We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Crystal Tamar. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Crystal below.

Crystal, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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 thank God everyday that I am NOW able to earn a full-time living from my creative work.I’ve performed to and created music simultaneously with school/work since I was 9 years old.I was able to transition to doing music full time in 2008 when I was working at a jewelry store (what?) and cheering professionally for the Houston Texans.Before walking in that door everyday I’d pray one specific prayer… “Lord please help me to start doing what I love to do everyday for a living!” No joke. On March 7, 2008 I received a phone call, AT WORK, from a childhood friend that I used to sing with, asking if I’d be willing to fly to Atlanta asap to audition for T-Pain’s girl group and eventually sign a recording contract with Atlantic Records. Three major steps in that, was having the faith enough to get up and go when the opportunity came, the wisdom to ask a lot of questions about what I was getting into and the adaptability to find my unique contribution to the group’s brand/Pain’s direction. God’s timing in this was perfect because I was writing and recording with producers of my own and developing my craft of dance & performance.Some things just cannot be rushed.

Crystal, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Crystal Tamar and I began singing at a young age, when my father founded an r&b girl group containing my sisters and cousin, after discovering our love of dancing & singing.We competed and performed cover songs all over the state of Texas consecutively for about 4 years.After continuing to develop the craft as a soloist via gospel & r&b music, my first professional opportunity came when my college singing group signed with Star Direction Management out of Los Angeles.Under the same management, that group went on to perform with the legendary Temptations and recorded original music while flying back and forth to college at PVAMU.It was 4 years later, when my first recording deal was signed under the Atlantic Records/Nappy Boy Entertainment imprint, that refined me for the independent solo recording artist that I am today.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Once I transitioned from no longer being in a singing group under a major record label, the concept of finding my own path was overwhelming. I needed time to recover, to re-conceptualize a new normal and more importantly make a living! I made the decision to test the idea of being a voiceover artist.This was something that I had done once, during my time in T-Pain’s group, playing the cartoon role in his Cartoon Network special.I enjoyed it and received compensation for it and wanted to try my hand at starting up a practice of my own.I joined an online agency that after about 3-5 months of trial and error, ended up being lucrative and flexible in schedule.I worked for myself remotely, applied my recording & audio knowledge and eventually began funding my first solo album & promo release.It is still my bread and butter to this day, funding my home studio and supplementing my income amidst an ever changing music industry.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

After multiple lessons I came to eventually learn that my career is not all about me.There isn’t a thing about what I’ve done or am doing today that only involves me. From my team and passerby’s alike, you are dealing with human beings day to day that have their own struggles, gifts, perspectives and goals.All things considered, no goal is easily attained, but if you take a moment to recognize opportunities to empathize, sacrifice, and be adaptable (with integrity) to the folks around you, you’ll gain a WEALTH of knowledge in the process and no effort is wasted whether you reach your end goal or not. Working in groups so much through the years was a blast but required daily sacrifice from us all. A sacrifice of comfort zones, of doing things someone else’s way, of living and working far away from family and friends, of personal space and an incredible investment of time.You hope that it’s worth it in the end and OFTEN it doesn’t appear as if it was.But in the end people don’t remember what you did but how it made them feel and that’s the real culmination of the human experience no matter what industry you work in.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.CrystalTamar.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsclearascrystal/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CrystalTamar
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/crystaltamar
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CrystalTamar

Image Credits
Ryan Middleton – Multimedia Producer & Photographer of Epic PhotoMedia. www.epicphotomedia.com