Vapor Talks #23: Florida Rains

One of vaporwave's most controversial newcomers in conversation

One of my favorite vaporwave artists from the post-pandemic generation is a producer by the name of Florida Rains. With his lauded releases in the late night lofi, signalwave and mallsoft subgenres, he’s been finding a loyal supporter base since appearing on the scene in early 2024; his albums have been regularly topping the genre charts on Bandcamp and quickly selling out physical runs.

The artist behind the moniker Florida Rains, whose real name is Jake, has been outspoken about having used generative AI as a tool for some of his work in the past. It’s been a controversial issue to say the least – and in a message to his Bandcamp community from last night, he announced that he had to pull parts of his discography from the platform. “I want it to be publicly known that I'm changing my production process moving forward”, he writes. “If you enjoyed my latest album, Driftlight Lounge, then you got a taste of that. My goal as an artist is to grow and improve, but also be accessible to listeners like you. To do that, I must calibrate.”

I spoke to Jake about hurricane season in Tampa, growing up on smooth jazz radio, how he went from being a long-time fan and collector to becoming an actual vaporwave producer, and of course, his thoughts on the use of generative AI in music.

Florida Rains – Driftlight Lounge (album cover)

I loved your climatewave albums Hurricane Watch and Hurricane Warning. Did you actually experience a bad hurricane recently?

Two years ago was the scariest hurricane season we had. We had two that came through that really made a lot of damage in the area. Thankfully my house had minimal damage – it just knocked down a couple things around my yard. But two blocks down, people had severe water damage from the flooding, and you would see furniture sitting outside homes for weeks. Some friends lost their cars and some of their belongings. The city just wasn’t prepared for it.

It’s a scary threat, but it comes with the territory. Florida is a beautiful place to be, but there’s going to be consequences to being in a beautiful place.

Growing up in Tampa, what kind of music was playing around the house?

My parents listened to a lot of classic rock, and my dad just loves smooth jazz. We had a local smooth jazz radio station too. You don’t find those anymore, they just don’t exist. Growing up, we would go out in the car at night, go to the mall, go to the restaurant, and they would play that music. It would set the theme to the night. I wanted to replicate that feeling when I started making music, and I’ve been able to connect with others that grew up in the same way too, which is really cool.

As a music-obsessed kid, did you learn to play any instruments?

Yeah, I played a little bit of synthesizer. I was in some local bands. We played more of an alternative rock style of music, influenced by Fall Out Boy and Paramore. I was just obsessed with those bands. I also grew up listening to a pop punk band called Motion City Soundtrack, and they were very synthesizer-heavy. I would just daydream about their synthesizer loops.

I picked up a MicroKorg, and I played a little bit of bass and a little bit of guitar, but never to the point where I was really good at it. I was self-taught, but I also had ADHD, so that made it a little difficult. I ended up playing in this band in my high school days, which never took off, but I had a good time doing it. After high school, I got a football scholarship, but I’d still catch myself in my dorm room just listening to music all night. It’s something that I’ve carried with me throughout my whole life.

I’m not even surprised about a vaporwave producer telling me he has ADHD.

For sure, and who doesn’t have ADHD these days, right? But the problem is that once you get so many projects lined up, it’s just so hard to adjust, and I’m a completionist so I like finishing one thing at a time. I don’t like getting distracted with other things.

When did you start producing music on a computer?

I’d say 2022, ‘23, so I’m fairly new to this. I’m 36 now, and throughout my 20s and early 30s, I was just a big vaporwave fan and a listener. I really loved consuming it and getting that nostalgia feel from it. Back in 2023, I went through a divorce and a custody battle, so I couldn’t see my daughter for over six months. It was really hard for me, and I wanted to find a way to channel my frustration, but also bring out creativity. So I just decided to go for it and become a vaporwave producer.

I didn’t expect much from it to be honest. My first release was Hurricane Watch. It was a theme that I felt would be really fun and a cool niche. I heavily relied on people like Paco Moreno and Kratzwerk for advice, and learned a lot from them. At first I was doing it through Audacity. Actually, I still use it. It’s been reliable for me. I haven’t found a reason to get rid of it, yet it does what I want to do.

I had a lot of output in 2024 because I had a lot of downtime without my daughter. I would come home from work, and my nights would just be doing this. Thankfully, I ended up getting full custody of my daughter, so I have less time to produce music now, but if I do find time, I’ll try to put something out. If you look at my output lately, it’s been pretty slow. That’s the reason.

