Sound Advice: honestav

Join honestav on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, honestav opens up about his path from DIY SoundCloud uploads to his 2025 debut solo headline tour, ‘hara-kiri’ album and more.

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Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile. 

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Content Warning: This episode contains open discussion of sensitive topics, including suicide, addiction and abuse. Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is struggling, and needs support, help is available. For confidential, international mental health resources, please visit https://www.smartrecoveryinternational.org or https://www.iasp.info/suicidalthoughts.

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On this episode of Sound Advice, we’re talking to honestav. Many people found out about honestav from his emotional 2024 breakout hit, “I’d Rather Overdose,” but even though he’s a viral sensation, Avery Freeman is no overnight success story. He’s been working on his craft since he was a teenager, religiously posting on SoundCloud, often daily.

On his journey of 10,000 hours of hard work, honestav has developed an infectious online persona, and broadened his sound from rap to incorporate singing, acoustic guitar and elements of rock, Americana and country. His authenticity, fun-loving ways and honest, real life lyrics have gained him legions of devoted fans in America’s heartland. 

In this interview from the road, we talked to honestav about the emotional process of putting together his debut album ‘hara-kiri’ and the power of music in helping him overcome pain, and he delivers motivational advice for anyone trying to stand out in the music game. We find out more about his influences growing up in Pierce City, Missouri, and the evolution of his musical identity, and how SoundCloud has helped him along the way; as a musical diary, and as a place to meet collaborators and fans. 

SoundCloud is also celebrating honestav’s work on our Ascending program, which supports emerging artists making waves on the platform, so you’ll be seeing a lot more of honestav this month. SoundCloud's Ascending is a global program designed to spotlight emerging artists on a monthly basis — enhancing the artist's fandom, listenership and overall trajectory. We’re excited for honestav to open up about his journey so far, right here on Sound Advice.

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LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING HONESTAV

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LISTEN TO 'HARA-KIRI' BY HONESTAV

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HEAR MORE FROM ASCENDING ARTIST HONESTAV

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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honestav’s First Solo Headline Tour and His Music’s Missouri Roots

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• We begin the conversation by catching up with honestav about his debut solo headline tour, No License, which added two dozen dates due to overwhelming demand. Speaking from his tour bus, honestav tells us that he’s been deeply moved by how audiences have responded to his songs on the road.
• From freestyling a set on top of his tour bus after a fire alarm went off at one show, to seeing people crying while singing his lyrics back to him, he’s experiencing intense connections with his growing fanbase every night. For honestav, these singalong moments are among the most touching and memorable parts of the tour. 
• If you want to check out honestav’s tour, you can find more information and tickets here.
• A song that’s been having a major response on the tour is “Living Wrong,” a country-tinged earworm where honestav sings and raps in his confessional style. It’s a song that feels rooted in his upbringing. “It’s an anthem for home,” he says, and it’s easy to see why. 
• Growing up in Pierce City, a small town in the midwestern state of Missouri, honestav listened to Sublime, Limp Bizkit and The Strokes through his brothers, The Beatles through his dad, and hip-hop and country through local kids; Garth Brooks, Eminem, Soulja Boy, Lil Wayne were all on rotation. Reflecting on this melting pot, honestav sees his music today as a culmination of all of those influences: blending rap lyricism, country cadence, live guitars and electronic beats.

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How Posting Hundreds of Songs on SoundCloud Led honestav to Find His Authentic Sound and Discover The World 

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• When honestav was a hip-hop loving 16 year old, he started posting original songs on SoundCloud, and quickly ramped up the pace; soon, he was posting a new track every Friday, and then, a song every day for a year. As a teenager, honestav tells us, he was caught between wanting to defy authority and wanting to be loved and accepted. In his music, he worked through these feelings in real-time. 
• He tells us how his music-making was very DIY: rapping over beats that he found online, recording himself at home and finding friends to play guitar riffs for him. By uploading tracks to SoundCloud every day, he treated the platform as a musical diary. Thinking back on this period in his life, honestav can see himself as a young man struggling to find his purpose, and his sound. 
• He opens up about the transformation that he went through: from making and posting music that he thought other people wanted to hear from him, and trying to manufacture a career by appealing to others first, to falling more in love with music-making and talking about his own life in his lyrics. Eventually, he says, he found his truth: that you have to lead yourself as an artist, not be led by others. 
• Growing up in a small town with no established music industry, honestav used SoundCloud as a way to reach out to the world beyond his city limits. In true DIY spirit, he tells us that he’d print and paste flyers all over town with his SoundCloud profile on them, to spread the word about his music. But even if the locals didn’t understand him, he remembers, he knew that he could find people who could understand him through SoundCloud. 
• By posting his music on the platform, and seeing likes, plays and comments on his tracks, he realized that there was a world beyond his hometown — a world he wanted to reach out to. The experience was profound, and inspired honestav to keep making and sharing music. 

