We were lucky to catch up with B~Free recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, B~Free thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a proud Musical Swiss Army Knife from the Midwest; Chicago-born & Milwaukee-bred. As a prominent singer, producer, composer, flautist, pianist & content creator, I’ve had a lifelong pursuit & involvement with music in just about any capacity, & I’m still working to achieve higher heights with the gifts that I’ve nurtured. Things that set me apart or at the very least, make me special as a musician, are the authentic & genuine nature & quality of the art that I share, in addition to highly relatable & visible content. I wholeheartedly believe I was placed on this earth to creatively entertain, & I happily help others tap into their special talents through performance, collaboration, & education (such as the work I do with leading Grace Weber’s Music Lab at Radio Milwaukee.) I’m most proud of the various examples of work that I’ve created thus far, & my personal mission is to leave my mark within the industry as one of the most multifaceted beings to ever bring the world joy & beauty through the creative arts.

More info/overview available: https://bfree2music.com/bio

B~Free, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

WELP! This seems like a good place to dive in lol In the last 10+ years of my life & career, the most unexpected problems/issues I’ve ever encountered have always been drastically health-related. I commonly reference the winter period of late 2013 when I was in the midst of my 2nd full year of teaching K-8 choral & general music while still leading a full-time career as an artist. I’d been sick for a long while with what I’d originally thought was a cold & laryngitis but after days of being unable to speak, I started to experience severe burning when I spoke, ate, or drank anything, & a 105-degree fever on one night led to a hospital ER visit. Many more doctor sessions & a trip to an Otolaryngologist (Ear, Nose & Throat doc) eventually established that I not only had pneumonia, but I’d also contracted a rare throat infection called “Herpangina,” which is normally transferred to adults through children. Mind you, the entire time I’d been going through all of this, I’d been coughing a great deal of what felt like acidic phlegm, & still unable to talk, eat or drink anything without my throat severely burning. I was completely devastated & knowing that this severity of illness was attacking my voice, music & livelihood was even more horrendous. & to make matters worse, I was still in the middle of the teaching school year with no sick days left, so I had no choice but to press forward in whatever state of being I could salvage.

By the end of 2013 going into 2014, I ended up in the care of a great ENT doc & team at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee; at which point I was able to rehabilitate my speaking voice through speech therapy. However, I was still very much unable to sing as nothing but tightness, pain & restriction occurred whenever I tried. My ENT performed throat scopes on me & had determined that while my speaking voice was generally back, my vocal cords were essentially singed from the trauma of the throat infection & pneumonia. It was also determined that my vocal folds had formed visible polyps, which, if left untreated, also contributed to my inability to sing or speak. We opted to continue my speech therapy through the rest of that school year, & on the last day of school, I underwent my first major surgery in life to treat my vocal cords. Months of healing ensued, & from the time I initially became sick to the time it took to heal my voice post-surgery, I’d been unable to sing for 11 months. By the grace of God, my voice was generally recovered & I was able to sing again by late 2014-early 2015.

While continuing to navigate my vocal health has remained a top priority for me, it hasn’t come without additional conflict – also in the most unexpected ways & times. Most recently, at the top of 2022, I was recovering from a severe bout of the CoCo (Covid) & noticed it had been close to 6 weeks since I’d been able to sing. Considering my track record with vocal health, I didn’t wanna chance anyhting & began an extensive series of doctor visits, starting with my ENT. I was shocked to find that my vocal cords were in great condition but even more shocked to find that the trail of my new singing troubles was being linked to issues with breathing, due to a life-threatening case of anemia, which was ultimately due to dangerously low iron count, caused by heavy monthly cycles brought on by my previously diagnosed uterine fibroids. (& as a Black woman in her 30s with a hereditary disposition, it was almost inevitable that I’d experience this.) It felt like every trip to the doctor was another blow, & I was devastated that I was embarking on yet another unanticipated journey to navigate with my vocal health.