Going back to the time when you first discovered vaporwave as a listener, can you try to describe what drew you in? I saw another interview where you said that Luxury Elite was a big inspiration.

Yeah, just stumbling upon her album World Class was huge for me. It was like a gateway, because I got this feeling that I had as a kid, riding in the car of my parents at night, listening to that type of music. Nostalgia is a drug, it makes you feel good, so I chased it and discovered other artists like 猫 シ Corp. [Cat System Corp.]. When I was going through a tough time in my marriage, I would throw Good Morning America on. I’ve never found an album that was able to calm me down more. It’s an unbelievably powerful album in my opinion, it’s just so soothing.

Late night lofi is my favorite microgenre of vaporwave. It’s the genre I produce most, and I’ve been able to discover a lot of other artists through that microgenre. My current favorite artist that’s still producing right now has been Midnight Première. Waterfront Dining is my overall favorite vaporwave artist. I collect a lot of their music on cassette and vinyl, they’re probably my most collected artist throughout everything that I have. I own about 1200 vinyl records, 900 CDs and 500 cassettes.

That’s all vaporwave?

It’s spread out, but a lot of it is. Most of my cassettes are vaporwave, because it’s mainly a cassette genre, but it’s becoming more of a vinyl genre.

As a fan and listener, were you an active member of the online vaporwave community?

Not really, I’ve never been big into Discord. I find a lot of negativity there, and I try to stay away from it. But I was a big loyal purchaser of PMP, Paco Moreno’s label. For a couple of years, I was picking up every album he put out. He told me that I was his number one supporter, so he would send me a lot of free tapes along the way.

Another one that was huge for me, which is now defunct, was Cityman Productions. I got really close with the owner. We would talk a lot on Facebook, just message back and forth. Really cool guy, his name is Tony. He put out a lot of Cat System Corp.’s tapes, so I was able to build up my collection through that.

I became a fan of Kratzwerk before I started collaborating with him, and we became friends on Facebook too. You know, I was a big supporter and really liked and bought his music. Once I became an artist, the second thing that I put out was a collaboration with him. It was actually his idea, which was awesome. It was really cool as a fan to be able to work with artists that you grew up listening to and admired their output.

Going through your discography, there’s a lot of music in the late night lofi style that Luxury Elite pioneered, but you’ve also been branching out into signalwave and mallsoft.

My focus as a Florida-based artist was to give the outside listener a taste of my area. When I first started, it was cool to come up with these projects of places that I grew up being around, like Westshore Plaza Mall. My grandma used to take me there as a kid. She loved shopping at the department stores, And then also just growing up, having the Weather Channel on in the background at night, if I couldn’t sleep, or if I wanted something to calm me down. The music was great on there, so I just wanted to put together a Florida-themed climatewave project.

The whole Florida theme is how I started, and I’ve kind of moved away from that, because I feel like there’s only so much I can do with that, and I’ve done all I can hopefully. Now I can think of something else, and I’ve just branched out to other regions, like the Vegas theme and the New York theme. It’s all about coming up with these new and unique themes, and just building on that.

Do you usually first have the music or the cover for a new project?

I’m visual, so I like getting the cover first. If I get a cover that I really like, it can help me put together a theme, and from there, I can collect samples that meet that theme. If I collaborate with another artist, I don’t like starting until I have a cover. I feel like I can create something that best fits that cover when I have it in front of me. I don’t think that there’s been a single project that I’ve done where I started with the music and didn’t have the cover. That’s just the best way to build for me. I know others are different, but that’s how I like to work.

Anonymity is still a big topic in vaporwave. People know that your name is Jake, because you have it on your Instagram bio...

…well, it’s hard to escape that when Google has already doxxed you. (laughs) If you google Florida Rains, the AI will tell you my name is Jake Hunter. But I try to keep a little bit of anonymity. I’ve never shown my face as an artist. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it, but I don’t feel like it’s necessary. It’s not really about me, it’s just about the experience. I really like the Florida Rains logo, which was built by Paco Moreno. That’s just been my image, and it works for me.

You’ve caught some backlash for the use of generative AI in some of your work. You’ve talked about this topic in another interview with victory over death, but what’s your stance on that right now?