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Exploring Grief, Loss and Addiction on His Debut Album, ‘hara-kiri’

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• honestav’s music has been connecting with fans in large part due to the confessional nature of his storytelling. Having experienced heartbreaking loss in his life from a young age, through the suicide of his brother and the overdose death of his father, honestav went through long periods of grief that impacted his mental health and other personal struggles. 
• Speaking candidly about this time, honestav tells us how music has kept him alive and given him a purpose; a means to work through his emotions through the act of songwriting, and to connect with others who are going through similar experiences. As he tells it, he feels compelled to write honestly. 
• This comes across on his debut album ‘hara-kiri.’ honestav breaks down the making of the project, and how he narrowed the final tracklist down from 400 songs to the 10 songs that spoke to him the most in that period of his life. The title, too, comes from a tough emotional place. Referencing the ancient Japanese act of ritual suicide, ‘hara-kiri’ is a difficult but meaningful title for honestav. After the loss of his brother and father, he felt drawn to ‘hara-kiri’ because of how it framed issues of loss, choice, grief and sacrifice. In naming the album as so, he says, it’s a message to his late loved ones that he’s thinking of them and misses them, but that he needs to live his life as best he can. 

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How honestav’s DIY Spirit Powered His Hit Track “I’d Rather Overdose” For Viral Success and Human Connection

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• If you look into honestav’s apartment, he says, you’d find a sheet nailed hanging to the walls, a microphone and a laptop. With this no frills set up, honestav made some of his most popular songs to date, including his 2024 breakthrough hit track “I’d Rather Overdose” feat. Z. On the song, honestav sings and raps with such emotion that he’s “screaming and crying” into the microphone, he says. 
• That raw energy came from a place of true emotion, he says, but also from the simplicity of his home set-up — proving to fellow artists that you don’t need to have an expensive or complicated studio arrangement to make great music. As honestav tells it, the environment in which the music is made is super important to how the final track comes across.
• When “I’d Rather Overdose” started to go viral, honestav saw strangers on social media posting tens of thousands of videos, with the song attached, sharing stories about their own struggles with loss, addiction and grief. honestav was stunned by the response. He explains how he’s deeply grateful for how much the track has connected with others, and acknowledges that the experience has boosted his confidence as an artist.

Inspiration, Motivation and Advice for Other Artists, and How to Use SoundCloud to Succeed

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• When it comes to giving advice to other artists, honestav wears his big heart on his sleeve. Here, he shares tips on how to stay inspired, motivate yourself to create and share new music, and how to keep your feet on the ground even when you’re trying to elevate your music career. On SoundCloud, he loves to send direct messages to other artists about potentially working together — “I’m the kid who would email everyone," he says, “I’m in every famous person’s DMs” – but, sagely, he tells us that before others can believe in you enough to work with you, you have to truly believe in yourself. 
• Sharing tips and methods to get yourself in that zone, honestav shares that he’s a big believer in “talking to the universe” — that in speaking to yourself positively, out loud, you can inspire yourself to keep pushing forward — and that to be the best, you have to work on your craft every single day. Here, honestav drops wise gems of advice back-to-back: put in your 10,000 hours of work to become a master artist, trust your instincts and surround yourself with people who believe in you. 
• For honestav, it all comes back to SoundCloud: “Every time you post a song is like buying a lottery ticket,” he says. Every upload is a chance to be heard, understood and shared with the world, so take those chances as often as you can. Don’t be afraid to share your music, even if it’s in demo form, because people want to hear new music every day — and even if it isn’t perfect yet? Well, neither are we. What matters is the heart you put into the track. 
• Having come from posting a song a day on his SoundCloud from Pierce City, Missouri, to having his own solo headline tour, honestav knows that he’s come a long way — and it’s all down to the simple yet powerful act of sharing his music with the world. 

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Links and Extras

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Follow honestav’s journey on SoundCloud.

Listen to honestav’s latest track, “Living Wrong.”

Press play on honestav’s 2024 album, ‘hara-kiri.’

You can find information and dates for honestav’s 2025 No License tour here.

Hit play on honestav’s confessional collaboration with Z, “I’d Rather Overdose.”

Explore some of honestav’s wide-ranging influences, including Sublime, Limp Bizkit, Eminem and Lil Wayne, to name a few. 

Listen to the Hip-Hop Motivation playlist on SoundCloud.

Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.

Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud

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• Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
• Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
• Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
• Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
• Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.

To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.

Credits

Host: Vivian Host

Executive Producer: Mike Spinella

Producer: KC Orcutt

Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney

Coordinator: Trevor McGee

Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin

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