, it was the same thing with music. I just started to keep my recordings to myself and just constantly improve my sound.
The Knockturnal: So there’s a lot of music you’re sitting on that you just had over the past two years that people haven’t heard?
JUFU: Yes. I would never release a lot of them because they’re just bad to me. But then some of them are good. Some, it’s like I don’t know. Sometimes I go back and then I think about reviving some of my projects.
The Knockturnal: What was the first positive reaction you saw from the first release that you put out?
JUFU: First release was the song called ‘Woahh’ on TikTok. That initially came out because there was this “Woah Challenge” going on and I was just like “why don’t I create my own song for the challenge?” And I did that; made a video. People started making videos to that sound. It had around 600 to 700,000 videos. And it was really dope because it was just cool, like people like the song. Initially it was just a 15-second song that I made specifically for TikTok and then when I started to see the demand—like people searching it in on YouTube, then I decided to make the full song.
The Knockturnal: Did you expect such a positive reaction? Were you expecting your comedy fans to be into your music? Or were you pretty confident?
JUFU: For the most part, I’ve, I felt confident because I had to reach a certain level of confidence for me to actually release things.
The Knockturnal: Now bring us to your newest release, can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind it and the production in general. You’ve been making music now for two years? Three years? Also, what is the recording process like?
JUFU: Yeah like two years. So “Who RU?” was inspired by watching ‘Rush Hour. There’s a scene with Chris Tucker talking to the sensei and he’s like, ‘Who are you?’ And then the guy’s name is Yu. Yeah, so that’s comedy tied into what I’m doing. And the process is pretty much just: How can I come up with a song that people can make videos too? And in terms of like finding beats and stuff, I’m very, very picky when it comes to selecting beats. That song initially, I found it via YouTube and I just liked the bounce of it. I was specifically looking for something with a bounce. I feel like really bouncy, and very bouncy beats that are primarily just drums and less melody tend to do very well on TikTok specifically.
The Knockturnal: Can you explain how hashtag/dance challenges have brought you success on social media?
JUFU: I think it’s been a very strong part of the success of my record. “WHO R U” is near 500,000 videos on TikTok and the streams translated over to Spotify is around 2-2.5 million. Spotify is 5.8 million. Everything is crazy to me, honestly! This song has made it everywhere, from within the platform of TikTok and it just blossomed out and people incorporated it on to YouTube.
The Knockturnal: How do you reflect on “going viral” or having viral fame, it’s not something we had 10 years ago?
JUFU: That’s very weird to think about. It’s something I’ve never actually thought about until now. It’s a very interesting feeling. The “Who R U” song is a song that I imagined being such a global song that anybody and everyone can remember it in the future. I don’t even know where to start feeling about that.
The Knockturnal: Who do you admire in the game?
JUFU: I’ve mentioned this in pretty much every interview but X is a huge inspiration for me. In terms of the way that I carry myself, my life agenda is pretty much inspired by X. What I mean by that is, my agenda is to leave a positive impact on absolutely everyone that I can. In terms of musical inspiration, just his versatility, it makes me feel like it’s fine to be an artist that’s doing rock, hip hop, and R&B.
The Knockturnal: Will there be a music video for WHO R U?
JUFU: Yes, in the beginning of December we’re reshooting and it’s going to be with a bunch of influencers. Meg Donnelly, she’s a Disney actress and artist, will be in it. I have a lot of relationships with a ton of YouTubers and stuff, and that’s due of my social media background. I noticed that since I’ve been transitioning from solely being a content creator to an artist/creator, people have been reaching out to me more often than me reaching out to them. So many things have been happening in the last four months and it’s very different for me.
The Knockturnal: Do you feel the fact that you are somewhat of a viral sensation in your neighborhood? Have you experienced someone recognize you?
JUFU: Yes. I actually did have 2 people who lived on my block who recognized my house from my videos. Other than that I just get noticed at the most random places that I least expect.
JUFU in his music video “Woahh”
The Knockturnal: Is it strange to you that it hasn’t necessarily hit the physical or geographical location of where you live but globally you have an impact?
JUFU: Yes. It’s really frustrating too because it feels like if I want to do a show somewhere, it’s gonna be hard because everyone is literally everywhere around the world. I just gotta work hard to connect.
The Knockturnal: Tell me a little bit performance-wise, what’s been your favorite show you’ve done so far and how long have you been doing it?
JUFU: My first performance was like 4 weeks ago, here downstairs. But my favorite was at a middle school that I did last Friday. That was just amazing. The energy was phenomenal, everybody was singing the song. I wish I knew the words—I couldn’t put it into words. It was my first-time kind of visually seeing my impact and we were saying that if I wanted to, I had control where I can tell all the kids, let’s run throughout the entire school! We didn’t do anything crazy. Pretty much, what I’m saying is they would’ve just gone against all school security and just did whatever I said. That would’ve been fun. They chased me out when all these kids just started running up.
The Knockturnal: That’s crazy. Whats like.. the age range right now of your fans? Cus you said middle school but, you know. it sounds like they went crazy
JUFU: In terms of “Who R U” fans, I’d say it’s probably concentrated between the ages of um..12 and 16. um..But like then again, there’s some people above and some people younger
The Knockturnal: If you’re doing shows in NY or in general, do you think that because given the fact that a lot of your audience is on the younger side, would you be doing shows that are like all audiences, 16+, etc.?
JUFU: So, when performing “Who R U”, I’m very picky about who is consuming it as of right now. Until it becomes more of a song that people are just familiar with, kind of like Old Town Road. That’s where I envision it being but when you hear my other music you’ll definitely see like ‘oh, he can do this for any crowd.’
The Knockturnal: Do you have any other projects coming up?
JUFU: Top of next year, there’s a project coming.
