Paris Texas On Going Commando And Making Music

“Ask me what color my underwear is,” Louie Pastel said to me via Zoom one Friday afternoon while he was lounging in bed.

“What color is your underwear right now?”

“Bro,” he replies, “I’m not wearing any.”

I wasn’t judging. Over the past six months, Louie and his Paris Texas counterpart Felix—who was using the screen name HuntingADuck during our chat—have released a total of thirteen YouTube videos (an eight-part short film series and five music videos), all in anticipation of their second self-released album titled MID AIR. This confident, energetic project is sixteen tracks in length—more tracks than Paris Texas’ entire public discography prior to their July 21st release. I’d also be lounging around underwear-free if I had done the same. I’d be exhausted, quite frankly.

Until their tour starts September 6th, they’re recuperating; Louie may continue to freeball, and Felix will be playing a bit of PS5. If you’re unfamiliar with Paris Texas, the vehicle fueled by Louie and Felix’s combined ingenuity, then it’s time you get acquainted. Let me put you on, as the kids say nowadays. This isn’t Paris Texas the classic movie or the small town. No, no; this is Paris Texas the rap duo—a damn good one for that matter.

In 2021, Paris Texas was launched at breakneck speed onto hip-hop radars with the release of Heavy Metal, the song that “solidified things” for the two. “When I made that, and people responded well to it, I was like, ‘Alright, this might be something to tap into,’” Louie recalls. Listeners were instantly enthralled by Paris Texas’ raw, honest lyrics accompanying rhythms born from a seamless meshing of genres in the most energetic, captivating fashion. They meshed genres so seamlessly that people didn’t know what to call them. Are they a rap duo or a rock duo?

There’s so much of both in their work, but let’s set the record straight: it’s rap music with loads of rock influence—it isn’t rock music. “There’s so much we could get into with that,” states Louie, “Obviously, there’s a lot of guitar influence, and there’s distortion on vocals, but I just think it’s mad funny sometimes” when people discuss it being rock versus rap. “Like I get what they’re trying to say, I’m not even shocked. You still have to judge this like a rap album though, like this is not Red Hot Chili Pepper music.” There are most definitely massive distinctions between Paris Texas' and Red Hot Chili Pepper's music, and I’d be willing to bet their creative processes are vastly different as well. That’s the beauty of art: No individual does it alike. Even Louie and Felix have different routes to a shared goal.

For Paris Texas, working normally looks a lot like the two sitting around, watching each other work and getting inspired. If you were to spend time in the studio with them, you’d most likely find Louie sitting at a computer or with an instrument, “trying a bunch of stuff out.”

He tells me: “Sometimes I have a base idea of what I’m going for, so I try a bunch of different riffs that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I just fiddle with ideas,” until something sticks. All the while Felix is hanging out, listening attentively, and scouring for inspiration. When he finds it, he finds himself a mic to turn his thoughts into verses. The bulk of the Paris Texas work is done in tandem rather than as separate entities; “We try and do as much as we can together,” but they also know they can’t force each other into creating, and they know where the boundaries between dual and personal lie.

They’ve been working and recording together for almost a decade now, starting way back when they may or may not have been cracking Ableton and ignoring schoolwork. They’re really just highly-compatible friends that share a “bit of understanding no matter what, even if there’s a complication,” Louie says. In fact, they say “the most [they’ll] ever bicker is jokingly.” They’ll “argue about, like, Tropical Vibe Celsius for a day. It’s just stupid shit.” Their level of understanding and respect for each other carry through to the music-making process.

They know they are “not going to go into the studio and do something magical every time,” Louie says. When I asked about creative slumps—or overcoming creative block—he said he’s been “thinking about this a lot lately,” and has concluded that “creative blocks aren’t really real.” Rather, they’re used as a way to tell oneself to stop when the going doesn’t stay so good. Paris Texas enjoys it when the going gets difficult, and they are mindful that things won’t always come naturally or easily, but “you just have to keep going. The moment you stop, you fuck up because then it’s catch up every time you go back to the studio.”

Paris Texas reminds us that we’re not going to make a hit every time we write a song, or a masterpiece every time we paint, but corrosion will occur every time production ceases. Insert any facet in place of music and painting and this still holds true. After Boy Anonymous, Paris Texas turned around and released EP Red Hand Akimbo in five months, a testament to the fact that pushing through the non-magical days can pay off and yield something extraordinary. These two endeavors are what set the Paris Texas trajectory to Mars, and fandom was born in the wake of lift-off.

