Welcome Philly-based artist and current Temple University student RUSHIL to Positive Publicity. He is set to release his second single “Sanctuary,” which is collaboration with fellow Philly artist Esha, on June 18. The single is an emotionally immersive Pop and R&B-influenced song about expectations we set for love. RUSHIL’s debut single “Un1ty: An Anthem for Humanity,” released earlier this year, is a trilingual (English, Spanish, and Hindi) call for a more respectful and unified world. He poured it all into his performance of “Un1ty” at Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts graduation ceremony, watch below:
RUSHIL has also been utilizing TikTok to kickstart his creative process, gaining over 58,000 followers and 1.1 million likes. He posts song rewrites and clips of how his feature on a popular track would sound.
Welcome! Tell us about your new single Sanctuary. What was the process like creating that song? How did you and Esha come to work together?
Creating Sanctuary was a very new experience for me. Esha reached out with the song idea and asked if I wanted to collaborate on it. I was a little hesitant at first because I had never met her before – plus I was used to writing songs by myself. But when I heard the demo she sent, not only did I know it was going to be a special record, but I told myself that it’d be a great, first experience to work with someone else on a song.
In terms of writing, she had written the majority of it, but I added a bridge, which she also loved when I sent her my idea for it. Using the final lyrics and melody, I started to produce the song, and within a few weeks, I had a fully produced instrumental. We recorded our vocals separately, and I worked with an audio engineer (who Esha introduced me to) to mix/master the song.
I’m pretty fascinated with how TikTok is influencing the music world. How has utilizing the platform been for you – do you enjoy it?
I joined TikTok in December of 2019 but was just using it as a pastime until I started to see singers and dancers blowing up and building their artistic careers. So in March of 2020, I started posting covers and mashups to popular songs and got a good response. Before I knew it, I was approaching 60K followers. But what I realized is that in an attempt to capitalize on trending content and the popular requests I got, I was starting to post more for the algorithm rather than posting videos that I wanted to/stuff that actually displayed my creativity. I honestly stopped looking forward to posting for a while and as a result, my growth plateaued.
What I realized is that I wanted to show more of what I can create rather than just reproducing existing songs. I recently started posting song rewrites, verses on songs if I were featuring on them, and songs reimagined in my own style. With more original music and ideas for Tiktok content, I’m really excited to post more and accelerate my growth there again.
In terms of music – what are you really looking forward to in the future?
I’m really excited to show what I can do and what I’ve been working on. I’ve been sitting on a lot of songs I’ve created in new styles that people haven’t heard from me and have a lot of relatable songs, too. I’m also really looking forward to meeting new people in the industry, be it other artists, potential collaborators, or professionals on the business side because I can relate to them in terms of this journey and everything it entails.
What should we be on the lookout for from you next?
My main goal as an artist is to be as versatile and as true to myself as possible. I don’t always believe in trying to fit songs into the boxes of “genres” from a creative standpoint since it can sometimes feel limiting.
I want to create honest songs on topics I have a lot to say about and combine genres the best I can to create a new genre of music.
Thanks for stopping by RUSHIL!
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