We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Therapii. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Therapii below.
Alright, Therapii thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Yeah, thanks for having me. Before I begin, I just wanna say I really love the work Canvas Rebel is doing for the indie community. Wishing you all much success in your efforts to get our stories out there. In terms of the question at hand, I’ll never forget it. I was in high school when all of this began. A junior to be more specific so I felt as though the clock was ticking for me. It was like, “What to do after high school? …choose a college from my electives or pursue my dreams and goals in the arts?”. 80% of my family were pushing college or some trade. Something safe. I had other plans though. So I said to myself, what do ‘I’ want? Where can ‘I’ find fulfillment in life?
Joining the school choir was probably my best move in HS. That allowed me to become more comfortable singing in front of great numbers of people. Believe it or not, I used to be that shy kid with crazy talent lol. So with that experience behind me and a burning desire to pursue entertainment, I felt in my gut to go for it. Visions wouldn’t let me sleep. So I made the concrete decision that after high school, though I didn’t know how, I was going to make it happen. My mother wasn’t super strict so that made things a lot easier too. We practically grew up together so as a first time parent, especially a mother at the age she had me, it was a lot of learning curve things taking place in our relationship but the biggest takeaway is that she never withheld me entirely from living my life. Both of my parents wanted the best for me but they had a tough time figuring out how to express it. She did her best to raise an upstanding, honest, focus driven, educated boy to become a man and I have to say, she definitely created the platform for that in me. I got mad love for my mother, man. She’s a pillar in my life.
Fast-forward a bit to the day I took that risk. I’m in the 12th grade now and had already been informed that I’d passed high school. With that information, I decided not to go to graduation lol. Don’t judge. I really didn’t care for the theatrics. I didn’t even go to prom. But yeah…so a good friend of mine became the gateway to what has become my comfort zone in music. I gotta shout out my guy Nedric for tagging me in to become a part of a group he was formulating. We got together often to rehearse known songs initially just to sing around the city to the girls. That turned into a connection of his becoming interested in working with us on a more professional level or at least more professional than what we’d been doing at the time. The would be manager then got us into professional quality recording studios throughout Baltimore where we later found our sound and eventually became a household name in the city. That spawned shows and events in and out of the DMV area, to Philly, New Jersey and California. Ultimately, we got scouted by a label based in Atlanta Ga via Youtube. And that was the turning point.
After the Youtube recognition, we got word that the owner of the label in ATL wanted to have an in person meeting with us. Of course we took the meeting and not so late after, we were offered a contract to sign with Def Jam Recordings. Here’s where the risk part came into play. I told my mother all of this AFTER the fact. She knew about the guy group but she hadn’t known about the touring and all that. When I told her about the deal, that’s when all of the “go to college” stuff went out the window lol. So we signed and moved to Atlanta. From Baltimore fresh out of HS between 16-17 living without parents in a new state we’d never been to, hoping for our dreams to make room for us and create a future where we’d need for nothing ever again. What could go wrong, right? Well… after six months, we disbanded due to reasons I really don’t care to re-live but it was a great experience. This was around 09. A year later, I’m at a standstill in music. I thought my career was over and I had no other moves to make. After going back to working a normal job, it wasn’t long before I said “I can’t do this anymore” and sent up a serious prayer. I was told prior to this that my career was ruined, I wouldn’t make it without certain people yadayadaya… That type talk makes me go even harder, which I did.
Amongst other things, I reconnected with the former manager of the group and that opened the door to smaller opportunities that I just had to work and turn into something more. We’d gotten to a place in our lives where we were actually helping one another at a point. But my focus regardless of whatever, I’m not going backwards. After tasting the major industry life, living a normal lifestyle is unfulfilling. That’s just facts. It can be like a drug, sadly. So In 2013, after a ton of reworking and rebranding, I signed to Warner Chappell as a songwriter through a JV deal out of New Jersey. As I’ve mentioned in recent interviews though, so much more happens after this so you’d have to go peep those to find out lol. But to reel it all in, if I had not taken the risk to move to ATL, if I never kept going after that first door closed, if I gave up on my goals and never quit my day job, even without a real plan, I would’ve never created the opportunities I have today. I think too many people want to live safe or have it all figured out before they take the next step and I believe that’s where regret and resentment stem from. You gotta go and get it. If you believe in yourself, you just have to make the first move and God will provide the rest.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Of course, my name is Therapii (artistically) or Feroz (when it’s strictly business) and Hayes if we cool like that lol. I just gotta draw those definitive lines. But I’m originally from inner city Baltimore (over west, poplar grove. I went to public school and later furthered my education through reading, years prior to being accepted into the University of Maryland Global Campus for my MBA and BS in Data Science. I’m the oldest of six half siblings and the only child from my mom. I got into the music industry in 2009 through Youtube recognition. I’m a singer, songwriter, vocal producer and engineer, actor and, newly, entertainment company owner, founder and CEO (Simple Genius Entertainment); in short, I’m an entrepreneur. Hidden talents include a little piano and trumpet but nowhere near as fluently as I did in the past. I plan to pick those back up soon in addition to learning electric and acoustic guitar. My services include original songwriting for major and indie artists, vocal engineering and arranging, mindset mentorship for new artists and business advice in select avenues.
So you’re a real jack of all trades, nice! We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey. Anything you can leave us with, to think on?
Lol, yeah, I’ve been called a jack of all trades many times over. It’s almost as if you have to be these days. But let’s see…resilience…Well again, I’ve been told I couldn’t do many things without the help of people who had more than me. I’ve had many doors shut in my face. I’ve been manipulated out of my creativity and ideas due to heavy eagerness, humbleness, gullible trustworthiness and always readiness to work. All of which led me to dead ends. I’ve been through homelessness and unfortunate wrongful imprisonment, earlier years I dealt with mid level depression and back to back deaths of people close to me… just so many things to make a person want to quit life. As they say, “but God”… I had something inside of me that kept forcing me to take another step. To keep smiling. To let yesterday go because the reality is you can’t change what already happened. It serves no purpose to live for yesterday. All we have is the day at hand. Not even tomorrow. So practicing that mindset until it became THE mindset, I was able to, instead of reliving hurt, take those traumas and make them work for me under the light of success. My pain created the platform for willpower to be born. A dogmatic heart. I have DOGMATIC willpower. Nothing can stop me. I’ve been called everything negative a human being can be called, I’ve been broken down to bare bone emotionally and still I stand. As long as I live, I will never stop. With God on my side as my driving factor. I can literally do anything I set out to do.
Beautiful. To close out, let’s talk a little about life lessons. We hear a lot about learning lessons – but just as important, is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn something?
Really impactful question. Right off the tee, I definitely had to unlearn poor emotional intelligence. Due to my past and prior to growth obviously, I had a bad track record of anger outbursts when I felt attacked by one or more person/people. Also whenever I felt someone was taking too long to give me a response back to something or if I had to wait for something, I’d believe everyone was doing it deliberately. Not that people don’t do that, it’s just, everybody you come across isn’t that way. I guess I also unlearned expectations in that respect. But yeah man, whenever I felt cornered I’d just lash out and it never mattered where I or who it was. I grew into a bad temper and took an inner lack of peace out on people… it was all bad. For business and personal reasons. That “toxic masculinity” behavior is what I expressed before I even knew that was a thing. Many of us who desire better for ourselves choose to unlearn these kinds of things sooner than later and get on a path of healing and into overall success. Years of endless prayer and meditation created this change platform for me. I feel different now because I am different now. It’s a major blessing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.simplegeniusent.
com - Instagram: www.instagram.com/
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1therapii - Youtube: coming soon