Porter Robinson & Ninajirachi on Their Debut Collab: ‘I’m Getting Messages From People I Didn’t Even Think Would Like It — Billboard

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Porter Robinson & Ninajirachi on Their Debut Collab: ‘I’m Getting Messages From People I Didn’t Even Think Would Like It — Billboard | AIPROPX

While a collaboration between Porter Robinson and Ninajirachi felt inevitable, it’s also very possible it might never have happened.

Talking to Billboard over Zoom — Robinson is at home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Ninajirachi is in Chicago for Lollapalooza, where she played yesterday — both admit that they’re typically too shy to reach out to other artists to see if they want to work together.

But understanding the significant connective tissue between his work and Nina’s, Robinson felt comfortable sending her the DM that would lead to “WannaCry,” the pair’s collaborative single released July 28 on I Love Cats/NLV Records. Ninajirachi arrived to Robinson’s Chapel Hill studio in early February of this year, and the pair mind-melted, if still a bit shyly.

“The idea I came to you with,” Robinson says to Ninajirachi, “I almost wasn’t sure that I wanted to show you — because I’ve had people be like ‘I made this and it made me think of you,’ and I felt like, ‘Ooh, that didn’t excite me.'”

But Ninajirachi was into the sketch, with the pair expanding upon and refining it, ultimately making something that brightly exclaims their shared predilection for punchy, synth-driven hyperpop-leaning electronic music with emotional depth and intellectual backbone. This compatibility is understandable, as, amid her meteoric rise over the last year, the 26-year-old DJ-producer has been vocal about how much she was influenced by Robinson’s music while growing up in Australia, with the pair first linking IRL when she opened for him during his 2025 Australian tour.

“And it wasn’t just your music that affected me when I was growing up,” Ninajirachi now adds. “It was your shows. Your show was my first time in a venue, in front of a PA and a massive LED. It was like my hair was being blown back. I felt like a Victorian-age child being shown like an iPod. I was just like, ‘What the f–k is this?'”

Here, the duo discuss “WannaCry,” having sympathy for a computer virus and feeling seen in each other’s work.

Tell me about the first day of having this song in the world. What’s it been like for you both?

Ninajirachi: So epic. It’s kind of everywhere. Porter, I know you’ve had so many massive songs for such a long time, but this is the most I’ve ever seen anyone share a bit of music I’ve had my name attached to. Like, everyone has turned out for this song. It’s awesome.

Robinson: It feels so instantaneous. I’m getting messages from people that I didn’t even think would like it. It feels crazy to say about your own song, but to me it kind of feels like we cooked up a little bit of a future classic. It feels like one where some people will know the song and not know the artists. That’s what I’m hoping for.

Tell me about the seeds of the idea. I know you guys have known each other for a while — was it inevitable that you’d collaborate?

Ninajirachi: It kind of started from Porter honestly, even the song idea. Porter, the collab invite was you hitting up me and seeing if I’d be down to to make music. I’m very shy in that sense. I would have never done that. I’m not like, a confident DM “Do you want to collab?” kind of person, so you made it happen. And you had the start of the song idea when I pulled up as well.

Robinson: I’m usually really shy about asking people to collaborate too, but I guess with Nina, just given that you kind of grew up on my music, I felt like that was a layup for me. I didn’t have to get nervous with like, “Is she gonna want to get in the studio with me?” I’d watched Nina’s ascent, and we had done shows together in Australia, and I just immediately liked Nina. I thought she was really funny and likable and normal and weird at the same time, and just incredibly talented, and I wanted to to know more. It feels weird to talk about this, but just knowing that my show was the first show Nina went to when you were 14, right?

Ninajirachi: Yeah.

Robinson: So if I imagine being in her shoes, if I was to get in the studio with somebody who made a big impression on me, I guess I was just feeling pressure to make something good. I wanted to have something Nina would be into. I didn’t want to flop, basically. So I cooked up a few ideas and “WannaCry,” especially the lead melody bit, was the thing I was most excited about. I wasn’t sure if Nina would be into it, but once we dove into it, Nina just slayed all the writing, and totally fixed the production on it too. Something I feel like the fans don’t know is that the bass sound got so fixed by Nina.

How so?

Robinson: This is technical, but my bass sound was just kind of whack, and Nina changed it into this amorphous flowing thing and added all these insane glitches and made the whole breakdown of the song and all the soft parts and the chorus. Some songs take me years, and when Nina and I got together, it just flowed really naturally.

Nina, was that feeling true for you as well?

Ninajirachi: Definitely. We kind of meandered a bit too. “WannaCry” was the first thing we worked on, and it’s not even that we we were stuck on it, it was more in the spirit of just trying to quick fire a bunch of ideas. We saved it, closed it, opened something else and then worked on that for a bit, and then worked on something else. Then we were kind of like, “We should go back to that first one. That was really good.”

The writing did happen very quickly, but I think Porter, you have such good pop instincts, and the reason it happened so fast — I’d spit a bunch of stuff out, but if I was on my own I would have a harder time discerning what was good or interesting. With this I’d be like, “Wha...