Getting a platinum record for your music is a great achievement that many musicians often work towards for a long time. But what is it like when you accidentally get a message from America because your music is being sampled and that song then goes platinum? That’s what happened to Maik Timmermann from How To Loot Brazil, an indie band from the small town of Soest, founded in 2006.
Today’s professional musician has among the Pseudonyms Mike T. and the Leach but also worked on various projects under his real name. That’s how he was producer for two Top Ten Albums the Mülheim ska punk Sonda school and hat also for the Leipzig pop poet Lot, but also for DJs like Chris DiPerri and kids Vincent under other pen and instruments swung. How To Loot Brazil is purely a hobby. After eight albums and a number of songs sampled by artists such as Never Surrender, French Fuse and Mojjo, chart success came with Kodak Black.
In October 2021, Kodak Black released the song “Super Gremlin” which to date (November 2022) has over 260 million streams on Spotify, hit #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart and ultimately achieved platinum status in the US. It is the first platinum record for How To Loot Brazil. We spoke to the founder Maik Timmermann – disclaimer: the contact came about through family acquaintances of the author.
Musikexpress.de: Who is How To Loot Brazil and how did it all start?
Maik Timmermann: In 2006 I had already played bass for Phillip Boa for a few years and just wanted to get out my own songs again, as a kind of balance. Back then I was watching The Simpsons and that’s where the book How To Loot Brazil came up. “Great band name,” I thought, so I immediately secured the MySpace page and have been releasing tracks on my own ever since. I make the beats, sing the demos, write the lyrics and also produce here. At that time we also had a singer, but at some point he got stage fright. Then I asked a good friend, Vic, eight years ago if she would like to take part. Since then, the studio line-up has basically been: Vic, me and my friend Katja, who does a bit of background shouting but isn’t there live. Then we are a real live band, I play guitar, Arno on bass, Vic on vocals and Hille on drums. The synths come over backing tracks.
Your currently best-known song is “Errror” – how did that come about?
I’ve always identified with this snappy new wave, post-punk, but at the same time I’ve always wanted to use other genres as well. I’m a total fan of synth pop, 80’s high energy and dance music. And catchy choruses. Then all of a sudden I had this riff on the guitar, and then somehow “Errror” came about. Really a classic dance song, but still with a How To Loot Brazil trademark. Lyrically, it’s about the fact that back then, instead of concentrating on rehearsals and doing sensible things and pushing things forward, you would rather bang your head off in the rehearsal room and go outside to do stupid things.
How did the music video come about?
How To Loot Brazil is still a hobby project with no budget, record label, booker, manager or anything else. That’s why we shoot the videos ourselves, even with 0 euros, and try to get the best out of the editing. But since we have so much output, it’s not always possible to shoot videos afterwards, but instead use stock footage. These are recordings of “Playmates of the Year” from the years 1987/88 and they also fit the song. These days the 80s are hip again and are recreated, but this is an original from the time.
How did the contact with Kodak Black come about?
It was all coincidence and very lucky. Our first albums found their way into various playlists and Internet exchange sites like Soulseek, there was also a lot of airplay on small college radio stations from all over the world, and more and more people, mostly bedroom producers, wrote to me asking if they could remix our songs . Eventually that got to be too much for me, so I decided to just put the vocals online for everyone to use. Then I always write underneath: “You are welcome to use this for non-commercial purposes, but if it becomes commercial, let me know here.”
And Kodak Black?
With Kodak Black, that went through Atlantic Records. They asked, and it was relatively late because they wanted to publish the song, but then sent me an email: “Do you actually have the rights to it? Can we have that?” But then my publisher Michael Kersting from Click Music, who then arranged everything contractually, came along. As I always say, for a bedroom project like ours, that’s pretty flattering. I’m still grateful and humbled that it turned out that way.
Have you received any new offers since then? Has anything changed?
David Guetta, for example, released a remix, and the instrumental with our hook was also used countless times by other rappers, such as Dax, Latto and most recently Kevin Gates, whose version on YouTube now has almost 50 million views. There’s also a version of Kid Vincent, along with Eiffel 65’s Kiddo and Gabry Ponte. You just have to keep going, keep making songs and keep networking. Sitting here and waiting for someone to approach you, that doesn’t happen. You can’t force it anyway.
Any new How To Loot Brazil albums coming up?
I’m writing and producing again for the time being, and I also like to do remixes. The last one was released via Audiolith, but I usually release everything myself via my little label Look! mom! no-hit!. The nice thing is that we now have a few more listeners on Spotify, also manageable, but that the new songs also get a few thousand streams, that’s nice too. what more do you want
What do you take away from the collaborations and your time in different bands?
Overall, I’m grateful that I was able to do something with a lot of different people from different genres. From punk rock to house, all of these impressions flow into us too. But that also makes it more difficult to find a label, because we are too commercial for some and not commercial enough for others. Too fancy for some, too hard for others. That’s why I don’t even search anymore, I do it myself. But in any case, it’s always nice to work with different people on different projects.
What do you wish for the future?
I would like, although it’s a bit idealistic, that people would focus more on music, because today it doesn’t work without social media and that people who are interested in music don’t first look at how many followers someone has and that you which can only be taken seriously after a certain number of followers, or which gives it a certain validity. But I think I belong to the old school, that’s the way it is, and everything has advantages and disadvantages.