The Untold Truth Of Marc Rebillet
Is Marc Rebillet a comedian who expresses his comedy via music, or a musician with a distinctly comedic bent? That's something of an open question when it comes to the Dallas native, whose hilarious improvised songs and creative use of a loop machine have led him to be dubbed "Loop Daddy" by his ever-growing legions of fans.
Rebillet's star had just started to rise by the end of 2019, when he embarked on his first tour, fueled by the extraordinary popularity of his livestreamed performances emanating from his New York City apartment, in which he performs made-up songs based on suggestions by fans, typically attired in either a kimono-style robe or snug pair of boxer briefs. Unfortunately, the momentum he built with those live shows came to a crashing halt in the spring of 2020 when a global pandemic slammed the brakes on all live performances. Ironically, that led Rebillet to refocus on his streams, building an even bigger following and emerging by the end of the year as a far more popular performer than he'd ever been before.
From his early days in Dallas to the inspirations behind his act, there's a lot to be learned about this increasingly popular and unabashedly distinctive performer. Keep on reading to find out all about the untold truth of Marc Rebillet.
The crazy way teenage Marc Rebillet first went viral
Marc Rebillet's musical fame was still many years in the future back in 2007, when the 18-year-old Dallas teen became the focus of a local news report when he scored a front-of-the-line spot at an AT&T store on the morning that the new iPhone was being released. Just 15 minutes before the store was about to open its doors, a woman rolled up at the last minute and paid him $800 for his spot in the queue, with plans to make a fortune by purchasing $100,000 worth of the coveted, hard-to-get gadgets and then reselling them on eBay at a presumably steep markup.
Hilariously, the woman's plans were thwarted by the store's strict one-per-customer policy. Meanwhile, noted a profile in Vulture, while Rebillet "hammed it up for the camera," he not only got his iPhone and accessories at no cost, but also gained a certain degree of viral fame when the original video "racked up more than 4 million views," and even landed him a mention in The New York Times.
"It was the gift that sort of kept on giving for many years," Rebillet told the Houston Chronicle of the incident more than a decade later. "It would just get posted every time a new phone came out. And, you know, as I started trying to make music, I would sort of whore myself out in the comments section every time it got posted."
The reason he earned the nickname 'Loop Daddy'
During his early 20s, noted a Vulture profile, Marc Rebillet moved to New York with a goal of becoming a music producer, although his efforts bore less fruitful than he'd hoped. In 2014, he returned to Dallas to help care for his father, who'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It was during this period that he obtained a loop machine and begin experimenting with "looping layers of music on top of one another."
It took him a few years to really master the technique — mainly because, as Rebillet admitted, he was "a lazy s**t." Once he got the hang of it, Rebillet began posting video "idealogues" of his loop-based musical exploration, which eventually led him to set up a phone line for fans to send him suggestions that would form the basis of improvised songs. "I started uploading videos in a semi-serious way two or three years ago," said Rebillet in a 2019 interview with DJ magazine.
When Rebillet determined his father (who sadly died in 2018) was no long benefitting from his presence, he started booking live shows to capitalize on his online videos, which had begun racking up millions of views and earned him the nickname "Loop Daddy" for the tunes he structured atop a looped beat. As Rebillet told DJ, those songs were pure fancy. "People think about these songs so much more than I do," he admitted. "I think of something and I riff on it, plain and simple."
Reggie Watts was Marc Rebillet's musical inspiration
The idea to use a loop machine, which ultimately set Marc Rebillet on his musical journey, didn't emerge out of thin air. As Rebillet told EDM, inspiration struck when he discovered musician-comedian Reggie Watts, known for his keen ability to make up improvised songs on the spot. "When I saw [Watts] do these improvised performances years ago, it sort of unlocked this thing like, 'Man, you can actually get up on stage and not have a plan, and just do something,'" said Rebillet of Watts, who became bandleader for James Corden's "The Late Late Show" in 2015. "He was really the catalyst for that." As Rebillet told Spin, he found himself "enamored with the concept of getting up on stage with absolutely no plan."
