Born and raised in a rural mining town in Western Australia and hailing from Lebanese heritage, Bourjous was exposed to a wide range of musical styles growing up. Whilst attending boarding school in Perth, Bourjous delved deeper into hip hop and built up a passion for writing rhymes, which continued throughout his time in University.
After joining the corporate world, Bourjous knew he needed a bigger dream to chase. After linking up with Dewy McGill at his workplace, Bourjous began his journey as a recording artist in September 2017 with Lit Lit. After dropping three more singles in quick succession to finish 2017, Bourjous dropped the video clip for Party Up, and released his EP LeboDopa in June 2018. Now, he’s recording new singles and will be working on a new music video when he travels to the Middle East in August/September 2018.
It’s the story of Bourjous so far – but we wanted to know more. So, we reached out to the artist for his side of the story. Take it away, Bourjous.
From a West Australian mining town to shooting your first music video: as he prepares himself for the next release, learn the story of Bourjous so far.
The song
As soon as I heard the instrumental, Party Up basically wrote itself – especially the hook. I came across it two days prior to my studio session, and given it was late on a Thursday and Friday night that I only had time to work it, it’s fair to say I was quite intoxicated (to say the least)… which is the premise for the inspiration of my simple hook “and we party up… let’s turn it up and smoke up, have another round”.
It’s a lethal combo combining all aspects of the hook in reality, which is exactly what happened at the shooting for the music clip.
The clip
The music video was initially storyboarded with the idea of having a controlled party with various different scenes prepared for execution on the night. What actually happened is that I got way too lit (even before people were starting to rock up) which lead to a number of things: everyone else getting lit, my producer’s house getting trashed, only executing two of the ten or so scenes planned, and no one listening to the video director, including myself.
On the night the director had to make a quick call to make do with whatever was happening around him. For example, no rapping was initially planned as per the storyboard, however, given my state of mind at the time, there was no way I wasn’t going to rap in my own clip!
In the end everyone had loads of fun, my film director aged about ten years, and the clip came out just as I wanted; natural. And it gave a better reflection of how the song originated.
The EP
Party Up is a bonus track added as part of my EP which was released in June 2018. The name LeboDopa is derived from the word levodopa, which is a drug helped to increase dopamine in the brain (and just remixed to LeboDopa as I’m Lebanese).
Dopamine is the cause of a lot of feelings and emotions, including love. This is the underlying premise of the EP, with differing songs talking about times of happiness, sadness, loss and lust.
LeboDopa is out now.
