We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shack Deville a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shack, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

Sometimes I wish I started my creative career sooner. I was always writing lyrics and making beats, even back to when I was in middle school. I didn’t take it seriously enough, though. It was always more like a hobby for me back then. Nowadays, I look around and I see people who applied themselves around the time I had that side of me on the back burner, and I respect the progress and success stories they’ve made in that same amount of time. But I’m a person that believes in perfect timing as well, so I have no doubt that everything aligned at the right time,

Shack, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, until I was about eight years old. That’s where I really fell in love with music. Growing up, my father would always play his Motown and classic soul records, my mother was always singing gospel throughout the house, and my older brother gave me my fill of hip hop and rhythm and blues. When I was alone in my room, I would always go through the CDs and cassette tapes in the house and play them on the boombox and memorize all of the songs that I liked. As a kid, I was always gifted and into exercising my creative talents. I was always drawing and writing short stories, but I never really got a chance to exercise my musical abilities until I got older because I was really introverted and shy. You couldn’t have paid me to get on stage or talk to people. When I relocated to Charleston, my family was going through some issues and it was a tough time for me, so music became an escape from my reality at a time I didn’t know how to express myself. Those are the breaks when you’re the black sheep. I began making beats in middle school and began rapping in high school. It was something to do in my free time, and I didn’t take myself too seriously. I still didn’t have aspirations of becoming a great artist. I had a checkered past from getting involved in some things I shouldn’t have, I signed a letter of intent to play college football at South Carolina State University, and I wanted to study Computer Science; Music was the last thing on my mind. Everything changed when I suffered a career-ending injury in college during my junior season. Football was taken away from me at a time I was showing so much promise for a shot at the NFL. Although my scholarship was still intact and I could graduate with my degree, I still felt lost. I didn’t have a passion for anything anymore. I went through a period of depression where I was getting addicted to painkillers and suicide was on the table. When I was at home healing from my surgery, my best friend gave me some perspective and brought the studio to my house, where I recorded about ten songs from my bedroom on a set of crutches. He saved my life. Music saved my life. From that moment in 2013, I knew I found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is being able to express myself in ways I wouldn’t be able to in normal settings. I use my art as a therapy session, so where it may be more difficult to speak about my thoughts and feelings to another person, putting it into a song feels more natural to me. Networking with other rappers and singers who may feel the same way and creating collaborations that people will play in their cars and headphones for years to come feels great.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

All You Need to Know About the Music Business, Art of War, and YouTube all played a big part in developing my understanding of the business side of things. I learned so much about how to collect my own royalties, publishing, marketing my brand, and how to navigate the financial side of the music as well. I’d advise anyone who is trying to follow the same path to spend as much time researching before they dive into the game.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dvlnintl.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/shackdeville
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/shackdeville
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/shackdeville
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaEQ8CKFESW6E52kFJebakA
• Other: www.linktr.ee/shackdeville