We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Von Graves. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Von Graves below.
Von, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I’m currently finishing up an EP called, “For Heaven’s Sake”. It’s produced and written by me. I’m excited about this project because it’s a new chapter for me and for those familiar with my music, shows growth in a lot of different areas. I’m a storyteller at heart and so my music discography has these 3-4 year gaps between albums sort of written as time stamps catching my audience up on my life. I’ve always been inspired by personal testimony, movies, and amazing artists with strong voices and unique perspectives. I feel like I channel a lot of that in my music and “For Heaven’s Sake” embodies a lot of that for me.
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.
I’m just a creative follower of Christ Jesus––simply put. By trade however I’m an artist/ music producer and run a YouTube channel with my wife called The Graves House that’s basically a reality tv show about our family. It’s a blessing to be able to do what we’re doing in a way that has a positive impact on other people by just being ourselves. Our goal is and always will be to remain as authentic and obedient to the Holy Spirit as possible. I believe we are all blessed with specific passions, gifts, and skill sets intended to advance the Kingdom of God here on Earth. However we go about it is up to us to hear from God about but I like to think I’m positioned exactly where I was destined to be.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Personally speaking, it’s never really been about going viral or anything like that. I’m honestly a pretty private person which is somewhat counter-productive in this age of social media marketing. It used to make me feel a certain way and I would get down on myself for not posting every 3 hours of the day or whatever the algorithm calls for. But, I’ve always been driven by impact and a lot of times more eyeballs doesn’t necessarily correlate to more impact… just more noise, more trolls, more outside opinions. Art is so subjective and personal, if done right, can be such an intimate experience for an audience that less, oftentimes, is more impactful. I’m in an era of my life where I want to treat every project as if it’s my only project, every opportunity as a first impression, and every fan as if they’re the only person in the world who is giving me a chance. That being said, the most rewarding aspect of artistry, for me, is knowing someone is giving me an opportunity to be seen & heard.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My mission is to inspire, empower, and positively impact whoever watches and/ or listens to my music, my podcast, my vlogs, and any other medium God calls me to. Specifically with this next EP I want to reach a group of people who feel hopeless… voiceless. People who churches have turned their backs on (and vice versa) due to misinformation, neglect, hypocrisy, etc. I have a song called Church Hurt on it that speaks to my brothers and sisters whom Jesus refers to as His “lost sheep”. These are folks whom felt let down and turned away from religion without the knowledge of The Kingdom to replace their longing. I want to bring another level of innovation and maturity to the Christian Rap space that’s long overdue. I want to raise the ceiling on hip hop by reintroducing the lost art of storytelling and spiritual awareness. There’s a lot I want to do for music…
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/vongraves
- Instagram: @realvongraves
- Facebook: @vongravesexperience
- Twitter: @realvongraves
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thegraveshouse_ & https://www.youtube.com/c/vongravesexperience