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CALEB NEGUSSIE: If y’all don’t know already, we are Free Planet.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Daniella Tello-Garzon, and you’re listening to Sound Source. This episode is about FreePlanet, a group composed of two twin brothers that love to rap, design clothes and make videos. 

CALEB NEGUSSIE: Hi, I’m Caleb Negussie. I am co-founder and co-creative director of FreePlanet. 

ROBEL NEGUSSIE: I am Robel Negussie and also the co-founder and co-creative director as well. 

TELLO-GARZON: How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it before?

ROBEL NEGUSSIE: It’d be like…do you know the dum dum lollipop? The one with, like, mystery flavor? I feel like that’s what it’d be. Every song you go to, you’re not gonna be 100 percent sure what you’re going to be in for but you’ll like it in the end. 

CALEB NEGUSSIE: Yeah, I like that. 

ROBEL NEGUSSIE: Cause we do so many different things. It’s really hard to box our music in. I feel like every song never sounds like the last one. 

CALEB NEGUSSIE: I would say, you’re gonna probably smile while listening to any of our songs at least one time. 

TELLO-GARZON: Do you guys write your own lyrics?

CALEB NEGUSSIE: Yes, we do. 

ROBEL NEGUSSIE: We do, we do. We do not allow ghost writing in this area. We’re very good at writing together I would say, which is really cool. 

TELLO-GARZON: So, are your song lyrics based on real people and experiences in your lives?

CALEB NEGUSSIE: I would say, some of them for sure. I’m thinking about the ones that we have out now, cause we have a lot of other songs we haven’t released, just cause we’re gearing up for a tape that we’re gonna drop soon, but yeah I would say a lot of them are definitely based off real things. 

ROBEL NEGUSSIE: If they aren’t based off real things that happened, they’re definitely based off real feelings that we’ve had. 

TELLO-GARZON: What are your rehearsals generally like?

CALEB NEGUSSIE: One thing that I think differs from our rehearsals versus onstage, we won’t go apeshit during rehearsal, but we tend to do that when it’s an actual performance. Like, we have a lot of energy when it’s like actually performing…I have my long hair, I will be shaking that. I’ll be jumping around and just having a good time. This is funny, I remember one of our performances — we did a couple — I think last year, one person was saying that I was making eye contact with everyone at the same time cause my eyes were so wide cause I was so intense. But that’s kind of what I want because everyone’s like, “Woah, that got me gassed.” I was hyped because like, we want everyone to feel free to just kind of jump around and do whatever they want. 

TELLO-GARZON: Do you feel like being Northwestern students has impacted your music?

CALEB NEGUSSIE: It has helped me, personally, learn how rewarding it is to kind of just not follow, or feel like you need to follow a certain mold, if that makes sense. The feeling that this environment gave is that it’s not worth doing it unless you start out the gate with it being amazing.

TELLO-GARZON: Despite Northwestern’s perfectionist environment, Caleb and Robel Negussie decided to deviate from that environment with their first song. 

CALEB NEGUSSIE: So we were like, we’re literally just gonna make a song that is hilarious, it was kind of like — 

ROBEL NEGUSSIE: It was the most, like, inappropriate song. 

CALEB NEGUSSIE: Very inappropriate, but it was hilarious. It was very sexual, but funny. Just, hilarious. And it was unmixed, shitty mic, like we rapped on a mic that was good, I guess, but not correctly. The music video was shot in our neighborhood, in the middle of the winter. i It was like -30 degrees, and it was a one take. Like, literally, we just put the camera in the middle of the street and we’re like, “We’re just gonna shoot this music video.” Cars literally interrupted the video. It was hilarious. But it worked. We were like, “Okay, we’re just gonna do this,” ’ and we ended up getting our first gig to perform somewhere based off that song that we were like, “This is a song we’re not gonna follow the rules for,” and it just proved to us that it doesn’t matter. There’s no one way to do something. Just be yourself. 

TELLO-GARZON: To learn more about FreePlanet and stay updated on live shows, new music and clothes, follow @FreePlanet on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and all music streaming services. Thanks for listening. This is Daniella Tello-Garzon, and I’ll see you next time. 

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @daniellatgarzon