Iron transfusions ensued thereafter, which offered temporary progress, only for the problem to eventually return. After sooo many invasive tests, I was faced with the difficult option of trying to treat all of this with birth control hormones to ward off the other surgical options that I was unsure about. But in the 10 months that followed, the painfully long & heavy amounts of hemorrhaging I experienced had a horrible effect on my quality of life, & ultimately, my ability to travel & perform. After months of prayer, deliberation & introspection, I elected to undergo a partial Laparoscopic Hysterectomy, which meant another major surgery & even more unknown territory in the course of healing. This was singlehandedly one of the scariest experiences I’d ever encountered but as of today, I’m about 8 months post-op, & as I’ve continued recovering, I’ve been able to establish a new normal & reincorporate music-making & performance into my regular practice. In the span of a decade, none of these issues were anything that I could’ve EVER predicted that I’d go through, but it’s because of these instances that my ability to share music through my voice is something I’ll never take for granted.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The strongest examples of pivoting in my life & career can easily be linked back to my individual life journeys, & the alternative matters that were utilized for taking care of myself. For example: during my vocal cord stint, I had an entire school concert to teach where I was unable to sing at all. The pivot? Using whiteboards, audio examples, lyric sheet dependency & teaching the melodies by rote on the piano. Additionally, during the time that I was healing & awaiting vocal cord surgery, I was physically unable to sing anything. To pivot, I heavily leaned into my songwriting & music production. If I couldn’t sing my words, I was determined to have my art represented somehow where even someone else could. Luckily, with time & frustration on my hands, the ending result of this turned out to be the bulk of material for my sophomore album, “Ode 2 A Luv Affair,” which was gratefully met with acclaim & actually named the #1 Milwaukee album in 2018 by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel!

On a similar note, the fact that I produce my own music mostly started from a pivot. As a young woman, being heavily reliant on others to provide the soundtrack to my music often put me at a disposition. Lack of external resources often meant that my only way of composing what I heard in my head & wanted to record was by creating it myself. So, my pivot was using recording banks in various keyboards for song drafts, utilizing student loan refunds to invest in a Macbook & Logic Pro, & teaching myself how to create the very music I desired to sing over. In an industry that’s heavily saturated with male counterparts, it’s always been important to highlight that aspect of my career & take pride in being a woman creative with so much self-sufficiency. Having a song titled “iProduce My Own Sh*t” is hella intentional because “When I say I do everything, I really mean everything,” & being a sound example for other women like myself is imperative.

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

People tell me all the time how they admire my consistency & perseverance in my artistic career. & while I appreciate that people take notice of how hard I work & continue to push forward, most of this approach has been developed because I very much have had no choice. The significant health issues alone have been enough to take a person out for the count, but it can also be extremely grueling & discouraging work to continue pursuing a prosperous & notable life as a creative. I don’t think anyone would’ve blamed me for finding another line of work or another dream to pursue if they had to endure 11 months of being unable to sing – & uncertainty on whether or not they ever would again. Plus, with every unprecedented experience, it’s pushed me far beyond deadlines, timelines & personal goals that I had for myself within my creative career. But knowing that I’ve been charged with a very specific & unique passion for what I do, & the fact that I continue to come out on the other side, forward momentum is the only option for me; even when I don’t always know what it looks like.

At this moment in time, I have a number of things I’m planning on doing, things that I’m dreaming of doing, & spaces that I’m expecting to be brought to based on my personal perseverance alone. Every day is a choice to push forward without necessarily knowing the outcome or even having all of the answers, & I’m extremely grateful for the time that I’ve been continuously given to share my gifts, & the ability to navigate whatever direction they’ll take me in next.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bfree2music.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/bfree2music
• Facebook: facebook.com/bfree2music
• Youtube: youtube.com/bfree2music
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@bfree2music

Image Credits
Basi Akpan Samer Ghani