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

IDROWNEDZAY, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

The first time I earned money for my music was when my older brother was just starting up his company and he asked me to make an instrumental for an online advertisement that he was working on. He told me to just make something that’s “short and simple but catchy at the same time”, so i loaded up FL Studio the next day after school and tried to cook up something that fit his description to the best of my ability. Long story short, I ended up making an instrumental in like 10 minutes that was short and sweet and had a pretty catchy melody to my standards. I emailed it back to my brother and he ended up liking it and wanted to use it for his ad.

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.

My name is iDROWNEDZAY and I am a 20 year old music producer hailing from Miami Gardens, FL. I have always had an affinity for music and other art forms since a young age. As a kid, my parents would put me on to the biggest stars at the time like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, etc. I remember we had a whole DVD that was filled with videos of all of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits. We all used to rewatch that DVD over and over again and I remember as a 5-6 year old kid, being really inspired by Michael and how he was able to craft songs that were really catchy and sounded different from everyone else.

Fast forward a couple years later, my Dad bought me a tablet for Christmas and I discovered this app called Music Maker Jam which allows you to create your own instrumentals using multiple genres and me and my brother would just play around with it after school. We would go home and make like 3 different instrumentals a day for months on end and we ended up with hundreds of instrumentals saved on that app from that time. We then started getting serious and releasing “albums” on Soundcloud that wouldn’t really gain any traction but we still enjoyed it regardless. A couple months after that, my tablet unfortunately started to have battery issues and ended up completely shutting off. We knew of no other good music production software at the time and tablet repairs were really expensive.

I then started looking up other music production software on my laptop and downloading them, but a lot of them ended up looking really complicated to me so I skipped over most of them until I found a software called FL Studio 12. When I first loaded up FL, it sorta looked confusing for me but I ended up watching some tutorials and I slowly started getting the hang of it. From then on, I would just practice and hone my skills every day after school until I felt comfortable enough to upload to YouTube and Instagram.

As a producer, I make sure I come through with a variety of different sounds/subgenres that my clients could pick from. In doing so, I can attract a very broad and diverse fanbase and have many different types of artists rapping over my beats. I always felt like me being versatile with my production, separates me from the rest because a lot of people like sticking to one sound and like staying within their own lane, which isn’t a bad thing but it’s always good to branch out a little bit and challenge yourself.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist/creative is seeing how the world reacts to your art. I always felt like getting legit compliments and positive reinforcement from other people besides your family and close friends is a different type of feeling because you know for sure that it’s genuine and not coming from a place of like, “oh, you’re a family member or friend of mine so I have to go along with and compliment everything you do to not hurt your feelings and destroy your self-esteem” Strangers really have no motive or incentive whatsoever to support and praise you because they don’t have any ties to you at all. They don’t know anything about you and your background so you know that they’re most likely being authentic. I feel like being able to craft something that a bunch of “strangers” can enjoy and actually form a whole community around is always a very nice feeling as a musician. Getting up on that stage and being able to see people of different backgrounds coming together in a crowd will never fail to amaze me and I can’t wait to get to that level of success.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My real goal/mission behind all of this is essentially to push boundaries and bring everybody together through music. I try to incorporate multiple genres/subgenres within my music to cater to different audiences whether it’d be rock, punk, country, pop, etc. I want to show people from my community that they shouldn’t be scared to experiment or do anything that deviates from the norm. A lot of people are stuck with the mindset that since they’re from a certain area and identify within a certain demographic of people, they’re supposed to look or act only one way and follow whatever the crowd is doing. That mindset is very damaging because it could really hold you back from breaking out of the box and reaching your fullest potential as an individual. It’s okay to have your own interests, thoughts, and beliefs. It’s okay to dress how you wanna dress. It’s okay to show emotion and tell people what’s on your mind. It’s okay to be you. Some people these days may have certain thoughts and perspectives but are afraid to voice them due to how close minded society can be and that needs to change.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/idrownedzay
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idrownedzay/?hl=en
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/idrownedzay?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2CQgjvlyXRteAQqRojHWjg
• Other: Email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Image Credits: @badapplejoseph