He has played drums since the age of four and believes this may have affected how he listened to music.

“I never really listened to the vocals or lyrics of a song,” he says. “I’m always drawn to the little details and the sound selection of the production. When I’m making beats now I always tend to use sounds that are a bit unconventional and weird; that’s what makes my production interesting and unique. It is hard to get them to fit in the mix, but there’s nothing that a little EQ can’t do!”

Jardine’s parents were big music fans, who loved gospel artists such as CeCe Winans and the soulful end of pop music: Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. Although he didn’t take any formal training on a melodic instrument, he believes their catchy hooks must have seeped into his consciousness.

“I think the most interesting music nowadays is made from feeling, not formulas”

“I can’t play piano to save my life, but my dad is a really talented keys player. I’d always hear him playing in the house growing up, so I think that developed my ear for melodic lines. All of my melodies are made by just clicking notes in my DAW until I like the sound of it, and I don’t really have much theory knowledge. Personally, I think the most interesting music nowadays is made from feeling, not formulas.”

Jardine was an avid chart-watcher and spent long hours glued to MTV, which meant his listening spread across hip hop (Kanye, The Neptunes etc), indie music (MGMT), electronic music (Daft Punk, Justice), and funk (Jamiroquai). He attended the School of Audio Engineering (SAE) in Auckland, and while he saw that many of his fellow students were aided by learning the technical aspects of recording, he felt he already had a good foundation from years of making music on his own.

“I’m still a firm believer that you can’t teach creativity; only the basics of it. One lesson that I did learn is the importance of building good relationships and networking with the people around you. Nowadays, that’s one of the most important skills you can have in any creative industry and I think I definitely picked up on that from SAE.”

Online khaos

Jardine uploaded his first “playboi carti type beats” and “pierre bourne type beats” in mid-2020, thereby joining the “type-beat” trend of young producers creating instrumentals in the style of beats used by famous rappers.

As a child, he’d played the console game Modern Warfare 2, and his favourite emblem/calling card was “9 lives” so he took this as his producer name. It helped that he was also fond of cats. He used the text-to-speech function on the Note app on his dad’s MacBook to create an audio-tag to place at the start of each beat: “9lives exclusive”.

Trap music began to sound stale to him, so he was drawn to US rapper Luci4, who took crunchy, hi-hat heavy beats of trap music but created a more disorienting sound by pitching up the vocals in the style of hyperpop and incorporating the hallucinatory elements of cloud music, with woozy, unpredictable synth lines and layers of reverb. This style of music was tagged as “Sigilkore” – which riffs off the word ‘Sigil’ meaning a magical symbol. The associated visuals also had a fantastical edge – darkly-themed images of swordplay and castles.

9lives played Luci4 one of his beats and the pair became online friends

During an Instagram Live stream by Luci4, 9lives played him one of his beats and the pair became online friends. It wasn’t long before 9lives was being heralded as a flagbearer for Sigilkore.

TikTok users discovered 9lives’s track ‘khaos emerald’ on YouTube, leading to tens of thousands of “creates” even before 9lives had uploaded an official version to Spotify. His track ‘labyrinth’ followed a similar path. The first official release by 9lives was an instrumental mixtape/album, #exclusive (2022), which quickly accumulated millions of streams.

9lives also spread his music through other online platforms, loading remixes to Soundcloud, chatting with other producers on Discord, and posting material to Instagram and Twitter. He developed a strong visual style, both in terms of his own look and the imagery that went with his music. No surprise, given his side hustle was a modelling career which included fashion shoots for top brands, including Stolen Girlfriends Club, Checks, and I Love Ugly.

9lives was introduced to Dan Woolston by lilbubblegum, a rapper/producer signed to Woolston’s management company Higher Ground. 9lives joined their impressive roster, which included another local hip hop artist who’d had viral success, SXMPRA (as well as pop act Sachi, rapper Melodownz, and the producer Montell2099). New York label The System signed 9lives to a distribution deal for #exclusive.

Meanwhile, the Alabama rapper jnhygs discovered 9lives’s music on YouTube and placed her half-spoken raps over a ripped version of ‘khaos emerald 2’. It gained buzz on Soundcloud as ‘Xtayalive’.

Around the same time, 9lives connected with Kanii – a US act signed to Warner, who already had a massive hit with ‘I Know’. Kanii was also interested in doing a track with the same instrumental jnhygs had used, which led to a new pop-edged version.

Kanii’s ‘Go (Xtayalive 2)’ became a viral smash, with over three million “creates” using the sound, including one by Kim Kardashian that showed her dancing with North West (Kanye’s daughter). The single was certified gold in the US and featured on Kanii’s exiit EP (2023) that reached No.10 on the US Dance chart.

9lives began 2023 with another mixtape/album of instrumentals, 33.1FM, that continued to expand his sound. Most notably, ‘fairy’ had lush synths and an unexpectedly light-hearted vibe.

Then everything sped up ...

