We caught up with the brilliant and insightful =Zailuv a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi =Zailuv, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I think it started a few months after I started writing music. I started writing music when I was 14 in 8th grade. It was a difficult year because I was getting in trouble a lot at school and at home. Life was kind of hectic. I was looking for some kind of outlet. I always loved writing poetry. Even when I started writing raps time just seemed to pass by so fast. I really enjoyed doing it.
I started off keeping my new hobby a secret from my parents. Luckily, in this day in age, it is pretty easy to get information off the internet. So, without my parents knowing, I saved up some money and built myself a studio. It was pretty cheap and wasn’t very good quality but it helped me record my first handful of songs. The moment I really realized that it was something that I wanted to take all the way was after I posted a couple songs on the internet. The thing that really drove me there had to be the interaction you get from the people around you. It felt like I finally had a voice and I instantly wanted to share it with the world. I felt in my heart that I always belonged in a place where I can share what I feel with the world and that same initial feeling that sparked it all is the same feeling that pushes me today.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Zailuv, and I was born in Glendale, Arizona. I make a weird mix of music. The genres I primarily lean towards are hip-hop, alternative rock, and pop. Some of my influences are Mac Miller, Lil Peep, Felly, and Smino. I think a few of the biggest reasons I make music are: First feeling like I have a way to express all the emotions I feel; I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel a lot and It’s kind of hard to make space for these feelings.. which brings me to the other reason why I make music. Which is, trying to help people understand that it’s okay to have feelings. I feel like, a lot of times, media, pushes this idea of perfection and I want to be able to express myself in my imperfect way in hopes that it inspires people the way that I am inspired by those who do the same.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The spring of 2017 definitely offered me a good struggle. I was living in an RV that my mom had gifted me in an RV park that had pretty cheap rent. I worked for a company called LifeTouch. We took pictures for the year book. It was a traveling job. It was definitely a cool experience. I got to see parts of Arizona I didn’t even know it existed. I think it taught me a bit about where I’m from. I still have the studio set up from back in the day, but I upgraded it a bunch. Making it a pretty decent set up. I was releasing a bunch of singles, back then, with my friend Bennet. Everything was pretty good until summer started. Anyone from Arizona knows that summer time is hot. The RV that I was gifted was kind of a ‘flaming box on wheels’. I mean, the engine was alright, but before my mom had gifted it to me she had an idea to turn it into a ‘tiny home’. She never really finished remodeling, so, it kind of looked like a construction site on the inside. There wasn’t really a working shower, and the toilet was just floating in the backroom. The generators needed new batteries and I was pretty poor back then, so it wasn’t really a priority, seeing that I lived at the RV park and they offered electricity. As summer approached, work started to slow down. It was a seasonal job and when the schools were closed there was no work. Now, before I became more of a planner, I was not a planner at all. So, I had enough money to pay for rent but I was living check-to-check, back then. I use to like to flip my phone. I really enjoyed finding new ways to flip it and do cool tricks. I was at my friends house and I went to flip my phone, like I always did, but this time it fell and the entire screen cracked. Being a little complacent as I used to be, instead of clocking my hours every single day like I should have. I would wait until the end of the week. It happened to be a Thursday, right before payday. So, as you can see I didn’t have the chance to clock my hours. Which mean’s I didn’t get paid. Long story short. I ended up getting evicted. Because the RV was stationary, I didn’t see a need to have insurance on it at the time and I probably couldn’t have afforded it, anyway. The only thing I thought to do was to park the RV in neighborhoods so I could sleep for the night and move on to the next place in the morning. Along the way, I picked my brother up. He’s a couple years younger than me. I love him to death, but I also want to punch him in the arm a lot of the times. That’s to say our personalities clash. We were crashing in a neighborhood, and before I woke up he decided to go onto someone’s property and charge his phone. This was against what I suggested if anyone is wondering. So, when I wake up, Elijah says ‘dude, there’s cops outside’. Sometimes in life, It feels like this weird instinct comes out, and without thinking you just take care of what’s in front of you. I went outside and I spoke to the cop that looked like he was in charge, the older gentleman. There was about four or five cops outside by this point. I told him what was going on. The whole story and he seemed to show me some sympathy. He told me that he knew that the RV had no insurance and he said I was trespassing. I told him I was sorry for what my brother did. He said he couldn’t just let me off, though. His co-worker had suggested that they have the RV towed, but the older gentleman said that he would let me off by taking my license plate. That’s when s*** got crazy. I was kind of in a situation because I was in the middle of the city with barely enough money to put gas in the RV so I could move it from one neighborhood to the next. And seeing that I didn’t have a license plate anymore, I couldn’t drive it on the freeway and take it somewhere that was safe. I mean the last thing I needed was to get pulled over without insurance or registration lol. I was eating rice for pretty much every meal and the AC didn’t work. I would be able to stay in a location for about 2 or 3 days but eventually a cop would tag my RV to get towed for not having registration. It was a pretty stressful way to live. Hanging out in Wal-Mart parking lots and random neighborhoods. It went on like that for about 2-3 months. Until I was able to lock a job in with an old employer. That kind of helped me put my life back on track after all that. I feel really lucky I was able to make it out of that situation without a huge amount of debt or getting arrested or something. I was able to make music the whole time, though. I kept my equipment and never stopped creating.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think the most rewarding part of being an artist has to be when people tell me that they understand or can relate to something I have created. It is so exciting to feel like your voice is felt and that it is something that other people understand and appreciate. You know just connecting with people. Another rewarding part of being an artist is that feeling that you get when you see a crowd engaged with you. It’s like lighting. One of the best feelings ever, honestly.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Zailuvsmokesdoobs
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1vsyzIlaFAlbIGFQ5olmII?si=NfgTsE8zT_aqhIqkLhOTjw Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/zailuv Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/baby-mangos-feat-jerry-cole-ep/1608820150 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/artists/B089VYG5CH/zailuv?refMarker=null&
Image Credits
Alice Guglielmo for all photos