We were lucky to catch up with Daniel Martin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Daniel, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I first knew that I wanted to pursue a career in music when I started to have people around me telling me to do so. I still second guessed it and prayed about it but I worried what people would think about me and how people would call me a “Soundcloud rapper.” I eventually just went for it and gave it a shot and that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Upon making that decision to take it seriously, I prayed and asked God for a major opportunity in music. The next day after saying that prayer, I got an offer ti be the first ever rapper on the Bible App and that song charted #6 on Billboard. Since then God has opened so many doors and I’ve recently signed a distribution deal. A lot of the same people who told me not to take it seriously when I thought about it eventually apologized and I gained their respect. Taking the risk was worth it!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is DANMAR and I’m a 21 year old full time independent artist/musician. I started producing my own beats at the age of fifteen in high school. I’ve always been obsessed with rap culture and the idea of having a large fanbase that loves and supports you. I make rap, pop, and classic rock music. Most guys my age like playing video games, but I’d rather sit in my studio and make beats or record. It’s just what I love to do, I can’t explain why I enjoy it so much. I sit down at my computer and sometimes I walk away with a song I listen to on repeat and I never know when I walk in to the studio what song I’ll walk out with. It’s such an addicting experience to create something you love. The purpose in what I do is that so much rap culture is surrounded by negativity and sin. Rap culture has promoted killing, guns, sex, drugs, and money for as long as it has existed. I want to change this narrative and make rap that can be listened to by anybody. I use the same instruments that rap uses and use it to make pop style songs. The rap that I do make as well is clean. My music is about my real life experiences, struggles, love, and most importantly Jesus. I want to remove the hate from rap music and instill it with love. In the two years that I’ve taken music seriously, I’ve charted #6, I beat Drake and Lil Wayne on iTunes for a couple days and I’ve performed in front of just over 3,000 people. On top of this, I’ve developed some amazing connections and made some new lifelong friends who share the sane vision.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I knew about how useful Instagram reels and Tik Tok are now. My friends who are artists have been utilizing Tik Tok and reels and I personally have literally watched a few of my artist colleagues go viral from reels. I’ve had a few reels of my own go viral but I had to post somewhat consistently for a while before it worked. But I will say once the reels did work, it made a huge difference in translating into streams and my business as a whole. The more followers you have organically, then the more reputable you are as a business and the more traction you will have long term into growing your business. There are countless of extremely talented people out there who nobody knows because they have no idea how to market themselves. A great product is only useful to those who know about it. If nobody knows about that great product, then its basically useless. So when you make something that you want people to buy/engage in such as music in my case, you’ve got to do your part and market it. Tik Tok, Reels, and Youtube Shorts have completely changed the game for businesses and creatives. You can quite literally build a business by posting consistently on social media as long as your content can capture people’s attention.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Every success story has its ups and downs. There have been many moments in my music career when I have had to be so patient and keep my head down and just keep grinding. Post after post, release after release, video after video, song after song, it seemed sometimes that the grind would never end before breakthrough came. But the grind has always been worth it and God has provided me with some abnormally amazing opportunities in my career and I wouldn’t change any of it. The biggest act of resilience of any successful career in my opinion is the ability to literally never quit. Businesses do not become successful overnight. Building a business is lots of trial and error. Failing is one of the best teachers. Many successful entrepreneurs have had to fail countless times before that one moment of breakthrough or finding the formula/model that works for that business. An entrepreneur that I have a mutual friend with said that God told him he was going to give him a very successful business and that he needed to start it. That very business almost went bankrupt three times before it worked for him. He even laid down the keys to his house to the bank. That business is now worth over 100 million dollars and he literally said that he has more money that he knows what to do with. It took him around five years to get that company off the ground, but if he had not had resilience and trusted what God told him then that business would not be successful today.

Contact Info:

• Website: danmarofficial.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmarofficial/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dan.mar.7796/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/danmarofficial
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjz2arERow69aNsbBLC5Nyw
• Linktree: https://linktr.ee/danmarofficial

Image Credits
Ras: @rascreativeco Nehemiah: @shotbynehemiah Jacob: @kovlyboi Hannah: @hannahnicole.photos