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

Lorenzo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?

I do feel that both my work and myself as a person have been misunderstood AND mischaracterized since the revealing of my personality on my YouTube channel. I first started my channel as simply a place to share beats I would make and remake of popular songs. Eventually I would put myself on camera to begin teaching lessons on how I made these songs and because I love to interact & engage with those who comment, I would often find myself getting angry and responding to the usual “internet trolls”. Either defending artists who were not as far along in their journey or defending my own way of teaching as I am self-taught and my ways are not always so conventional. What I’ve learned and took from this experience is actually something I’m still learning about which is the fact that I actually have had Bipolar Disorder. Something I’ve only found out about a month ago. So now I know WHY people have misunderstood me. I haven’t even been able to fully understand myself.

Lorenzo, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I first got into my industry by way of my church. My dad is a pastor and I come from a naturally musical family and I grew up around music all the time. I believe because of this (and the fact my mother used to play piano while pregnant with me) I have had a very strong foundation in music. I became the organist of my church at age 7 where I would teach myself how to play the organ and piano all by ear. Back in the 90’s I was also a huge Michael Jackson fan and decided that I not only wanted to just play an instrument but I wanted to write songs and perform as well. And so I started making music on a computer, which graduated to uploading that music to YouTube in 2005, which eventually became a serious business for me (teaching music, mixing and mastering songs, recording artists and now filming for large music software companies and streaming platforms) after about 10 years later.

What I’m most proud of is just the fact I’m still going. I’ve landed a few beats on the albums of grammy nominated artists albums such as B.Slade and I’ve also shot music videos recently for actresses like Sheryl Lee Ralph from ABC’s Abbott Elementary. These things are exciting for sure. But now more than ever I’m just more proud of the fact that I am still am going despite all of the hardships I currently face and have faced over the years.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

What society can do to best support artists, creatives, and a thriving creative ecosystem is simply give them what they are worth. While I do agree that most important is the support given in showing up to shows, sharing art on social media, or good old fashioned word of mouth, THESE days I am hyper focused on getting paid what I feel my art is worth. Especially in the music industry it has been incredibly tough for artists to earn a livable wage. I can’t speak for any other industry but musicians have to figure out so many OTHER ways to earn income when I feel like the art itself should be enough to do that. Show monetary support and stop trying to get deals from your artist friends or talk down their rates for whatever it is they do. I feel we are already so undervalued because of the way companies like streaming platforms are set up to pay us. The last thing we need is for those closest to us or for regular customers to undervalue the work we do and all that we invest into our craft. It is not just what you see in the end result of a 3 minute song for instance. Hours, weeks, days, years even AND tons of money went into those creative endeavors. Artists need to be valued a lot more than they are now for the creative ecosystem to survive and thrive.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Ever since I built my studio from the ground up (I actually literally built it with my father), I’ve steadily had a decline in my mental health. Prior to this I’d just film my YouTube videos and make my music in the comfort of my bedroom but I found I was a big fish in a tiny bowl and needed space to grow. While I have noticed my business increase by way of clientele for music videos and advertisements such as the ones I’ve made for Auto-Tune, the inner workings my mind I found to become more confusing and hectic. Being self-employed is stressful enough. Being a self-employed ARTIST is even harder. Around October of last year I hit one of my lowest lows during a period where I felt my creativity was being milked for pennies on the dollar and I was a hamster caught in a wheel that I could never get myself off of. In a desperate effort to break this cycle I decided to consult with a therapist about what I’d been experiencing at the time. The most difficult part about this was I still had to show up every day and try to work so that I had an income to pay my bills, but this only felt like it was contributing to a further decline as I was pretty burnt out at the time. Therapy has quite literally saved my life as I was still able to somehow weather the storms of my depression with periods of hyper-productive episodes I’d have in that time. It wasn’t until 5 months later where my therapist suggested I may have Bipolar Disorder. And another month or 2 later, confirmed by a psychiatrist. I’m still not used to even saying that but I have looked back over my life, thinking of just how the heck I’ve been able to do so many of the things I’ve done in my life without even knowing I had such a disorder. That to me speaks to the resilience I’ve had over my life and is the main reason why I’m simply happy I’ve been able to somehow continue over all of these years.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.lxgends.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/iamlxgend
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/iamlxgend