They Call Him Loop Daddy

Marc Rebillet livestreams improvised music to millions of fans, often in just his boxer briefs.

- Nichole Perkins

MARC REBILLET IS STANDING in a mostly empty living room with a huge grin on his face. Wearing nothing but a bronze-colored silk robe and a pair of black-and-white boxer briefs, he holds a microphone in his left hand. Headphones are clamped to his ears, and his right hand hovers over a keyboard. The caller on the line wants a song about “getting it on with a big-booty Black girl.” Rebillet pauses, never losing his smirk. “I could get blasted for this,” he says, laughing. For the next 12 minutes and five seconds, Rebillet, his keyboard, and a loop machine (he’s known around the internet as Loop Daddy) oblige the caller with a bedroom groove featuring a bass line straight from an ’80s R&B quiet-storm playlist. The chat box lights up. Everyone wants to “work that ass for Daddy.”

Since 2016, Rebillet (pronounced RUB-EE-yay) has been live streaming completely improvised musical performances on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and sometimes Twitch to millions of viewers. His first taste of virality came in 2007. Rebillet, then an energetic 18-yearold, was the first person in line at an AT&T store in Dallas to buy an iPhone, and he hammed it up for the camera when a woman bought his spot for $800. The video racked up 4 million views. He quit college the following year to start a music career. Rebillet was a classically trained pianist, and he would eventually work with private teachers to learn about sound engineering, mixing, and jazz theory. But he had no plan for how to bring his music to larger audiences. “I’ve never been good at strategy, you know? It was all just shots in the dark,” Rebillet, now 32, says, shrugging in the living room of his chic Manhattan apartment.