Marc Rebillet


Marc Rebillet is an American electronic musician and YouTuber from Dallas, Texas and currently based in New York City. He is known for improvising electronic songs that feature comical lyrics. Rebillet primarily distributes his work through YouTube videos and Twitch live streams in which he uses a loop station, keyboard, vocals, and percussion instruments to produce his songs in his apartment. He also has released two studio albums: Marc Rebillet and Europe, and two extended play records, Loop Daddy and Loop Daddy II.

Early life

Rebillet started playing piano at age four, and studied classical music until age 15 while attending Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. He dropped out of Southern Methodist University after one year of studying acting. Rebillet then worked in other sectors for ten years, including in a corporate call center, while producing music unsuccessfully under the name "Leae".
In 2007, Rebillet was profiled on Fox 4 in Dallas after lining up to be first to buy an iPhone during its initial release. A woman paid Rebillet $800 for his spot in the front of the line, attempting to buy many phones to resell. The plan backfired because of the store's policy that only allowed one iPhone per customer.

Career

Online streaming

Rebillet's professional music career began in 2016, when he began publishing YouTube videos and live streams of himself improvising songs in his bedroom, apartment, and hotel rooms. These videos began to go viral through Reddit and Facebook, generating a fan base. Many of Rebillet's songs are inspired by live requests from his fans, who call him from a phone number that he posts on social media, or comment during the live stream. Rebillet's sessions can last from one to five hours. The content of the streams vary widely, from romance and sex to more frivolous topics, such as snacking.
As of July 2020, Rebillet has 11.8 million online streams of his music, has 753,000 YouTube subscribers, and 50 million YouTube views.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rebillet's tour of Australia and New Zealand was cancelled and subsequently rescheduled for early 2021. In place of the cancelled shows, he scheduled four free live stream shows on Twitch named for four cities on the cancelled tour. He called this collection of shows the "Quarantine Livestream Tour", with the first show attracting over 1.57 million viewers and raising over $34,000 for coronavirus-related charity. Explaining why he chose to begin streaming on Twitch, Rebillet told The Verge, “I’m just trying to survive, and Twitch has the highest earning potential for livestreams.”
Also related to the pandemic, Rebillet recorded a song, called "Essential Workers Anthem", dedicated to essential workers, to thank them for their work. Discussing the song for the Boston Herald, Jed Gottlieb wrote that "the tune he built in a minute had more moxie and magic than anything on the recent lo-fi network TV concerts".

Live performances

His first live shows took place in 2017 in bars in his native Dallas, Texas. He subsequently moved to New York to further develop his music career. Describing how his online presence quickly increased his fanbase, Rebillet told an interviewer:
It happened very, very quickly...the whole online thing just took off in this very aggressive way. Like, people around the world just started sharing my stuff on Facebook primarily, and my audience on Facebook went from 7,000 or 10,000 followers to, within a week or two, 50,000. Then it was 100,000. And it just kept climbing! And with that spike came all of these booking requests from all over the world that I really had no clue how to deal with or what to do with.

Starting in 2019, Rebillet has performed on tours in the United States and Europe, and ticket sales has become his primary source of revenue. Rebillet's live shows are energetic, interactive, and almost entirely improvised, with very little material being repeated from show to show. Explaining his approach to performance, Rebillet said, "I think up a couple of ideas, make some observations through the day, think of something that’s germane to the crowd I’m playing to, I use those things as seedlings for song ideas." The Dublin Gazette called Rebillet "a man who’s thoughtful far beyond his output. A considered artist, having fun." The Irish Examiner called Rebillet a "DJ/comedian/one-person emotional meltdown" and called his live performance "unnerving and very engaging". Tyler Hicks of the Dallas Observer said that "few performers can match the zealous intensity".

Drive-In Concert Tour

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, in which all concerts were cancelled, Rebillet scheduled a "drive-in concert tour" in June 2020, in which he performed at twelve shows at eight drive-in theaters in the United States while attendees watch from their cars and listen over a local radio frequency. The objective of these performances was to remain in compliance with social distancing regulations. In place of opening acts, short films were shown. Explaining how he planned to perform, Rebillet told CNN, "Since everyone is going to be forced to be in their cars, I'll be able to do a lot of running around, 'interacting' with the audience, just by doing my thing." The tour was called the first of its kind in the United States, and grossed $523,000 with 12,132 attendees. Rebillet reached more fans on the drive-in tour than he would have on a comparable tour of indoor venues.

Awards and recognition

In August 2019, Billboard named Rebillet as a "Billboard Dance Emerging Artist", writing that Rebillet creates "sexy hooks", "sensual R&B burners", and "hip-hop-tinged funk creations".
In December 2019, Shacknews awarded Rebillet the "Do it for Shacknews Award 2019", saying that he rose to a "surprising level of Internet notoriety" in 2019. Shacknews CEO Asif Khan wrote: "The popularity of his very experimental style to creating music is inspiring to the countless part-time studio musicians who are out there on the Internet. Marc's ability to build a community has lead to [sic] pockets of cheerleaders appearing all over the place these days."
In 2020, Clubbing TV named Rebillet #2 on its list of the top 40 live streaming DJs, saying, "No one can make you laugh and dance like Marc Rebillet."

Music

Rebillet's music is defined by his use of a Boss RC-505 loop station, which allows him to layer his voice with keyboards, tambourines, and other hand percussion instruments. Most of his songs are improvised, and include elements of funk, soul, hip hop, and house music, as well as comedy skits. Nick Pagano described Rebillet's music as ranging "from soulful serenading piano ballads to funky bass licks to downright club bangers, and is always accompanied by his unique sense of humor". His lyrics tend to be comical, silly, or vulgar, enough so that he has been referred to as a comedian. Rebillet's "goofy", "nerdy", and "earnest" personality plays a role in his popularity.
Speaking about the lyrical content of Rebillet's songs, WBUR's Tonya Mosley said, "they’re actually really insightful. It’s sort of like social commentary."
Rebillet has mentioned Reggie Watts, Nina Simone, Madlib, and James Blake as sources of inspiration. Speaking about Reggie Watts, Rebillet has said, "I would not be doing this if he didn’t exist."

Discography

Solo albums