Exclusive: Pi’erre Bourne Partners With Pepsi On Inaugural Pepsi Music Lab Launch

Pi’erre Bourne: Someone form my team and someone from Pepsi’s team got to talking, the opportunity presented itself to me and I would never turn that down.

The Knockturnal: What aspect about the Pepsi Music Lab program excites you the most? 

Pi’erre Bourne: They’re creating a platform for up-and-coming artists and giving them a chance for real, that’s rare. Nowadays you don’t really see situations like that so it’s really dope for them to shine more light on hip hop.

The Knockturnal: Are you excited to collaborate with these 3 upcoming artists from the Pepsi program?

Pi’erre Bourne: yeah definitely, I know with the selection process there’s gonna be so many people submitting their music and they’re gonna have to go through so much so that’s probably gonna be overwhelming for Pepsi, but I’m excited.

The Knockturnal:  Have you always been interested in artist development/discovery? 

Pi’erre Bourne: Honestly I’ve always been interested in artist discovery and development, I have my own label SossHouse and I have several artists that I am developing right now, so this situation isn’t gonna be too difficult to me because I’m so hands-on when I work with artists, so I enjoy building them and seeing them flourish without me even being around later on in the future.

The Knockturnal:  Can you tell us about SossHouse and the creative/business roles you play outside of being an artist/producer? 

Pi’erre Bourne: Running a label and working with artists can be a lot for others but it’s not overwhelming for me, I just have to wear several hats. Yesterday we had Rolling Loud and then my artist he needed studio time and I needed to make sure he had beats for the studio, so it’s a lot that most people would be overwhelmed with, but as long as I prepare beforehand I’ll always be prepared to deliver on whatever end they need me on, engineering wise or producing wise or coming up with strategies for their merch or how we’re gonna push the songs. I’m really hands on with everything, but I love hearing their input. I’ve never tried to tell them what to do. I sit back, see where their head is, I try to throw the ma couple pointers, and then we meet in the middle. One of my artists, Sharc, is on my album actually, on The Life of Pi’erre 5, on “Drunk and Nasty,” and that song did really really well. He was surprised because of all the features on the album, he wasn’t expecting his feature to pop off like that so that was cool for him to see then we went on tour to Europe, and then we did the U.S. tour so we been moving pretty much since the project has come out and then I have a few other artists like Chavo and a few more artists I’ve been working on, but we haven’t put out their music yet.

The Knockturnal: Can you tell us about your new collaborative project with TM88, YO!88? What’s your favorite track off the project and why?

Pi’erre Bourne: I just dropped a project with TM88 called YO!88, he produced all of the beats on the album with his production team Crash Dummy and I’ve been a fan of TM for years so to be able to work with him is an honor. My favorite song on the album, I would say probably “HomeComing” or “Richer Dreams” because I finally got to do a song with Young Nudy, and out of most relationships in the industry that’s like really family to me so for us to do a song – we never really cared about doing songs together we respected what we do and that was it, so for us to come together it was like two different worlds coming together on one song, I hope we can make more music in the future as far as us rapping together, but I’m cool with how everything has been with producing, I really enjoy working with Young Nudy.

The Knockturnal: Over the years you’ve released 8 collaborative projects, your latest being YO!88, what have been some of your favorite joint/collaborative projects throughout hip hop history? 

Pi’erre Bourne: Probably one of the early Future tapes like 56 Nights where he was locked in with 808Mafia and then I would also say Curren$y’s Pilot Talk, he worked with Ski Beatz for a majority of the project and Ski Beatz made the “Dead Presidents” beat for Jay-Z. That’s kinda where I got the concept from, Curren$y used to lock in with one producer and do a whole tape. He did a lot with The Alchemist and Harry Fraud, that’s one of artists I would say I kinda got that from.

The Knockturnal: What are your plans for 2022?

Pi’erre Bourne: Hopefully a lot more good music releasing, some cool videos. I really just want to get into more creative projects in general, hopefully, just me spreading my wings more.

The Knockturnal: Any more collaborations on the way with you and your artists?

Pi’erre Bourne: We got a lot of music coming out with SossHouse, that’s something that I’m always gonna continue to do and just keep building. I want to work with more artists and get into film.

Pi’erre Bourne: I’ve always wanted to be on T.V. since I was a child. I didn’t know what it would be, but I just wanted to see myself on T.V. I’ve always considered acting, but I never really knew anyone I could talk to about it because of my music background, that’s kind of the conversation that starts with everyone and it’s kinda hard to get out of that conversation, but living in Los Angeles and Hollywood  I’m just crossing my fingers every day that maybe I’m gonna run into a director.

The Knockturnal: Were you close at all to Virgil Abloh? And if so what’s the most important thing you learned from him?

Pi’erre Bourne: Me & Virgil were cool, I wasn’t the closest how everyone else was with him on a personal relationship, this year we kinda got cool and talked about a couple things. He sent me some Off-White stuff, and I was sharing my ideas with him and telling him my favorite color is purple and the Louis Vuitton store in New York, they had made it purple like later on in the year and we shot a scene of the “Hulu” video in front of the LV store when it was purple because the purple is close to another album cover I had that’s just a purple background – I’m not sure if our conversation sparked that, but it was cool to see. It is unfortunate losing a legend, he was a great tastemaker for our culture. Like I said when I first started this answer, I wasn’t really close to him yet. I worked with a lot of people that was close with him and they would always tell me “Virgil loves you.” I would always try to hit him up, but you know he was a busy guy. We finally got each others phone numbers earlier this year and we were talking and I told him about me tryna make my clothing line and I sent him a preview of it, for him to see it. It’s an unfortunate time and my condolences go out to his family, wife, and kids.