To be clear, I’m not an AI artist. I’ve used it as a tool to create samples in the past, but it’s not like I make the whole song in there. There’s still a production process that goes into it, and the reason behind it is not laziness, so I’m not putting out slop, I’m really just using it to create something new. I’ve said it before, you can sample Kenny G and beat a dead horse as long as you want. I love Kenny G, I’ve sampled Kenny G and I will probably sample Kenny G again, but why not put something out that’s different?

I know people have their thoughts about it. I get it. I understand. My opinion is that you should listen to music you like, and if what I put out is not for you, that’s totally fine. Don’t listen to it, I’m not gonna be offended. But if you do enjoy it, that’s wonderful and I really appreciate it. A lot of people feel a really certain way about AI, and some people just completely outcast it, and that makes it tough to even just talk about it. I’ve made the personal decision to not use AI as a tool in my future works, which also includes my latest album, Driftlight Lounge.

Is there an overlooked album, sort of a dark horse in your catalog?

Circuit City. That album was really fun to make, and it also took me probably the longest to make. It’s quite unconventional, because these are not songs you’re going to find anywhere in vaporwave. A lot of these songs just didn’t get popular, and the bands ended up breaking up, so they never got their chance. But these are songs that I grew up listening to and that I really connected with from my personal collection.

I mean, it did well. It sold out on cassette. But I feel like it didn’t really get its listenership, just because it’s such a different sound. I still find myself throwing it on from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with listening to your own music. You should be proud of what you put out. Some people find it corny if you listen to your own music, but I don’t feel that way.

In public discussion, people often create this dichotomy of mood-based music on one side, and music driven by artistic expression on the opposite side. I’m not sure they really have to be separate.

It depends on what you’re trying to get out of it. I appreciate music that has that artistic direction, and I like hearing something that is different. Like that band Geese – they’re cool, I’ve even bought their record on vinyl, but I don’t think I feel the same way about them as everyone else. I like listening to emotional, mood-based music. I find myself listening to that the most.

What are you listening to outside of vaporwave?

I start my day going to the gym, and there I’ll listen to something a little more upbeat and heavy, like metalcore or hardcore. I’m really big into Midwest emo and math rock. I also enjoy pop punk, alternative rock, and a little bit of electronic music. Those are the main genres I’m listening to.

You’ve started a new CD series a few months ago. As you mentioned earlier, the scene is still very fixated on tapes, and more recently vinyl, so why CDs?

They’re just my favorite format. As a kid, I loved collecting CDs. I wasn’t interested in a lot of other things that kids were interested in, so I built this amazing CD collection. My car has a CD player still in it. It’s a 2017 model. A lot of the newer ones just have Bluetooth connections. It’s too bad they don’t really put CD players in there anymore.

I’m actually doing these CD runs myself, so I do all the designs, submit the music, and I have a manufacturer that handles the pressing and shipping, which is really cool. What I’ve been doing is just weekly putting out a new one as I go. I know not everybody listens to CDs, but there are a large amount that do, so just having it out there for them has been really cool, and it’s cool for me too because I get to pick up a copy for my personal collection. (laughs)

Can you tease something that’s coming out soon, any projects that you’re currently working on?

I’ve had a couple labels reach out to me that want me to make something for them. I’m not yet working on anything, but I do have some projects in mind. I want to build on that corporatewave theme. There’s really not a lot of artists that are doing that right now, so I just want to carve my name into that. I feel like it’s only necessary to keep it going.

Starting this project in 2023, I didn’t really have any expectations. I just wanted to put one album out and see where it went. The fact that it did well carried me and made me want to keep going with it, and people reaching out to tell me that they get that same feeling from it is really why I keep going. I don’t know for how long I’ll be doing this. I’m just enjoying the ride right now.

Listen to Florida Rains on Bandcamp

Florida Rains’ Top 10 Vaporwave Albums

(unranked)

• 猫 シ Corp. – Good Morning America (self-released, 2017)

• luxury elite – World Class (Crash Symbols, 2015)

• Kratzwerk – Airport (self-released, 2021)

• waterfront dining – Sprung 夢中 (self-released, 2015)

• midnight première – hooked on you (self-released, 2025)

• International Telecom – 3 a.m. Signals (Bogus Collective, 2023)

• VHS テープリワインダー [VHS Tape Rewinder] – Night Thoughts (self-released, 2018)

• Cosmic Cycler – Nocturnal City Streets (Gorgeous Lights, 2017)

• HiBias 카세트 – Prevue Tonight (PMP, 2023)

• CT57 – Road To Nowhere (self-released, 2024)