British YouTube star KSI has said he maintains his success by staying true to himself and not being concerned with “just getting clicks”.
The social media star, whose real name is Olajide William “JJ” Olatunji, has 4.8 million followers on Twitter and just over 20 million subscribers on his YouTube channel.
He told the Press Association: “I think the way I keep going is I stay true to myself. I think previously I would just do what I would think I needed to do to get clicks, to get views, to get this, to get that. Whereas nowadays I’ve stepped back from doing that and I essentially have a lot more integrity.
“I don’t just do things just because, I do things because I want to do them and it makes sense for me. I feel like a lot of people lose their integrity and just get swallowed up by this whole social media craze, to the point where they don’t even know who they are themselves any more.
“And then once the viewership stops or slows down, once all the hype about you slows down, they start to panic, to do more crazy, rash things to try and gather attention and essentially (it) slowly destroys a person and I feel like sometimes it’s just good to know who you are and not try to do stuff just for clicks essentially.”
The internet star has also branched into music and is currently on a 17-date tour, the New Age Tour, across the UK and Europe.
New Age is also the name of his album, which features musician and producer Randolph.
He said: “For us New Age is about showing the world this whole new digital force that’s coming through. So I guess the whole mainstream idea and we just felt because we came from an internet background, it was fitting to call the album New Age to show that.”
The album is entirely self-produced and self-released.
— KSI (@KSIOlajidebt) June 13, 2019
KSI explained: “We felt like we don’t need (record) labels. We’re in a day and age where we don’t need labels to help us promote our music, we can just promote music ourselves and be smart ourselves.
“There are so many artists who are independent and who are killing it in the music industry… I think it’s funny how, I don’t know what corporation or what ‘thing’ is trying to put people who are independent in a bad light but if anything it’s making us stronger.
“I feel like gone are the days of the gatekeepers, where you have to, if you want to do anything with the entertainment business, you have to go through a certain person to make it essentially. Now you just bypass all of that and do it on your own, create your own community and build off of that.”
He also said he is in talks regarding a boxing re-match with fellow YouTuber Logan Paul.
KSI and Paul stepped into the ring last year for an amateur boxing match, which ended in a “majority draw” after six rounds.
KSI told the Press Association: “We are in talks – it’s quite close but I can’t really say too much about it because of well just… it’s going to be big.”
The New Age tour is at Electric Brixton on June 20, with dates in Nottingham, Dublin and Europe after that.