Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rella. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Rella, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I believe that the best way to earn a full-time living from your creative work is to come to grips with a variety of concepts. The first is that it takes money to make money, and that in many creative industries talent is secondary to marketing spend. There are millions of artists all around the world who fall victim to the wishful thinking trap that “my art and my talent will be noticed without me doing anything and will explode on it’s own”. This is not true, you must spend money and play the “game” to get your work out there. Denial of this will cost you everything, and will make you bitter and jaded. It’s not personal, it’s just how things are.

The second thing is that raw talent is secondary. In my industry, music, talented artists often do not make it far. This is related to the previous point in that many believe that their talent alone is what will take them to the top and then get lazy, feeling like the industry owes them something. It’s not true, and talent is cheap. Go down into the NYC subways if you don’t believe me. What record labels, and fans look for, is the ability to create communities. If you can create a community around your art it becomes a million times easier to monetize it, regardless of industry. This is what I did. I identified a niche in my musical genre, and through marketing targeted everybody and anybody showing interest in that niche. It is difficult, but it is infinitely better than throwing a hook out into the ocean hoping something bites.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Rella Bio:
Rella is a rap artist from New Zealand. His music is best described as being both melodic and emotional, with an emphasis on rap and bedroom pop vocals over melancholic guitars and heavy drums. With over twenty five million total Spotify streams and collaborations with popular underground artists like Tommy Ice and 6obby, Rella has managed to cultivate a following that has seen him grow to over 400,000 monthly listeners in over 170 countries. Despite this success Rella has been independent since the very beginning, as he believes this allows him to communicate his message in the most authentic way possible.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2023 I received an Instagram DM from 10K Projects, a record label founded by Elliot Grainge. Artists on their label include Trippie Redd, Iann Dior, 6ix9ine amongst many others. They wanted to arrange a call to talk about my label situation, and with many of my favourite artists being on or associated with this label I was pretty excited to say the least. That weekend however, was a Trippie Redd show. I wanted to go with my friends who already had tickets, but I made the easy decision to instead stay home and wait for the call. I certainly didn’t want to miss a call from Trippie Redd’s label, while in the crowd of a Trippie Redd show.

I thought that this call would be it, that I would be off to LA and would be signing for a huge amount of money to a label with some of my biggest inspirations on it. My friends left for the show, wishing me luck for the call. That call never came, I don’t know why, but it never did. I waited all weekend by my phone, and it never came. When my friends returned I had to tell them I never got the call, and saw in their faces both pity and disappointment. I pretended like it didn’t bother me, but it did. I later learned that they ended up signing other artists from my country for millions of dollars instead. I didn’t get a reason or an explanation and I never heard from them again. After years and years of work the disappointment of being so close was indescribable. I felt passed over and rejected, defeated and depressed. I felt like quitting. But I decided instead that I would make them realize their mistake by continuing to release music, by continuing to do what I had done up until that point. In the months that followed I doubled my monthly listeners and released an album. I felt proud of myself that in the face of the biggest let-down of my career to date, I refused to quit, and showed resilience in the face of crushing disappointment.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think most non-creatives don’t really understand what It does to you when you get everything you’ve ever wanted and come to the realization that you still aren’t happy. Many people can blame life’s problems on the things they don’t have like money or popularity, validation or success. The thing is though that when you achieve everything you thought would make you happy, and yet realize that you still aren’t it kind of crushes you. Makes you wonder why you tried so hard in the first place and makes you feel foolish and naive. You have to then switch and find a new “why” or be consumed by it. Non-creatives often don’t come to that realization, and ironically many successful people end up envying that. Its like grinding in a video game like GTA where all you want is the fastest cars and the most money. When you get it however, everything becomes boring, you drive around aimlessly because nothing interests you anymore, you’re directionless and after five minutes you just turn the game off. Except in real life you can’t just turn the game off and do something else, it’s your reality now. You’re surrounded by a million reminders of your success which are in turn a million reminders of your lack of happiness. Complaining to regular people makes you seem ungrateful, and complaining to other successful people makes you seem selfish. It’s a trap, and not something you can just search for on Reddit or Quora. There’s a quote I like about magic glasses which says that “once you put on the magic glasses and see through them, you can never take them off, and you can never make someone else see through them either”.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yaboyrella
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtCkU-1okIAbJdctND0Y92g
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/yaboyrella
• Other: spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0nWx30KaQr86AxqBbqDIUw?si=qkxsObOUSg2uvbWdOXvwlw

Image Credits

all photos by Daniel Berry