We were lucky to catch up with Ryan Joshua recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

My first time making money from music felt amazing. A lot of artists will tell you that they’d do what they do for free…though we want to make a living off of our art, that’s 100% true—and starting out, we do make our art for free (and usually spend a lot of money to make it). So experiencing that it’s possible to earn money from doing something you love is one of the best feelings in the world. It’s very encouraging. I made a little over $32 in streams in the span of three years (most of the money was made in the first year) from two terrible songs (in my opinion), “Crazy Mulatto” and “Ball Game” that I released through my previous distribution company: UnitedMasters. When I released those songs, I was still new to recording music so my delivery was shabby, the mixing was terrible & they weren’t mastered at all. I didn’t promote either song neither before or after the release and I quit making music shortly after releasing them. How people found the songs, I don’t know. Three years later, I was curious to see the streams and if I had made any money so I checked and I had $32…it’s not a lot but I thought that was insane—I made $32 from two poorly crafted songs. Not only that, but one month, I received $14 in streams…that blew my mind. I was slightly inspired to make music again. Who was listening to my songs that much? I thought “these are two songs that aren’t my best work and I got $32, imagine what I could make if I put out the quality songs I know I can produce and put out 10-15 songs”. Imagine darkness and a fire that seems to be dead and then, one of the logs glow orange—just for a second—creating a dim light—I think that’s what happened in that moment. My fire, my passion was still alive. Knowing that people liked my songs—my art, cared enough to stream my songs, knowing that it was possible to make money from them meant the world to me. I didn’t start making music again until a year or two from that moment but that moment was pivotal.

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 Ryan Joshua. I’m a Christian rapper. I usually don’t/won’t make cute music you can dance to & it won’t always be super catchy but I’ve been told it does exactly what it’s meant to do—encourage and set a fire in/under people. All my songs are great for a gym playlist. As an artist, in all that I do—music, poetry, writing books—my goal is to instill a fire in everybody to be driven, to go hard…to walk in boldness, confidence, power, and authority. For non-believers (in Christ) specifically, my goal is to lead them to Christ through being loving and showing them who God is through my life, lifestyle, and actions. I also wanna let believers and non-believers know that you can be a Christian and still have fun. It might look a little different but life doesn’t stop and the fun doesn’t stop just because you love God & decide to dedicate your life to Him and partner with Him—which is the best thing anybody could ever do.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I recently rebranded—I’m now “Ryan Joshua” and am formerly known as “Ryan Outlaw”. I rebranded and changed my name because name change after name change trying to find the perfect one, I began to dislike aliases. Also, I just wanted to be myself but I never liked my name (Ryan Joshua Ellison), until recently. The other reason is I changed my name is because I was getting into legal trouble. The “Outlaw” part of “Ryan Outlaw” derives from an old alias of mine, “Illegal”. I began making music by watching battle raps on youtube and writing my own battle raps/disses. So, I love the competition aspect of rap/hiphop. I love mentality of “I’m the best, I can outwork you, I can out-rap you, I can overwhelm you with literary devices (look it up), prove me wrong…” it’s all love at the end of the day, but…prove me wrong…watcha got? By calling myself “Illegal” I was saying: anything that I write should be illegal to write because it’s so lethal, so destructive, it shouldn’t be allowed to be written let alone recorded. I’m also saying me being in the music industry, me being alive should be illegal. “Outlaw” plays off of that by meaning “I have a bounty over my head because of the stuff I write/release and I have a bounty over my head because the devil wants my soul, he wants me dead…he doesn’t want me to reach my destiny”. That second/last part is true for everybody but I’m a Christian, so I know it to be real and have experienced it. That said, by calling myself “Outlaw” I branded myself as such—as an outlaw—I was saying that’s who I was & I believe there were some spiritual effects of that. I no longer wanted to break the law—the United States laws and also, God’s Law—His written Law. So I changed my alias because that wasn’t my name, it wasn’t who I was, and decided to use my real name (that hits and translates different if you’re a Christian). I still itch to change it and find the catchiest version—a part of me wants to just use my last name, “Ellison” but I think I’m content with “Ryan Joshua” it sounds real—like a real person, it sounds personable, and it’s me.

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

1. Follow and/or subscribe to our socials—be active—like our content, leave a comment, and share it with a few people. That goes a loooong way. 2. Buy our art—whatever we produce.
3. Keep your critiques to yourself…trust me, we beat ourselves up a lot you don’t have to and we have people that we trust and go to for advice/critique (it’s not you). You don’t have to like or understand everything.
4. Show us love by doing all of the above and telling us how and why you appreciate our art/what we produce. That also goes a long way.
5. Create more free spaces for us to write, paint, draw, sketch, record music & simply exist, co-exist, and connect w/ each other. Let’s all make art together, everybody can make art!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linqapp.com/JoshuaR
• Instagram: @ryjxshua
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@Ryjxshua?si=TYdtejiC3Hy-2gcL
• Other: TikTok: @ryjxshua