We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bless The Best a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Bless thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
There wasn’t a certain moment that made me choose music. It was more of a progressive thing. I remember smoking and freestyling with other rappers as a teen. We used to battle each other a lot to see who was the best. That also helped my word play with writing. I started writing music in the 5th grade. I had two notebooks full of raps and songs. I was 12 working with a Tascam 4 track recorder, a shure stage microphone 😂, and a dual tape deck. That’s how I started experiencing recording and mixing audio. From there I went through phases of learning and playing with digital audio programs. Experimenting with pressing my own cds with an at home press kit to recording songs with other local artists and friends, I spent a lot of time working on music as a teenager and building my skills. From there I decided to pursue a degree and really get the technical side of music. Although I enjoyed the Full Sail University Music Production program, I’ve learned the most from hands on experience. There’s not much that you won’t learn from being around other producers, engineers, writers, and performers. I have sang in r&b groups as a teenager, gospel groups as a young kid, and performed in rap groups as a young adult. All of these things helped shape my musical knowledge and drive. I decided I would be a producer when I was 18, but I really didn’t know what that entailed, I just knew that I loved making beats and writing songs.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Bless the Best. I am a music producer, engineer, songwriter, and performer. I’ve been into making music since a child. Always enjoyed it and was good at it. Even when I was bad at it, it was still good if that makes any sense. If you need music for anything, I’m the guy you call. I pride myself on quality production. I have a sound that cannot be matched or copied. Guaranteed dope!
: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I want to break all the stereotypes and show that most of what people are chasing is bullshit. I’m not saying it’s not good to have shit, I’m saying don’t fall in love with having shit. Real power is people. I want black people to fall back in love with loving black people again. I want humans to fall back in love with loving humans again, but that seems like some fairy tale shit sometimes. I don’t want to keep rambling on this one, but yeah I definitely feel some type of way about the world right now.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
One of my close friends and I had this deal on the table with this Sicilian guy when we where like 19. We met him through doing shows and performing around Minneapolis. So, when meet with dude several times and chop it up about putting a business plan together and launching a label, etc. Eventually we become like family. Hanging out on the regular basis, dude would drop by the studio and check out music we were working on, take us to the strip club, and all type of other stuff. Supposedly was supposed to ink a deal with Dipset Midwest because they were looking for talent at that time. This is like 2007. So, we put the business plan together, get ready to order all the pieces to get our own studio, and we meet with an entertainment lawyer to get the label together. Sign all of the paperwork to get things rolling and then dude disappears and we never hear from him again. He never paid the lawyer to get the paperwork completed and changed his number. We never saw or heard from buddy again. Definitely wanted to quit after that, but just couldn’t. I took a hiatus though 😂.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @blessthebest__
- Twitter: @blessthebest__
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCg1512XslQjTJua7BDCwx3w
- Other: Blessthebestprod@gmail.com