We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful FAE. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with FAE below.
FAE, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?
Thanks for having me. It means a lot to that people listen to my music, and give me the opportunity to keep on creating. My first dollar came through performing, but my first meaningful dollar came through streaming revenue. I was in the kitchen writing a song when my publicist pointed out that my album streams had brought in money. I was honestly shocked when she said that because I didn’t expect that many people to be listening to my music. What surprised me the most was the different amount of countries that were listening to my music, from countries in Africa to countries in the middle east. I will never forget that moment I am still greatful to this day.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
FAE is an acronym for Fariji Also Entertains. I came up with this when I started writing music. My brother FANAKA, introduced my to the industry of music when he took me to a studio session of his. That’s when I recorded my first song, I was in eighth grade and ever since then I started to make music that combined rap with a melody to create melodic rap influenced by my East African heritage. My talent and hard work has allowed me to release music under Kilimanjaro Records. Throughout highschool I have been in and out of the studio performing live shows and small events. I am proud of the options I have when creating music, I can mess around on a track and still broadcast a meaningful message. I value my connections a lot. What sets me apart from others is my sound and ability to articulate a message with different cadences making me versatile to create songs of any nature. I also move at my own pace and get things done the way I want them to be done instead of the way another person wants it to be done. I have a music video dropping soon and I can’t wait for people to listen since I’ve been gone for so long.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When I first started sharing my music I was using a distributor that was withholding royalties to a point where I was losing money. I had to take down all of my content from the previous distributor and re-release every single song, along with re-writing lyrics so that the auto sync feature worked for each song. I also had to obtain the music ID for each song so that it would look like I still released on the original release date. Although it was a small hurdle in my journey, it was a long process that taught me to do more research and not be distracted about the excitement of releasing music.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I wouldn’t use my time in the studio wisely, recording too many songs at once which would take away from the time available to make a quality track. I used to record four to six songs per session, mix two and master both, but I would still have several songs left to do the same thing with once I left the studio. I found my time is put to better use if I record two songs, have them both mixed, create a clean version, and have them mastered. Laying down vocals doesn’t take much time at all. Fifteen to twenty minutes at most. What takes the most time is mixing the vocals, making sure the highs and lows of my vocals mix well with the highs and lows of the instrumental. Making this change meant I could take more time with each song, and make something I love listening to everytime I leave the studio.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/_faeonnabeat/ - Youtube: https://m.youtube.
com/channel/ UC7slkEaJlUSeIcdtDRB5v3A/ videos - Other: TikTok: https://www.
tiktok.com/@__faeonnabeat
Image Credits
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
Business: https://claudiasinclairimages.