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

Alright, Lady thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Honestly, I didn’t choose to pursue a creative/artistic path. It chose me.

Growing up, I didn’t have a safe place to reflect my ideas, thoughts, and experiences. Whatever I was pondering on, or living through that happened in my life, found its way through writing and drawing. Through journaling, short stories, illustrations, or humming my own made up tunes, it all started in grade school.

Things looked fine on the outside, but there was a nightmare lurking behind the curtain of my family environment. When I went outside to play, I would imagine myself doing great things to catapult me to a better place. I didn’t know it but my imaginations were the seeds, that helped me survive, and fueled a lot of vision and curiosity for creative and artistic expression.

It inspired my actions to see if some of these visions and curiosities could become a reality.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a creative multipreneur, and what I’m focusing on for this feature is my music, record label, and music publishing company under Lady Dang World and Stay Royal Records. My shameless plug is I’m about to drop a single called “All Right With Me” on Good Friday, 4/15/2022. If you’d be so kind as to save the date, I’d deeply appreciate it.

I’m most proud of having the courage to do what my instincts guide me to, and my last single Wonder Woman was my best to date. It was chosen to promote Vietnamese women in modern music, and found its way all over Vietnam and then some. I am Vietnamese American so the levels of incredible regarding the events surrounding it takes my breathe away. Wonder Woman gave me my first radio spot in Canada. It was such a surprise gift at the end of 2020 into 2021 during some of the darkest experiences I’ve had to survive in my personal life. I think a lot of us have that story within these pandemic years, where life is still going on and doesn’t stop for anything, and some of our experiences aren’t talked about. I went on an intense healing journey, that took me all the way back to my childhood, and my upcoming single “All Right With Me” is what came out of it.

I designed a flagship, 5 unisex custom hoodie series called “I AM ROYAL” and 9 women’s gemstone bracelet series called “The 9 Virtues” that are available on my website/IG/Facebook shop page. Hand dyed, painted, custom made to size, and mailed to you from yours truly. Men’s bracelets and another custom series called “Truth Is” are being conceptualized.

I was a signed recording artist at 22, and left the industry because of its toxicity. I never thought I’d be in this field again, until I found my faith at 36. I missed the boat on the MySpace days of being an independent artist. Shout out to the Gen Xer’s who know what I’m talking about. It took all I had to learn where the business is at currently, how to be an artist in it, how to protect what I produced, who to learn from that added real value and wasn’t just a gimmick. It’s definitely like navigating shark infested waters.

What is super frightening is subjecting myself to public ridicule as an artist discovering my sound and place in music. That alone would detour most from starting especially in their later years with no real foreseeable support I decided to be in it for the journey, not the fame, and more patience and meaning showed up for me along the way. My funnel has gotten more focused, and my hope is that my music will ultimately be placed in TV, film, and ads.

Besides the digital formats like social media and streaming channels, figuring out how to book recording studios, set up shows for live acoustics or track play performances, and conceptualizing marketing and promotional stuff such as the clothing, music videos, visual content for a launch, is all an art in itself. My background as a creative multipreneur set me up to intuitively have an understanding, and a built in flexibility to pivot where necessary.

I honestly believe I’m paving the way for the next generation of artists to navigate these waters, and to know how to stand in it with strength. I’m already seeing those seeds with the younger generation who have witnessed my journey this far. Like my niece is interested in film and pursuing it because of her experience being in one of my music videos, and a young make up artist who I believed in, that didn’t have experience in the business are thriving now. Watching that unfold for them is pretty satisfying, while I’m running after mine.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Art seems frivolous to most until you have a heart break, or you can’t seem to find that perfect thing to make your new house a home. At that point, people realize it would suck if artists and artistry didn’t exist. It’s what gives a black and white world color, and is so under appreciated in real time. I’m not going to tell someone how to spend their money like someone who is entitled to it, but to pause and appreciate how much it takes to stay true and be one is no small feat. If that inspires you to support your local artists in whatever capacity you can, and it doesn’t have to be monetary, it could be sharing your relationships, or cross promoting their projects to your sphere of influence, all of it is deeply valued, and doesn’t go unnoticed.

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

The mission of Stay Royal Records is to inspire hope, faith, love, and belonging. Not in a toxic positivity way, but in a way that displays inner strength and tells stories of true triumph over tragedies, having deep joy even in the middle of dark things, and that innovation, edge, fun, and goodness can be found together in under 4 minutes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ladydang.world
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladydangworld/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladydangworld
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lady-dang-68a10217a/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/LadyDang

Image Credits
All rights of these images are credited as intellectual property of Stay Royal Records.