To find any Paris Texas project prior to 2021 is virtually impossible—that is, if it weren’t for some random kid on Reddit who walks a fine line between diehard fan and stalker. “I’m gonna shout him out real quick. That’s my boy, Liam,” reveals Louie. “He’s just some kid from Arizona, but I’m snitching back.” He then told me about a time when he and Felix were out one random night bowling somewhere in Ohio, and Liam tracked them down from a single Instagram story and released the exact location of where they were. “He finds everything,” including archived songs. “He doesn’t do it as much anymore though. I started DMing him and I think he realized, ‘Ah, this is a real person, I can’t just be giving out his location,’” Louie told me with a laugh.

Questions were raised with their speedy success, “When we came in the game and everybody loved it, it was like, ‘I don’t know, something must be wrong.’” Louie reveals that he’d asked himself: “If everyone loves it, where do we go from here?” The easy way out would be to continue duplicating what they’ve already made because it's been proven to work. That’s what a lot of artists do, but Felix admits that he hates how “there are so many variations of the same thing.” Specifically, he hates that there are so many ketchups: “We only need like two, and there’s, like, almost thirty. What’s up with that? That’s a crazy thing.” Just like ketchups, Paris Texas is cognizant that the world doesn’t need thirty versions of Heavy Metal. The first was exactly what we needed—like OG Heinz out of a glass bottle.

The newest project's title, MID AIR, is in reference to the duo “being in a status of limbo,” based on their popularity. With fame that came so fast, Felix says they’re “in a place where we don’t know what’s going to happen next,” and they’re “just kind of in the middle of everything right now.” Floating in mid-air—unsure if they’re on the way up or the way down. But the duo took what they started on Boy Anonymous and added new elements to their already unrivaled repertoire.

The eccentricity of Paris Texas isn’t bound to just music. “It’s so much more than just the music for us,” they want to make known. In fact, “the short film” that was released incrementally on YouTube, before the album, is what they credit as their proudest creation. “I feel like we’ve been killing it lately,” Louie says in reference to the videos, “I feel like people kind of box us in because we are musicians, but we have so much outside shit going.” Paris Texas “appreciates the fans,” like Liam, “that are involved in trying to decode the puzzle” they’ve put together, “because not everyone is.” If you’re a Paris Texas newbie, start here, this is the first thing they’d show anyone who’s never heard of them (finish the article first though, you’re almost done).

Paris Texas’ website is wewantmars.com and a large theme on MID AIR is blasting off to Mars—Come on baby lift off, let’s get out of here—but you won't catch the duo on Mars, ever. I asked them if they’d go, given the opportunity, and my question was met with an emphatically negative “mm mmmm” from Felix and a “Hell fuckin’ nah” from Louie. “That first Mars revolution is going to be crazy, like no government?! I’m staying my ass down here and burning alive because up there sounds way worse,” says Louie, “People are going to pay like fifty bands for the worst living situation possible.” They do, however, actually think something along those lines will happen in our lifetime. “I think they’re going to do it and it’s going to be so miserably bad,” Louie’s prophecy continues, “They’re going to send a lot of people too; it’s going to be fucked up.”

One day, when everything is said and done, when people are on Mars, and Paris Texas decides it’s time to call it quits, Louie will be “somewhere with a gut, a little dog, and a trailer—well a nice trailer, not some hillbilly shit…but close.” He’ll have a “giant ass Vegas cup” that he got last week because he makes the occasional trip through the desert, and his “baby girl also be fat.” Felix has no clue where he’ll be afterward, “I actually just don’t know. I don’t really think about it,” he says, and that’s perfectly fine because that just means there’s plenty more to come from Paris Texas—there is new stuff in incubation stages, but for now their main focus will shift to that of an eighteen-date tour.

Ultimately, Paris Texas wants to be used as a reference point, “whether it’s good or bad,” for future generations of artists—future genre-rattlers like themselves. When Louie’s sitting in his lawn chair in the middle of nowhere, this is all he wants: “Follow my lead in some way; my flaws and my good points, just use that,” says Louie, “If I can see someone do that, like if someone uses me in that aspect, then I’ve become a part of history.”