It took a few years, but Rebillet was eventually able to jam with his idol, and in the fall of 2020 unveiled a brief two-minute teaser of his collaboration with Watts. Several months later, Rebillet debuted a livestream that featured a full-fledged musical collaboration with Watts and Flying Lotus (aka producer Steve Ellison).
Meeting Watts was "a dream come true," Rebillet told Central Track. "I would not be doing this if he didn't exist." Finding himself "able to hang out with him as a peer was really something I never would have imagined happening. It blew my f***ing mind," Rebillet admitted. "That's really the high point of this whole thing so far."
He's got some famous fans
The significance of Marc Rebillet being able to make music with Reggie Watts cannot be understated, as it's one of those cases in which the student came to be accepted by the master as a peer. Yet, Watts hasn't been the only well-known figure to publicly declare themselves to be fans of Rebillet's work. As he revealed in an interview with EDM, other celebrities to have become fans include Snoop Dogg, John Mayer, T-Pain, and rapper and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" star Ice T, who retweeted Rebillet's song "Racism Sucks" in 2020 while declaring of the musician-comedian, "I think I just found my new Favorite artist... This MF is Hardcore!"
Interestingly, there seems to be a fine line between celebrity fans of Marc Rebillet and his future collaborators. For example, just look at what happened when Rebillet invited Wayne Brady to jam, a sublime choice when you consider the gifts that Brady has long displayed at musical improvisation on the long-running TV series "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"
Rebillet found another collaborator willing to surf on his same wavelength when he jammed with singer Erykah Badu, who totally got the vibe and fit right in with Rebillet's unique brand of improvised absurdity.
Marc Rebillet is equal parts musician and comedian
For Marc Rebillet, music and comedy are woven together to such as degree that it's difficult to define the two as separate elements. While Rebillet is loathe to put a label on what he does, he told the Irish Times he was even less interested in being liked. "It's not for everyone, and I'm fully down with that. You don't have to like this, it's a particular brand of music," Rebillet explained. "The content can be vulgar and graphic. Love it, hate, feel ambivalent, I don't care — feel however you want. I'm not here to win everyone over."
However, when push comes to shove, Rebillet admitted his primary impulse is musical. "The music is the key," he explained, noting that it "gives a certain legitimacy to the comedy." Ultimately, Rebillet suggested, "The comedy can be really stupid and baseless and dumb and not have much substance, because it's resting on top of something that's, hopefully, musically dope."
Asked by Bonfire whether he sees himself primarily as a musician or as a comedian, he shared his boilerplate answer: "I generally say I'm a musician because, I mean, all of this is very much couched in music at its foundation. My priority is on the music sounding good."
This artist gained fans during the pandemic lockdown
The pandemic had a unique affect on Marc Rebillet's career trajectory. Prior to the arrival of COVID-19, Rebillet had begun branching out into live stage shows and touring, propelled by the groundwork laid by his livestreams. When the pandemic pretty much slammed the brakes on all live performances, Rebillet's course of action was a no-brainer: He returned to his apartment and restarted his already popular livestreams.
Speaking to Mpls St Paul magazine, Rebillet admitted he found it "definitely frustrating not being able to play for big sweaty crowds," and expressed disappointment at seeing the year-long schedule of tours and festivals vanish. "But the upside to that is that I was able to get creative with the things that I had already put in place with my business. Which were the livestreams, which I'd been doing already for a couple of years prior, so I basically got to put that model front and center," he explained.
At the same time, he pointed to "a whole host of things that happened during the quarantine that raised my profile and my business to levels that I really ... I don't know if I would've been able to do it on a traditional tour in the same way." Rebillet added, "I just had to stretch my muscles and get creative and a little weird in ways that may not have happened if it were any old other year."
Marc Rebillet initially started out as an actor
Marc Rebillet's musical journey has been far from a straight line. A musician and actor from a young age, noted a profile in Spin, Rebillet began studying acting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, but ultimately dropped out after just a year. "I've been acting since I was a kid. I dropped the acting thing after a year in college after falling out of love with it and so when I decided to try and make music for many years, I just tried on the side to produce beats — and unsuccessfully," he told Attack magazine.
