ericdoa loves video games. Beyond it being a thing to do in his downtime, video games provide prime inspiration for his highly original music. Storytelling and worldbuilding are cornerstones to his sounds and why he has found fans in the short couple of years of his nascent career. With luck, this could help him change music forever.
The 19-year-old has been able to turn a lot of heads since posting songs on Soundcloud in 2020. The popular TV show Euphoria featured his song “sad4whattt,” while personalities as diverse as Charli XCX, The Kid Laroi, Trippie Redd, and Addison Rae have all spoken of their admiration for the singer. He is slated to appear at this year’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, and things are only looking up from here. This is thanks to his unique music that blends trap, pop, indie rock, electronics, and experimentation into something seldom heard before — a quality that led to him to sign with Interscope Records. This is only the beginning for ericdoa.
Music has been part of ericdoa’s life since early in his life, as his family has been very musically inclined, counting a multi-instrumentalist grandfather and great uncle Monchito Motta, a multi-million selling salsa artist in Puerto Rico. The artist — born Eric Geroge Lopez — started writing his own tunes in 2018, but it wasn’t until 2020, with lockdown taking over the world, that he took it to the next step. “I was dropping lots of stuff from that time period, but I think I was able to focus more on the music I was making because I was out of school,” he tells Remezcla. “Just like, sit down in my room, just focus on music. I think because of that, I was able to reach more ears.”
While he’s been lumped in the hyperpop genre, ericdoa says he’d rather not be part of a specific style. In fact, he wants to be a part of every style. “Our whole thing with me and my producers is that we don’t want to stick to one specific blueprint because things become redundant,” he says. “You need to have something for everybody, you know? Music should be all-inclusive.”
Making music this way can be tricky, and according to him, it’s something he and his collaborators are constantly working on. “[It’s] constantly evolving because [our approach] changes every five seconds. I feel like we just sit down and see what people are enjoying and try to do it our own way. I think that’s what has made us get this far. We try to take those ideas and use them in things that we’re interested in as well,” he explains.
A huge influence can be found in his background. Being Panamanian and Puerto Rican gives him a fresh perspective on making his unique music. “I think being Latin is like we have a built-in energy, a performance thing,” ericdoa says. “When I was in Puerto Rico around my family and seeing how they were always able to just sit down and play music with each other, it’s beautiful. I constantly think of it as something that’s in my blood. I thought that I was supposed to make music. I was put on the earth for that purpose, even though that sounds really cliché and corny.”
“When I was in Puerto Rico around my family & seeing how they were always able to just sit down & play music with each other, it’s beautiful. I constantly think of it as something that’s in my blood. I thought that I was supposed to make music. I was put on the earth for that purpose, even though that sounds really cliché & corny.”
As previously mentioned, video games play a very important role in ericdoa’s life. An example is his song “lifeline,” which spawned a retro video game with sound design by ericdoa himself. The medium continues to be a huge inspiration for his art. “Everything that involves story-building in my music and creating my little world has all been from playing video games all my life. People are obsessed with lore. They love learning about origins and stuff like that; [I think that’s how] it’ll have people more intertwined with what the music is because there’s a lore behind this artist, he explains. “I make sure to include video game references in my songs, even though that’s the nerdiest issue of all time. I just love video games and I think that they’re super important to my music. I think that video games have allowed me to see different types of worlds.”
His next stop is Lollapalooza, his first “giant festival,” as he puts it, and he has some intense feelings about it. “I’m so nervous, but I’m excited,” he notes. “I dreamt of going to Lollapalooza or Coachella when I was a kid, so I’m happy that they’re allowing me to do this Lollapalooza thing.”
Although it’s very early in his career, ericdoa knows exactly what he wants his legacy to be, something he has been establishing since day one. “I want to be the person that introduces that new thing to music,” he says of his main goal. “I want to be able to introduce something that changes the way that you consume and listen to music for the rest of your life. [I also want] to be that first artist that is able to do the multiple genre thing because I feel a lot of artists don’t do it correctly; they just try to smash a bunch of things together and it just doesn’t sound correct.”
“With us, I feel like we’ve gotten it down to a science where we’re able to combine genres, and people don’t even notice. So, I want to change the way that people listen to music forever.”