9lives’s biggest singles were still ahead of him. Soon, even just the “sped up” and “slowed + reverb” versions of his popular tracks could gain 10m+ streams.

9lives’s management team contacted Houston rapper Odetari, and the pair began chatting over Discord before meeting in the US for a session. 9lives knew that a less complex beat would fit better with Odetari’s style and found a suitable unreleased instrumental, though Odetari also did vocals for two pre-existing tracks from 9lives’s YouTube. Their first release together ‘Reassure me’ was a reasonable success, but only hinted at what was to come.

Jardine now sees himself becoming “more of a songwriter than a producer”

The experience of writing a track from scratch with another artist is what Jardine now sees as the start of him becoming “more of a songwriter than a producer”. “In my experience, I have the most fun building a song from ground zero all the way up to being fully completed. Before that, it was more of a ‘send me the beat and I’ll send back the song’ type of process. In the future I definitely would love to do an executive-produced album, where I can build a full world with the music.”

Meanwhile, another of his tracks featuring jnhygs – ‘Jerk!’ - reached No.45 on the US Dance Chart in October. The following month he got a startling offer out of the blue. The emo rap/hip hop star Trippie Redd invited 9lives to a recording session. This was a big moment, not only because 9lives was a fan, but also because Trippie Redd was a key figure – he’d appeared on a track with XXXTentacion just prior to the rapper’s death and one of his own mixtapes had topped the US album chart. 9lives had two days to make it to Miami, so he jumped on the next available flight. This led to him producing a track for the next Trippie Redd album (‘Popular’ off Saint Michael V2, 2023).

In December, 9lives dropped the 3x3 EP (2023) with Odetari and the track ‘I LOVE YOU HOE’ became a monster hit. The track was at its heart a love song with lyrics like “no one look good with me but you” and it was catchy too, with a melody that hung around far longer than its runtime (just over two minutes).

It went to No.3 on the US Dance Chart and was certified gold (with streams surpassing a quarter of a billion). As a result, 9lives finished 2023 among the highest streamed acts from New Zealand – and he was still only 19 years old.

The new year started with two singles that highlighted the level he was working at. First was the heavy underground-rap ‘Multimillionaire’ featuring Trippie Redd and Odetari. Then his sound moved in a pop direction when the British rapper Skaiwater dropped a track they’d done with him – ‘(light!)’ – which also had a remix featuring viral superstar, Lil Nas X.

Beyond 9lives’s official releases was a wealth of other material that he posted to his Soundcloud, which went beyond what you’d find on his Spotify account. One notable set of tracks from a local perspective are his collaborations with New Zealand duo Emperor C and Benibachi. His Soundcloud was also where you could find his steadily growing list of flips/remixes of artists that spread all the way from Sade to Charlie XCX to Imogen Heap.

‘I LOVE YOU HOE’ became a monster hit, reaching No.3 on the US Dance Chart

In early 2025, 9lives reset expectations once again by dropping ‘die for someone feat. adore’ which reached back nostalgically to the EDM he’d heard in his teens.

“That’s one of my favourite tracks I’ve made. Adore (the artist) and myself made that track in New York City. It was the only song we made in that session so it felt like a fun, experimental project that we developed over a good six-seven hours. I think that electroclash/ dance-sleaze sound is gonna come hounding back next year, so I’m glad I can experiment with that sound as well. I grew up listening to a lot of that music, so it feels awesome to drop a track that feels like my childhood.”

This was in stark opposition to his next collaboration, ‘BBGirlgoslow,’ which saw him working with Atlanta rapper Bktherula. She had already gained enough buzz via Soundcloud that she was able to get rap-kingpin Ty Dolla $ign on the track.

9lives’ achievements were recognised at the 2025 Aotearoa Music Awards, where he received a Te Manu Mātārae Tūī – a special award that had been introduced the previous year to honour artists that have made a significant impact on the musical landscape. He had begun doing live sets too, including an appearance at SXSW in Australia. There was no club night in Auckland that catered to his type of music, so he and his management decided to start one of their own. The first step was a show with lilbubblegum and Emperor C x Benibachi at Double Whammy, alongside DJs Decorcy, D4y MC, Buddhaboss and dotjp_. There was also a pop-up by fashion brand Oneofone and visual installations by Re:type.

9lives remained Auckland-based, but he never felt bound to a particular scene, whether geographically or in the sounds he was seeking to create. One week, he’d be in his home studio cooking up instrumentals, the next he would be at Paris Fashion Week meeting up with potential collaborators. Nonetheless, he does hope to use his success to give back to the local music scene here.

“I definitely think New Zealand music had an impact on me growing up. Me and my mum would always be listening to the radio when she dropped off and picked me up from school, and luckily for me that was kinda the golden age of New Zealand pop in my opinion. People like Lorde, Naked and Famous, Ladyhawke, the list goes on … There’s a dope music scene in New Zealand now, with a lot of different sounds and styles from all around the country. I think it’s just a matter of bringing those people together and forming a community to foster what we have and help it flourish.”