We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hella Yella a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Hella thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. 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 have been very blessed to be able to earn a full time living from my creative work. My journey started on the campus of Huston-Tillotson Univ. From day one I was able to earn a living from DJing while living a very low budget college lifestyle. A few years into DJing I came to the realization that people would follow me to different venues and a real lack for Hip-Hop nightlife in Austin, TX so I made the decision to start curating my own events,

Hella, 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?

I got my start in college and my popularity quickly snowballed after an appearance on MTV, the summer after I graduated I went on my first tour with Tare the Truth and never looked back.

I take a lot of pride in being able to curate to all races, religions, countries of origin, sexual orientations and genders as wells along with a fun, entertaining, safe, non-discriminatory environment centered around Hip-Hop music and culture.

I’m most proud of being able to thrive and make a living off of playing predominately hip-hop to a mostly african-amaerican demographic in a city of Austin that has less than 10% african- americans.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being a creative for me is seeing people enjoy your creation. Nobody will see the hard work, blood, sweat and tears it takes to pull off these events but seeing the smiles on faces makes it worth it.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The best advice I can give you for building a social media presence is to build your audience across all platforms and your own platform. Instagram, tiktok or facebook could go down or lose popularity at any time. You don’t want to have all of your business tied up into one platform.

Contact Info:

• Website: djhellayella.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/djhellayella
• Facebook: facebook.com/djhellayella
• Twitter: twitter.com/djhellayella
• Youtube: youtube.com/djhellayella

Image Credits
@Media2Eazy