We were lucky to catch up with Layla Khepri recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Layla, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
Perseverance, humility, faith, patience, forgiveness and grace, discipline, leadership, teamwork, hard work and working smart.
In regard to what true success looks like to me, I think it takes all the above mentioned.
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?
My name is Marissa Arguijo, known by many as my artist name Layla Khepri, and my creative journey took off in elementary school as a talented writer. I’ve always had a big imagination and in fifth grade I wrote a story for the school paper that my teachers had me read to the other fifth grade classes, but even prior to that I wrote a story in kindergarten or first grade that they thought I plagiarized so that was pretty crazy. Nonetheless, as years passed, my love for music integrated with my writing and I began making raps and would even freestyle at the lunch tables in high school amongst other places. I hit a crossroad after Highschool between going to the military or pursuing music and chose the creative route. Since then I’ve met beautiful people from all different walks of life, one of them including my first talent manager and now business partner, Lady Redz. She shot all my videos and long story short, acquires equipment over time that I eventually picked up and proved to be a natural at least having taken what I learned from her over the years of helping on various sets and after the brand grew both with me as an artist and her as a filmmaker, we started a media production company called Indigo Republic Films. I learned a lot from Redz from the jump considering her entrepreneurial prowess prior to meeting her and then on. Meeting my current manager, Essince, only encouraged me even more along my journey to success with his ambitions and endeavors parallel to Redz’ and my own. It’s actually crazy how over time the amount of our connections from music shifted more into the film industry which proved to be beneficial especially as we delved into higher quality productions. That would include the first man to sign me to a label of any sort, Jeff Cohen, who we partnered with to produce our very first feature film, Bundles, which got picked up by BET Her…shout out on that one to another music related friend Chris Bivins who has also entered the field of filmmaking. Now as a production company, we have two docu follow series we just finished filming, Nu Bru, a which series created by Lady Redz (Ryan Jordan) that we’re currently wrapping up episode one of, two more feature films lined up for 2023, and that’s just a sprinkle of what’s on the way. There’s some L’s that took place along the way, but I was hurting for so long, now that I’m back in the drivers seat, I really want to just focus on the good that’s on the way and embrace the growth and took place and is taking place from the pain and losses I’ve experienced. However, I’ve really been leaning on my music as of lately as an outlet to express myself and allow my emotions to generate beautiful and transparent songs. In fact, I was going to release a project called Unicorn Season, but as life took its course, the music the project called for wasn’t resonating with me anymore. Not as the forefront of what I wanted to say and wanted people to hear at least. That being said, I have a nice body of work I’ve been working on for years now and it’s all coming together. Now I just need the name for the project and we’ll be good to go but the way life’s been going and the way I’ve been prayed up, I’m sure it’ll come to me like other things and it will feel perfect…not rushed…not settling, but perfect. I do know that the first song I want to release from it is called Amen though…so as a rapper/musical talent that gave me my first buzz of recognition, be on the lookout for Amen and a really real ass album.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Playing the victim. I never dealt with trauma I experienced when I was younger and instead of addressing it and taking accountability, I felt like the world owed me something, I made excuses for self righteous behavior or exerting a victim mentality in my relationship, made other people the bad guy in my story instead of just being logical instead of emotional, accepting hard truths about myself so I could face those truths and navigate what that meant, forgive myself, learn myself, what makes me happy, my triggers, etc…it’s a whole process of unlearning that mindset after you realize it about yourself and some people never realize that about themselves.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
The side hustle at a point in time became filmmaking. I would help here and there, next I picked up the camera and would shoot here and there, most of the time for free so I could build my portfolio, and after creating a business behind it and branding it alongside my reputation and the reputation Lady Redz (Ryan Jordan) had already began to build as a dope videographer, the moment came where it allowed me to quit my 9-5 and take on film as a full time means of being financially stable and still being able to fund my music career.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.LaylaKhepri.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laylakhepri/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/OfficialLaylaKhepri/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/layla-khepri-ba6b6252
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/laylakhepri
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/laylakhepri
- Other: www.TheIndigoRepublic.com https://instagram.com/theindigorepublic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=