Arriving at the studio while on FaceTime with MOD SUN, Iann Dior stopped by to chat with Audacy’s Bru all about his music, new album and everything he has going on. One of those things is going on tour with the likes of Avril Lavigne, Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker and more. Oh you know, just the who’s who of the latest pop-punk revival all on one tour, that Iann himself describes as “a festival every night.” More than just being homies, Iann views MGK and Travis as mentors, noting, “I learn a lot for them and it’s really cool.”
LISTEN NOW: Iann Dior talks with Audacy's Bru
Aside from doing his own thing, which we’ll get to in a bit - promise, Iann recently jumped of Glass Animals’ mega hit “Heat Waves,” which like his feature on 24kGoldn’s “Mood” will be inked in the books as epic.
Revealing how the link up for “Heat Waves” went down, Iann explained, “they had sent me the song… and I hopped on FaceTime with them and asked them what’s the vibe that you guys want on the feature, and they kinda just let me know and we just made it happen.” As Bru pointed out, FaceTime is clearly the move.
Taking the conversation way back to the start, Iann shared that he started dabbling with music after high school, because he “didn’t like working, but I loved poetry. English was the only class I could pass in high school.”
As for his come up journey, before becoming a household name, Iann “had about 20 songs on SoundCloud.” However when he moved to LA he removed them all because he wanted a “fresh start.” Shortly after that Iann dropped “cuthroat” and emotions,” after which things quickly took off and he got signed. But don’t ask him any questions about the business side of things, he’s more concerned about the music.
And when it comes to music, Iann doesn’t play, admitting he’s pretty competitive. However when it comes to his friends, it’s more like friendly competition. “Because at the end if the day we’re all friends, we’re all doing the same thing,” he noted, “and we’re all helping people so that’s all that matters.”
However, when it comes to things like bowling, “I wanna be the best I can be,” even though when he goes with Wiz Khalifa, who's apparently a bowling beast. That's sometimes hard to do, because as he admitted, “he be scoring like 250s and 300 is a perfect score."
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After discussing the importance of keeping day ones close to you, his recent realization that “a cold place can be paradise as well” after snowboarding in the mountains for a month, as well as his former YouTube days (which you definitely want to hear about), the conversation finally shifted to music.
Explaining how he came up with his album title, on to better things, Iann shared that for him it means “just getting past, y’know like all the bulls*** that I was sitting in, I was sitting in my own mess for a while.”
He continued, “So you know, for this album it was very personal for me and I wanted to y’know make sure everybody understood what was going on, and they knew the reason why I hadn’t put out music in so long.” Further noting that each song is “cohesive," and that he was "telling a story throughout the whole thing, and I’m actually really happy with how it came out.”
More than just an album for Iann, the making of on to better things was about taking “all the stuff that I was going through and put it out there into the world, so anybody that’s going through that too, y’know it’ll help them, cause I know I’m not the only one.”
While answering some rapid fire fan questions, Iann revealed his dream collab would be with J.Cole, his worst job was UPS, which checks once you hear why, and that “Fast” by Juice WRLD makes him cry. Be sure to check out Iann's album on to better things below, and to hear the rest his rapid fire answers and more listen to his entire interview above.
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