DON'T MISS TODAY:

Back to DJs & Producers Section

12/21/2010 @ImSoVAYNE We haven’t heard from you in awhile. What have you been up to? Really, just grinding. Really finding myself as an artist and there were a couple of things in my personal life that I had to take care of. Now that I'm independent, I really wanted to find my lane and now that I found it, I’m coming back strong in 2011, doing things the way I want to do it. Was it ever a challenge laying low and not releasing music? Nah, not at all. It was necessary. It was needed. It was very needed, especially with rap where a lot of people are just kind of lost. For me, personally, there were a lot of things going on and I needed to deal with that in order to deal with myself as an artist. So no, it didn’t bother me at all. I’m glad I did it and now I’m ready to vent all that I’ve been through. You used to be a Streetsweepers artist. What went wrong with you and Kay Slay? I don’t think it went wrong. I think that mutually, you know, we decided that it would be better off if I did move on, but honestly, where I was mentally, it wasn’t…I probably wasn’t in the right space for the time and I wasn’t ready yet and I think that he could see that in me and that’s probably where it kind of broke off. So really, it wasn’t him, per se. I would definitely say it was just where I was and it wasn’t my time and everything happens for a reason. There’s no regrets. No regrets at all. And I’m glad that he gave me the love and the attention that he did give me at the time. Now I’m ready to start over. How have you changed as an artist? I think I was everywhere, trying to do everything. And I think now, I’m a little more mature than I was and I know I have more of a message now as opposed to before. If you’re kind of, like, lost and have confusion going on in your personal life, then it’s going to come out in your music. But once you get grounded, like I did, your music will have more structure. Now there’s more focus on my purpose and the words that I’m saying as opposed to saying anything because it rhymes. And I definitely feel like I’ve gotten better because it’s coming from a better place. I got a lot more energy now. I feel like it’s a whole ‘nother mode. If people thought I was killing it back then, now it’s a whole different zone. Definitely I feel like I got a lot better. My content is just more there. There’s more content and more depth to the subject matter that I talk about because everything is more personal now. Before I was just saying what I was seeing around me. Now I’m talking about how I feel, my opinion on certain topics and especially with young females. I’m definitely coming from that angle. Were you making music you wanted to when you were signed to Streetsweepers? Everything happens for a reason and it was what it was at the time. That’s what I was feeling and that’s what I had to go through at the time and I took a lot from that experience, like the grind of it and the focus of it, to work with a DJ who gets as much respect as he does. Streetsweepers was really like boot camp, honestly. So when I go and work with other artists from other places, it feels like they’re slow. I’m always pumping out freestyles and pumping out songs. That was just the best experience for me. I needed that but I’m somewhere else now. But there’s still pieces of that that I keep with me. You know you can’t do an interview without talking about other female rappers in the game. What female MCs do you respect in the game? It’s hard because it’s not like it was back in the day. There’s no females. There’s only one girl that’s kind of doing her thing so nobody’s really on the scene. It’s not like before when there was Lauryn Hill and Kim and Foxy and Missy and Da Brat and Charli Baltimore. We don’t have that. We don’t have that currently but I see it coming. As far as underground female rappers, I don’t really follow them so I can’t name anybody that’s doing their thing. No offense, but I don’t follow it like that. What projects have you been working on? Well, I’m working on an EP. I’m still working on it. I’ll probably drop it around February. I got a couple of videos that I have set up that I’m going to record and drop. For now, I’m just going to be dropping freestyles on my YouTube channel and giving it to websites. I’m just building up the momentum but the real project is going to be my EP that I’m going to push next year. And I think the freestyles will give you a taste of what I’m about, period, and coming from that standpoint, it’s going to be very similar to the EP. The only difference is that there will be more of a variety and more full songs on the EP. I might get a little crazy, but I get crazy on my freestyles too. The freestyles are just something that I can do real quick on a Friday night to throw out there while I’m still recording songs. What do you feel is the best way to market yourself today? I think the internet is definitely the key to everything, obviously. We’ve had to switch priorities. Back in ’06 and ’07, it was still about mixtapes and blogs were just now getting kind of cool and it was about street teams. Now it’s totally switched up and everything is about your online presence and having the Facebooks and Twitters and being on the blogs and all of that. And branding yourself. I think a lot of people rap and everybody’s a rapper and everybody’s a producer and everybody’s something. What makes you so unique and different? That’s another thing I had to think about as far as my image went. I changed the spelling of my name as well, for legal reasons and for marketing purposes. I think branding is the key to everything and just doing you and not trying to be like somebody else. Just being who you are, putting a stamp on it and branding it and to have people want to follow you. I don’t want to keep saying “movement,” but you want to have people follow you and move with you. To me, that’s the key to winning.

By Brian Kayser @ seven3zero

Share This Article

Vayne - Check The Rhyme