How Instupendo and Ripsquad teamed up to deconstruct pop

Instupendo doesn’t try to be this lowkey; it just comes naturally. We’re speaking the day after the release of Ripstupendo, the Philly-based producer’s deconstructed pop collaboration with the continent-spanning collective Ripsquad, and I noticed that he hasn’t announced the release on social media. “To be completely honest,” he says over the phone, “the entire reason is because I'm coding a website, and I wanted to put it in the caption for [the post].” Surrender is its own form of intention, and Instupendo is nothing if not intentional.

Ten years ago, when Instupendo was making his own bespoke version of chill beats to relax to, the Delaware producer Distance Decay was a presence in his life even before he joined Ripsquad in 2019. “[He’s] someone I've known from some of the earliest music I was making,” Instupendo says. Their careers went in different directions: Instupendo began creating sweet natured mutant pop – think Arca, but Sanrio-ified – while an early track, 2017’s “Comfort Chain,” a glowing sea anemone of synths, has soundtracked hundreds of thousands of brainrot-free TikTok slideshows on its way to over 100 million streams. After joining Ripsquad, Distance Decay racked up production credits for Future, Trippie Redd, Lil Keed, and more.

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After Instupendo released 2021’s kaleidoscopic club LP Love Power A-to-Z, he and Distance Decay got to work on an album of their own at Instupendo’s home. The album took many different forms over the months; when the duo brought on Rip, the Perth-based founder of Ripsquad and producer behind Bladee’s albums Icedancer and The Fool, something got unlocked. “We kept on creating stuff, resampling it, creating it, resampling it,” Instupendo says, “it was almost as if the songs weren't our own anymore.”

If Love Power was a rocket ship hurtling towards the sky, Ripstupendo captures the brief moment that the vessel hovers above the clouds. The 11-track album eschews percussion almost entirely while smudging together pop melodies like paints on a palette. You’ll occasionally recognize colors: hues of “I Want It That Way” on “Human Nature,” the steel tones of a hook from a future Lady Gaga chart-topper on “Always,” William Orbit’s pioneering production for millennium pop on “Crow.” And throughout the music, the shadowy tones of emo melodies are rendered green and lush, and spread across the album like a forest canopy. Its gentle yet daring composition makes Ripstupendo a noteworthy addition in the realm of pseudo-ambient pop championed by Oklou and Malibu (who guests on the song “Kissout”). The songs may feel like embers, but the fires they stoke are grand and consuming.

A full-length collaboration is new territory for Instupendo, and he takes pains to emphasize Ripsquad’s contributions, both to the album and his own musical development. “They are the most talented composers, players, writers,” he says, his voice getting the most energized it’s been for our entire conversation. “I think they're the best of our time.” Speaking with The FADER, Instupendo discussed his work on Ripstupendo, intuition, and the ultimate goal of pop music.

The FADER: The first words that you sing on the album are “Radio Killa,” which is The-Dream’s famous tag.

A lot of the lyrics are combinations of little conversations that Distance Decay and I had. When I was recording vocals, I just wrote as I recorded. Every time I try and write lyrics and try to fit them to a melody, it's pretty tough.

The “Radio Killa” thing, we just happened to be listening to The-Dream’s Love and Money on loop. And it just became something that we were saying. And similarly in “Paranoi,” the chorus, “D told me to feel the zone,” was just some pep talk that he gave me. And then I just put that in the song.

When you listen to the lyrics now, do they remind you of anything you were feeling in the moment?

My friend Ellie, when we were showing her the album — many versions ago — she was like, “these are all love songs.” And I hadn't thought of them like that. And I think that connects with what you said about it sounding pop to you. When I hear the songs, I think of exactly what I was talking about in specific detail. But hopefully, I made it pretty in touch with something broader.

How did you draw from pop in making this album? Because it does feel like a pop record at its heart.

I was just reading through your interview with AraabMuzik, and I feel like he does something very similar to great pop music, where a lot of songs, regardless of if they're pop or not, contain sections that are in touch with what sounds good to everyone. They just take the best part and make it happen forever. And I think that that should be the goal, is to have music be the best part, always.

And that was the tough part for me with writing this, you know, it has to have structure. But there's definitely a 20 second part in every song where I'm like, “yeah, this could probably be looped. And you could delete the rest.” To me, that's the goal of pop.

As somebody who's written so much music based on your own intuition, can you tell when someone else has done so?

It's not up for me to say if I've made something that is in touch with other people, no matter how much I want to. But it's definitely easy to tell when people are somewhat weighed down by human intervention. I think that a lot of people could let go a little bit.

Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, all of that writing, you would have a hard time explaining what was so poignant about it. I think that's a perfect example of the best part repeated over and over. When I listen to that album, I listen to everything.

Someone like Yoko Kanno, a lot of her work is for soundtracking. And some specifically, like the Ghost in the Shell TV show, she has tracks that are probably emulating some other style. But despite all that, she completely cut through and made something that, at least for me, feels extremely in touch. Strangely, the first Nine Inch Nails album, to me, also feels that way.

Do you still have any strong connections to your early SoundCloud days?

There were so many eras and there was never a clique that I fit into, [but] I was never really searching. But there’s people like Good Intent, he’s one of my favorite people. I’ve known him since I was 14. That was just a friend that stuck with me. Cedric Madden is the same way, [and] Helica. There's so many great people that I've met along the way. It's interesting, because none of the people that I stay close with seem to make the same music as each other or as they did even. But for some reason we all relate.

Maybe it's just that: you’re all unafraid of changing up what you’re making.

It might be. In the moment I don't really think of what my music is, but occasionally I'll scroll through the YouTube comments of my biggest song. And they’re interesting because they don’t even think of it as Instupendo. They just think of the song. If I were to look at my discography as an outsider and try and figure out what the artist was, I don't exactly know what I would come up with. And I think that's kind of fun.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity