We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hykeem Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hykeem, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
Being from a city of mixed cultures that varies from French, Indian/Indigenous, African, & Spanish, we all as a city grew up learning each of the cultures ways of living, rules, & common courtesies. New Orleans, Louisiana raised us all to be kind, courteous, quick on our feet’s & wise during decision making. My parents circumstances when they were younger became the reason they are such wonderful & wise beings now. We as a family stuck through any storm given to us from losing everything through hurricane Katrina, living in project buildings (housing authorities), apartments, with family members to finally living in the suburbs. My parents learned through their upbringings the mentalities of getting things done when needed & learning how to survive through any circumstances while all still taking care of us. Their young age is always what I admire of them the most. They both shows that no matter the age, knowledge can be withheld. My parents did everything right in not only my eyes but others eyes too. Still till this day there will be people that walk up to my parents & say “y’all did a very good job at raising these beautiful young adults”. Being a entrepreneur herself, my mother encourages us all to not only make something of our selfs with our talent, but to put true passion & emotion in our art. Being a very hard worker & a wise business choice maker himself, my pops encourages us to stick through with anything we are doing no matter how difficult the task is & make sure we are thinking logically to take care of our families. Reading this part of the story you can tell how much I love my parents & their wise decision making when we were coming up.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
“Legends will live forever” & “Love me forever” is both statements you will hear throughout my whole career. To some, the first statement about legends is a bold take, yet my approach is very different from what is interpreted. This statement simply means to live like a legend through the love you share to the world which you will be remembered by during & after life. As I tell my story, you will understand my true meanings & purposes of life which is simply love in all forms.
Like stated in most interviews, being in choir in 7th-8th grade & also my mother, who was in the church choir at a young age, helped my discover my passion for music & singing. Gwalla Cobain (childhood friend) introduced me & my brother (Shadcrop) into the art of making music in 2014. Shadcrop & I then shared lessons to one another, teaching each other skills so that we both can be aware of each career. Shadcrop introduced me into photo-editing, the art of recording music itself, & bought our first camera along with our microphone to make music, & also the equipment for both careers. I introduced Shadcrop into Photography & videography. We both literally taught each other every career needed to be able to be self efficient in whatever was needed. My sister (Kremeir) became the first model I worked with besides Shadcrop & I taking pictures of each other, then Shaymack became the first model I worked with outside of family. Being an amazing supporting sister, Kremeir always supported us on each career & even helped us progress our craft with her ideas, modeling & even work of her own to expand our work such as her brands & YouTube channel with hair review & styling videos. Knowing our talents as a family, we always make sure we are supportive & giving to one another which how we was raised. From there we both made a name for ourselves in Fort Worth at a young age while moving our music around different states & cities, all while showing the city love with knowledge as we received it. Then we started working in the whole dfw area to expand our craft, knowledge & clientele.
Till this day we never failed to give back to the community by sharing the same knowledge we had to learn to grow, to another creative wanting to do the same thing. The uniqueness of my brand, mind & self is what separates me from most. I’m more-so focused on creating art that will heal the world than trying to be better than anyone. I would love for the creative world to be able to work with one another to create art whether it’s quick art, meaningful art or just fun art instead of competing with one another. My personal goal is to be the guidance to creatives in need to uplift their careers.
We was able to achieve many things from being music artist & music producers, co-photo studio owners, former director of photography in a diverse mothering agency owned by Davesha Tamia in DFW, having Magazine features to being magazine owners, being photographers at fashion shows to hosting our own fashion shows with the agency we was with at the time, Modeling for local clothing brands & more.I am a heavy believer of quality over quantity so I am currently on a hiatus from photography to focus on music, the film industry, building a team of creatives & a couple new talents I will share later down the line. Lately I’ve been creating amazing musical art with artist like Jayceon & Chi. I am now partnered with an amazing creative, Ry’lencia, which we will work on various projects from photo art, videography art, vlogs, short films & etc. Follow her Instagram @_Rylencia. I am also a member in Shadcrops Collective “CFOD”. The next couple of years will be the years where I am relearning & rebuilding to be able to use all of my talents at maximum strength. There are alot of new exciting projects on the way so please stay tuned!
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Social media runs more than half of the world right now which is a big stepping stone to all creatives in the world. We can control our narratives on social media by what we post & the statements we post whether true or exaggerated. At moments “having motion” whether real life or social media can be associated with being snobby, stuck up or etc at times to some while inspiring, hard working & etc to others. I stuck with a statement as stated in the last question “Love me forever” which means to love me unconditionally once you understand the love I give to the world. With that being said I would love the world to know my heart, love, & passions beyond what career I am in, money I make, people I know, and/or type of fame/materials I have. In my career I try to seek past every contradicting statement to be able to still show a non-forced message of who I am. My purpose on this Earth is love & I am here to help so I want my supporters to know there isn’t a moment in my life where I am “too big” to notice a soul needing guidance.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Time is always changing which makes it easier to be stuck in our ways due to the simple thought of “it has always been like this”. Lil Wayne made a statement in one of his interviews about being yourself but still keeping up with new methods instead of being a hater to the new methods introduced to us. In now times, the generation I am in has various ways to make a living for ourselves by new methods. I think it’s time for the world to give these new methods a chance at surviving by adding cooperate support. Even though I am a believer of old methods, we all must accept how we lived in the early 2000’s & before is now different from how we live now in 2024 & counting. It’s time to become aware to what’s working for us now instead of what used to work for us.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/j_keem?igsh=MWlhcGE1dWZ3dGprZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@jkeemxs?si=t4mKh_mmknSf5moV
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/jkeemxs?igsh=ZHExaGU5ZXZ5Z2g=
Image Credits
Davesha Tamia, Almetress, Two Simple Clothing, Shadcrop, Haleigh, Brie, Aarron, CoreyVhs, Jordan Mahoney, Donnie Gambino, Amiyaa, Crelucent. Xlimited_Edition (Charly), Mike, Lokohake, Yvngkingdom, Suh, Kamasinicholas, Zachee, Christopher, Kristany Jay, Lukestanford, Mystiqueee