How a YouTube Sensation Spends His Sundays

In the spring of 2020, Marc Rebillet’s improvised, solo funk shows, livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook from his apartment, became a lockdown sensation. Wearing a bathrobe and boxers, Mr. Rebillet posted a phone number and asked callers to suggest a word or theme that he’d use to write anthemic songs on the fly, belting them out in a power baritone. The tunes were danceable, subversive and hilariously raunchy.

Mr. Rebillet, 34, whose nickname, “Loop Daddy,” refers to the electronic live-looping technique he uses in his compositions, now has more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube and has parlayed his online popularity into a more established career. He embarked on a sold-out national tour, hosts a show on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel (Jack Black was a recent guest) and is the subject of a new documentary.

Since April, he’s been performing pop-up concerts on city sidewalks for “We Outside,” his newest livestream series. Mr. Rebillet welcomes the bits of chaos that passers-by bring. He has sampled a youth marching band and the howl of a dog named Cheeto. He was recently delighted when a man rolled into the crowd in a wheelchair, then leaped up to dance.

Mr. Rebillet is now planning a thoroughly un-chaotic studio album, one “that’s layered and well thought-out, produced, composed, intentionally done,” he said. He lives alone in Manhattan’s Seaport neighborhood.

BODY WEIGHT These days, I’ll get up probably around 6 or 7 a.m. I will usually do a workout in my apartment. I do this body-weight exercise program that I’ve been doing for like 10 years. It’s called “You Are Your Own Gym.” It’s based originally on a book written by this guy Mark Lauren. He turned it into an app ages ago that I must have found while I was living in Paris. I was very scrawny at the time. Over the course of a few years, this program has become a very regular, every-other-day part of my life.

UNICYCLE MAN I’ll get on my electric unicycle. (It’s a pretty dorky name — I tend to just call it a “wheel” because it’s not nearly as silly.) I’ve got a few of them. You put the pedals down and you stand on it facing forward. They go like 45 miles an hour. It’s like a little car. I go and get my little fruit bowl. There’s a place up near Fulton Street called Healthy Green Juice Bar, and they will fix me a bowl of fresh fruit with a scoop of peanut butter. It’s a perfect little breakfast: a little bit of protein, a bunch of fruit.

PEOPLE-WATCHING I might go to City Hall Park and eat my little fruit bowl, watch people start to move around and get the day started. And then I’ll come back and start making preparations to get my car to my apartment and load it up with all of my equipment so that I can drive to some random place in the city, unpack it all, set up and play a show for strangers for a couple of hours.

POWER BUSKING What I usually try and do is find a location, like a street corner or a triangle or some plaza, the day before or a couple of days before. And this past Saturday, I really had nothing. And so I just decided to get in my car a little earlier than I normally would and drive and just land on the first place that my instinct led me and where a parking space became available — that’s kind of an important factor — and then just do it there.

So, amazingly, I was driving around Union Square, and someone pulled out right as I was coming up behind them. I parked and got set up. And it was a really, really awesome show. A marching band showed up. It was the Brooklyn United, they’re an all-Black marching band, kids who are basically raising money for the organization.

We were just playing the show, and it was pretty crowded at that point. And we hear in the distance, “ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.” Some people in the back clued me in that it was a marching band. I was like, “Get over here!” And people made way and they came right in. You can see it online. They came right on in and just killed it. I sampled them and made a beat with the drum sounds. That’s the kind of stuff you just can’t plan. I mean, I guess I could have planned it, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun if I had.

AFTER PARTY About 5 p.m., I’ll go and get a drink with my friends who hang around and help me pack my stuff back into my car. We’ll go get a drink in the area, smoke a joint, sort of just bask in the afterglow and talk about fun moments and chew the fat. Then after that, I just can’t go on anymore, so I get in my car and leave.

HOME/ANTI-PERSON At that point I’m just done, and I really just disappear. I stop answering texts and everything and I basically just sit around and watch YouTube. It’s sad. It’s like I become this anti-person that just sits. And I want an absence of stimuli — nothing, just nothing. I’m not even looking at what I’m watching, really, I’m just existing. Of course, I’ll call my mom. I always call my mom after the show. And she really wants to know how it went.

VAPE AND ICE CREAM Generally, I’ll order something really, really greasy. I tend to have this feeling after these shows that, “OK, I’ve worked really hard and now I can do things that are not good for me.” So, I’ll usually get a bunch of ice cream and then I’ll also get a nicotine vape. I’ll just suck it down until basically I’m like a Roman emperor. I’m like: My belly’s full, I’ve got grapes, I’m passed out on the couch just “uhhhhh.” And then, I wake up in the morning and do my little workout like nothing ever happened.

NEAT FREAK Probably midnight, 1 a.m., I draw the blinds, I’ll brush my teeth, put my stuff away, because I like to wake up in the morning to a clean kitchen. Everything put away, everything nice, in its place, so I can go to sleep like a little angel and not have to worry about anything the next morning. And also to not look upon the horrifying condition, the state of me the night before, you know.

Sunday Routine readers can follow Marc Rebillet on Instagram and Twitter at @marcrebillet.