An unsuccessful attempt to establish himself as a producer did develop some key skills, however. "I sort of taught myself how to compose, mix, assemble banks of instruments and develop an ear for what sounds good," Rebillet explained. "I got this looper. That sort of opened up this whole other realm of possibility for me in terms of ... well, it sort of made it a reality; this sort of dream that I'd had for a long time of just being able to make s**t on the fly immediately. I just ran with that and started recording myself doing it."
Ultimately, he told Mpls St Paul magazine, the secret sauce he's come across is doing "something you really love and are decent at, and you gotta want to do that in a way that's interesting enough that people want watch it."
How he embarked on a socially-distanced concert tour
As the pandemic dragged on and continued to impact the livelihoods of musicians and other live performers, Marc Rebillet had been churning out livestream performances for his growing legions of fans who, like him, were trapped in their homes and desperate for entertainment.
Watching his burgeoning schedule of performances evaporate, reported NPR, had left Rebillet "on the verge of despair" when one of his agents told him about socially-distanced shows that had been going on in Germany at otherwise defunct drive-in movie theaters. A plan quickly came together, with Rebillet and his team calling drive-ins all over America looking for availability. "I said, 'Stop everything you're doing,'" Rebillet told CLTURE. "'Let's go. Let's do it as fast as we can.'"
Before long, they had booked a nine-date drive-in tour that melded the intimacy of a live performance with the social distancing required by COVID-19 protocols. "This is a place where people can literally get in their cars, drive into the venue, never have to have contact with another human being if they don't want to and enjoy a live show," Rebillet marvelled. When the tour was finally announced, Rebillet would bring his show on the road to such cities as Baltimore, Kansas City, Houston, and more. "There have been a couple of drive-in shows," Rebillet told CLTURE of his drive-in tour. "But as far as I know, this is the first tour like this."
Marc Rebillet on performing live vs. livestreaming
Marc Rebillet's career-making livestreamed performances have proven to be quite different from the spectacles that have taken place when he's onstage in front of a live audience, even though he's likely to wear nothing but a pair of boxer briefs for both.
Yet, whether he's rocking out in his apartment or onstage in front of a crowd of people, there is one key impulse that guides him through each performance: instinct. As Rebillet admitted in an interview with the Bonfire blog, he puts "very little thought behind" each performance before heading onstage, content to make it up as he goes. "I'm very much an instinct-based person and I always have been and the show has sort of evolved that way," he explained. "I never had a plan for what the show is going to look like or be, all I knew was that I was going to make songs up on the fly, and the rest just sort of became a product of that."
Since he's returned to the stage after a year-plus of pandemic-mandated "quaranstream" livestreams from his apartment, Rebillet's noticed the energy of his audiences has changed — and for the better. "You can feel it in the air — the relief, the joy, the unbridled sense of togetherness," he told Vulture. "I've never been happier to play. Let's f***ing go."
He's raised thousands for COVID relief efforts
As his success has grown, Marc Rebillet has branched out into the increasingly lucrative area of branded merchandise. In addition to items such as custom-designed boxer briefs, Rebillet has also created a merch line with the express purpose of philanthropy. Speaking with Bonfire, Rebillet explained his initial plan had been to launch some new merch and keep the money generated. "But I was talking with a few people that were like, you know, you should donate to a cause. And so I went on Charity Navigator and just did a sort of cursory look around at what there was and I found GlobalGiving who has a specific fundraising initiative for Coronavirus. And I was like, well, this is kind of perfect," he said.
As a result, Rebillet was later able to make an announcement on Twitter that this efforts had raised a whopping $34,777 for GlobalGiving's Coronavirus Relief Fund. "Guys, this makes me so f***ing happy," Rebillet wrote in the caption. "Over $34,000 donated to the GlobalGiving Coronavirus Relief Fund, and it's all thanks to YOU!!"
Rebillet upped the ante even further during a December 2020 livestream with a goal of achieving 1 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. Rebillet vowed in the video's description to stream "non-stop" until hitting that number, promising that "every time we get another 1,000 subs, I'm donating $500 to charity. BOOM." (As of this writing, Rebillet's YouTube channel boasts 1.82 million subscribers — no big deal.)
