Once A “Girl-Pandering” YouTuber, Joey Gatto Looks To Reinvent Himself With Thoughtful Hip-Hop

By 11/02/2016
Once A “Girl-Pandering” YouTuber, Joey Gatto Looks To Reinvent Himself With Thoughtful Hip-Hop

Joey Gatto, it is safe to say, knows his audience. “We were a corny little girl-pandering collab channel,” Gatto says of the early days of Settle Down Kids (known as SDK), the YouTube videomaking group of which he is a member. “Now, we just make these insanely stupid videos.” The channel’s most popular offering, released in 2015, is a lex-waxing challenge. Many of the comments it has received remark on the various reactions the SDK boys provide.

Based on that paragraph, you might get the idea that Gatto, and SDK by extension, are pandering to their several hundred-thousand YouTube subscribers, but the reality is quite the opposite. Gatto, an introspective and thoughtful YouTuber, is aware of the factors that lead creators to digital stardom; to harness them, he says, one must “[play] a game.”

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Now, at 22 and in college, Gatto is not interested in playing that game. While he still makes videos with SDK, he is building his personal channel with a very different goal in mind: He wants to make serious, artful hip-hop music.

“I had an easy time when it came to learning music.”

Gatto’s history with hip-hop goes back to his youth; he remembers seeing a B2K performance on the MTV show 106 & Park when he was in elementary school. Over time, his tastes have evolved; in a conversation with Tubefilter, he discusses his love for hip-hop heavyweights like Kanye West and the members of Odd Future, but also notes his interests in smaller, lesser-known acts like Goldlink and Smino. “I’ve always played piano and been really into music,” he said. “I had an easy time when it came to learning music.”

Through SDK, he began to express his musical inclinations, but the type of songs the group wrote were very different from his more recent work. At festivals like Digifest NYC, which connect social media stars to their adoring fans, SDK would perform silly tracks with names like “Let Me Touch Your Butt.” “They got a ton of hits and put it my mind that maybe I would have an audience if I tried for real,” Gatto said.

Over the past year, Gatto has made that shift into more serious music. In April 2016, he shared a track called “Back 2 U.” Six months later, he offered up another one, titled “Darkness.” Both offerings, which can be found on Spotify, are dark, brooding, and melancholy; they are far cries from the pop-heavy fare proliferated by many of the YouTubers who venture into the music world.

Gatto noted that the shift in his digital personality has audience to shrink. “I definitely get less views on my videos,” he told Tubefilter. At the same time, he feels as if his “diehards” have grown with him, allowing him to maintain a devoted following. “Darkness” has received only a shade more than 8,000 views on YouTube, but its like-to-dislike ratio is almost unanimously positive.

“18-year-old me wouldn’t necessarily have valued intellectualism.”

In a sense, launching a rap career will require Gatto to rebuild his audience. Like most YouTubers, he plans to use collaborations to his advantage. “I think it’s important to collaborate with people you respect,” he said, “because the video will be better with that person.” “There’s no reason I can’t do well right now,” he explained, “no reason why I have to pander.”

At the same time, Gatto is just pivoting — he’s also reevaluating where his previous career fits into his life. “I thought I’d be an entertainer forever,” he said, “but it’s an unrealistic goal.” Instead, he wants to go to college, study, earn a degree, and find a well-paying job “If i could study philosophy and then go to law school, oh my god, that would be the best thing ever,” he told Tubefilter, “18-year-old me wouldn’t necessarily have valued intellectualism.”

His shifting priorities are reflected in his interactions with fans, to whom he now preaches smart decision-making. He questions what he refers to as the hopeful mentality peddled by celebrities like Taylor Swift. “There’s a certain aspect of realism that’s lost with this follow your dreams idea,” he said. “A lot of my viewers and followers are people having issues with their careers.”

“It’s about being able to do something important.”

It seems clear that the professionally-oriented Joey Gatto and the Joey Gatto who wants to make thoughtful art no matter how few followers it brings him are two personae linked by his desire to grow up. And yet, ironically, that first impulse makes his timeline for expressing the second one unclear. For now, he will keep making music, as long as it fits into his academic schedule. “I’m not going to [give up music] for school, but it’s not smart right now to drop out and pursue it.”

Should an opportunity present itself, Gatto would be willing to take a deeper dive into the music industry, but he wants to make sure none of his goals are sacrificed in the process. “It’s about being able to do something important,” he explained. “I think the more money someone makes, the more they can contribute to society. So I would totally pursue music if it gave me a platform to speak about what I thought was important and gave me the resources to do what I want to do.”

At some point, though, he wants to release an album, and when he does, he has a name in mind: College Fund. It’s a title that shows where his priorities currently lie, and it’s not one you’d typically expect from the career-oriented world of online video, where many creators pursue their channels full time in lieu of higher education. Joey Gatto, however, is not a typical videomaker, and the music he has released thus far provides strong evidence for that statement.

To keep up with Gatto’s music, follow him on Soundcloud.

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