I started playing piano when I was 5. I continued my training through middle and high school. I also played trumpet for around 6 to 8 years in middle and high school.
I started getting into producing and making my own music at the end of freshman year of high school, first it was a little hobby, then I really started enjoying it. I didn't necessarily like playing piano until around sophomore year, when I actually started using it for my music.
A lot of my time in high school was spent producing by myself and with friends. I thought I'd have an album out in a month and I had no prior experience making music or anything, but that was not the case. I finally put an album out 5 months ago. It was a long process.
I think it definitely has, especially with my inspiration with how I make my music. I really like jazz and older soul music.
I love Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, the classics. With my last album, every track has a different genre combined with hip hop. It starts with classical music, and that's where my roots are, and it definitely shows in my production.
It's a timeline through the different genres from my perspective, and how I perceive them, and I combine it with the genre I like most, which is my version of hip hop.
I've had this idea since freshman year, and it was harder than I thought it would be, and definitely took a lot more time than I expected. When people listen to it, I hope they see how each track has a different tone. There's heavy gospel influences, jazz, rock, soul, and also classical. I kind of wanted to come out of the gate with every song having a little bit of a different sound, more line mixtape than an album, since with a lot of albums, every song kind of sounds similar.
I used to be really into jazz when I first started making music. I would just make piano and drum beats, but then I realized I could sample other music. One of the first songs I ever sampled was a surround sound song by JD, my sophomore year. Then I realized I can hear certain things from songs that I like, and can mash them together.
With my biggest song, "Please Take Me Home," I sampled a 3 minute song from my friend's choir concert, and I made 16 one-second clips of it. When sampling, the clips were all under around half a second to a second long. It sounds like a continuous sample, but it's actually like 12 or 16 different chops.
I really like sampling, but now I can get sued for doing it. But I like the idea of sampling something because it creates an entirely different melody. Then I take that, and figure out the notes for it, and then produce it with my own instruments.
As for the process for my last album, I'd make a beat, then sit on it for a while, but I'd have a bunch of ideas when I came back to it. Or I'd make a beat, then a hook, record it, then listen to it, then make a bassline with verses and chorus. Sometimes it can take 4 months to finish a song, especially with that first song on my album, Roses on the Floor. The first idea was just that piano riff, then I had one of my friends, a classical composer, help me structure the entire song. There are songs that take me as short as a week, but I can never really make a song in a day. It always starts with a very small idea, then I just build over it for a couple of months.
It actually happened twice. The first video that blew up was one with [ray emmanuel], and I had been watching him for 4 years, and I love his stuff. I follow him on instagram and everything. I hit him up after my beat blew up on TikTok, and asked if he wanted to hop on one of my songs.
With TikTok you just have to keep posting, which is the hard thing. The algorithm works, but a month or two later, the Please Take Me Home beat dropped, and blew up. I only had the beat at the time, since I had just made the beat and decided to throw it on Tiktok, but it blew up. People started making videos with it, and I created a duet challenge, because I needed time to finish the song, but everyone was asking when it was dropping. It was really hard, because everyone was complaining. I kept posing, and right before I dropped the album, 10 of my videos kept going on the for you page.
My goal for this year with music was to reach 10k streams on my album, but I ended up getting a million streams in four days, which made me very happy! Last March no one really listened to my music, and I'd post on tiktok and wouldn't get results. That's fine since it's about the process, but to see the difference now is very satisfying. I did not think that this would happen, at least for my first album, but I'm happy it did. It gives me motivation.
I don't listen to my music that much because I hear it so much when I'm making it, so when I put it out, I'm tired of it. If I had to name my top 3, first I'd say Gone, which was the last song I made on the album, and I just love the sampling used. I had my friend riff over it, then I split up her guitar and put it on. I also like the first song Roses on the Floor, mainly because it tells a story, and it has classical influences. I would also say Please take me home but by the time I dropped it, I was tired of it. And Through the wall too.
I connected with a bunch of artists and produced for a bunch of people. On the side, I produce for people, which is how I make money. I'm very happy about that because I didn't have to work a summer job. I'm definitely meeting a lot of artists, and producing for some other artists I know, and being able to feature them in my music. Seeing people that I've followed for a long time follow me back and talk to me is really cool.
Music is definitely an outlet, and it's the way I express my emotions. I don't like talking to people much, as I'm more introverted. With my friends I'm very expressive, but if I'm ever feeling down, it's the music that helps me get through it at the end of the day. It's a type of stress relief. If I'm not in my studio, I'm constantly thinking about wanting to be there, like I'm wasting my time doing anything else. It's kind of bad, since I'll be doing something fun and I'll be thinking about how I could be working in my studio right now.
I'm working on clothes right now, with my I WANNA LOVE IT brand, which is my producer tag. I'm trying to mash my clothing brand and producer tag together. I'm also working on new music. But in a year, I hope to just keep growing, and gain more listeners. I need to start posting more, since I've been slacking. I also really want to work with artists around Montréal, especially with live instruments as I prefer live instruments over VST. The first song on my album is all VST instruments, it sounds real, since it's automated and everything, but you can tell that it's not real. If I had to choose, I would just do live music. I'm also working on another album right now, I'm hoping it can come out before the summer.