Marc Rebillet's rise to viral superstar happened very quickly
In a September 2019 interview with Central Track, Marc Rebillet was embarking on a new tour, not knowing that in six months a worldwide pandemic would shut down live performances throughout the globe. At that point, though, it was less than two years earlier that he'd been making a name for himself performing in a few Dallas clubs, where he'd been slowly but surely building up a local fan base. As Rebillet explained, everything changed when he decided to leave Dallas and return to New York City in order to "give myself the chance in a larger market."
At first, he admitted, the gigs he was getting were largely "one-offs," and he felt himself "kind of panicking for ... a while there" when it became clear he "was not on solid footing." Then, Rebillet revealed, in September 2018 he felt his entire situation turn around "very, very quickly" when the online performing he'd been doing "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!"
Accompanying all that online attention were international requests to perform in various parts of the world, something the musician-comedian admitted he "really had no clue how to deal with or what to do with." Ultimately, Rebillet hooked up with a booking agency that "sort of helped corral all of those requests into ... my first sort of tour."
He made a bonkers TV commercial for a German supermarket
When Marc Rebillet became an online phenomenon thanks to his livestreamed performances, the attention he received was not confined to his native country. As his fame grew, it expanded beyond the borders of the U.S. into other parts of the world, particularly in Europe. In fact, the attention he was receiving by fans in Germany led him to be tapped for a pretty out-there commercial for German television.
According to Bandt, Rebillet — sporting a robe embossed with "Super Marc" — is the star attraction in a commercial spot for German supermarket chain EDEKA. In the commercial, Rebillet sings about being at the supermarket while having forgotten to bring his shopping list, and plugs his massive bank of electronic instruments into various pieces of produce. Since he has no shopping list and is unsure what to purchase, he says, "I guess I'll buy ... everything." This leads him on a quest to find "schmand" (a German type of sour cream) for his "little baked potato."
Like pretty much everything in which Rebillet becomes involved these days, the YouTube video of his bonkers commercial went viral, racking up more than 4.3 million views., as of this writing. Meanwhile, a tweet he issued of the video — declaring in the caption, "I'm in a commercial...in Germany" — was viewed more than 1.6 million times.
His home decor style is as quirky and eclectic as he is
Marc Rebillet definitely arrived as a celebrity in his own right when Architectural Digest paid a visit to his New York apartment, which was profiled in a feature for the magazine in 2021. Referencing Rebillet's "killer eye for design," AD described the vibe in his Lower Manhattan apartment as "clean and pristine, featuring statement art, vintage finds, and even a couple trophy pieces that'll give true furniture nerds hearts in their eyes."
Rebillet credits his friend, Gus, an aficionado of midcentury-modern furnishings, for helping him establish the design ethos. "I think the end result is sort of like captain's yacht, 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,'" Rebillet joked of his living room's "futuristic" look. While one of the apartment's two bedrooms serves as his actual bedroom, the other has been converted into his home studio, the room from which his iconic livestreamed performances emanate.
Another design influence mentioned by Rebillet is his late father. "He always had this really fascinating sense of taste and design," he recalled. "It was a big mixture of classical French antique furniture and Asian knickknacks and classical art ... it was just sort of all over the place." And while Rebillet admitted his own design ethos is different from that, his dad's "little tips and obsessive habits have become mine," he joked.
Marc Rebillet's streaming success led to recording a legit album
As can be seen on Spotify, the increasing attention given to Marc Rebillet's livestream improvisational sessions led to the 2018 release of his self-titled album, followed in 2019 by "Europe." Recorded during his first tour of Europe, each of the latter album's songs were titled after a different European city that he'd visited, ranging from Paris to Barcelona to Liverpool. He then followed that up with his "Loop Daddy II" EP (FYI, there wasn't actually a "Loop Daddy I"), and, in the fall of 2020, his "Loop Daddy III" compilation — and he shared the track list on Twitter just ahead of its release.
Prior to dropping "Loop Daddy III," Rebillet announced plans to record what he described as his debut album, indicating his previous efforts weren't as much "actual" albums as they were compilations of his online output. Taking to Twitter in September 2020, Rebillet revealed he was "embarking on a journey across the country to make my first album. As with everything else in my life, I don't really have much of a plan." In a subsequent tweet, he shared that the primary reason he was going on the road to record was so he could "collab" with other artists.