Favorite Things: Lansing hip-hop artist Mikeyy Austin and his iPhone 6

To the people who are saying, “Look at these millennials and their damn phones,” I say they haven’t discovered their best life yet.

I can use my phone for everything musically related I need to. I write whole songs on it and find the production and beats I am going to use on these songs with it.

My phone’s notepad is always full of lyrics, notes, concepts and ideas. I listen to all the songs after I record them on my phone and in my car through my phone as a test. I think I use my phone in every aspect of the music process all the way to putting music out through uploading off it.

I wouldn’t have any of this without my cellphone. It is a very outdated iPhone 6 Plus. It is old but does the job and I’m comfortable with it.

With social media as an artist, it is crazy to show people who you are in any given moment of the day. When I share snippets of songs on Instagram and Snapchat, people hear it and I get immediate feedback for my work. I don’t even have to wait until the song is out for people to tell me what they think about it.

I recently put out three new songs: “sunlight” song, “Facetime” song and “the song about being cool.” Each one started on my phone’s notepad.

I actually found a producer I liked in Germany while scrolling through producers on Soundcloud who make beats. I put them on and wrote material on top of them. It is a lot of listening to production over and over while pinning things down in the notepad.

All three songs came about from sitting there with headphones and my phone listening to beats for hours. This is how the life of my songs come.

From there, I transfer the song to my laptop to record it. As soon as I am done, I’ll Airdrop it back to my phone to listen to again through my headphones to hear what I sound like.

This phone is probably playing music a solid eight hours a day.

I use Instagram more than any other social media. I like it because it is showing what you are doing instead of posting a status of what you’re thinking.

Aside from work, there is an obnoxious amount of videos I take of my dog on it that might surprise people. 

I don’t think it is a thing where I am on it way too much. It is just the tool I use to capture the moment and my work.

(This interview was edited and condensed by Dennis Burck. If you have a recommendation for “Favorite Things,” please email dennis@lansingcitypulse.com.)