Emeryld is an R&B singer-songwriter currently based in New York City. Last month she released a heart-wrenching music video for her single “Right There” – a song in which she openly explores her journey with mental health and battles with post-breakup trauma. This track is the first single from an upcoming mixtape to be released early this year.

Quip: How has 2020 been for you?

Emeryld: Oh Jesus um… A fucking rollercoaster, like everyone else I’m sure. haha – Had a rough breakup with a partner I lived with to kick it off, got COVID, and was couch surfing for most of the year. That’s just like 5% of it though haha. I will say, I learned more about myself than ever before and I feel I really have a deep understanding of who I am now and what I want. I learned that music isn’t the only expression outlet I want to explore and I’ve been sharpening other skills. I learned boundaries for myself and what I needed mental health-wise and really want to get involved in the mental health space in a huge way, I started speaking on virtual panels, etc. talking about it and sharing my story to spread awareness which has been fulfilling. 2020 has inspired my spirituality and my love for connecting with strangers. The solitude really forced me to face my emotions head-on, things I ran away from in the past, and heal which was a blessing. I made the decision to move to NYC which has always been a dream and I couldn’t be happier about the decision. I don’t think any of this would have happened without the confines of this year. Lemonade out of lemons for sure. 

Q: Have you learned anything about yourself, your fans, or the industry?

E: I touched on it above, but I’ve also learned that I have so many different forms of art I love and want to utilize. I love interior design, creative direction, comedy writing, and acting. As for fans, they’re really friends. I’ve had the time to talk to a lot of them and we’ve been supporting each other as a community throughout this time and they send me cool shit that’s inspiring. I’m grateful. I also learned that the industry is ever-changing and flowing and is so reliant on the current worldly state, you just need to do what you love and not worry about hopping on trends, etc. because it changes so fast you can’t keep up if you’re chasing that. 

Q: What have you been missing most?

E: Live shows, Celebrations, and Benihana !!! 

Q: What new music have you made?

E: A ton, I’ve been experimenting a bunch with my sound and it’s been super fun to play for the sake of playing. Soon come   

Q: Where was it made, did you collaborate with anyone?

E:  Mostly made from my home, I’ve been doing Zoom sessions and then recording alone or (safely) meeting up with friends who are collaborators (Los Hendrix, Nascent, Mvjors, Cecil)   

Q: Do you have any live streams to share? 

E: I just had one on the 22nd! My favorite one was with SoFar Sounds up on their channel. I plan on doing more.

Q: Anything you’d like to share with your fans?

E: Let’s stay as involved as possible for pressing and inclusive causes, taking steps every day towards fighting justice into the new year. Be there for each other and practice kindness. Also – Check out my new video and single “Right There” out now!!

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Emeryld curated playlist, exclusively for Quip:

Photos by Brett Banducci | Styling by Emeryld

The post Retrospective: Alt-R&B artist Emeryld reflects on her life & career in 2020 appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Black Am I wrapped up 2020 with a release of a music video for his newest song “The Edge“. During this brief retrospective, he shares with us some wonderful behind the scenes footage from the video shoot, all filmed on his farm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1oT_Bor_No&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=QuanNelson

Quip: How has 2020 been for you?

Black Am I: 2020 has been a challenging year. The industry lost a lot of revenue, yet, the Ghetto Youths International label still managed to produce and release some tracks as we tried to be consistent with our releases in spite of all the challenges, I give thanks for that.

Q: Have you learned anything about yourself, your fans, or the industry?

BAI: I have learned that the industry is changing due to the lifestyle of the fans, more staying at home means more time on the internet, viral meetings are the new way to link up so I look forward to more of those and adjusting to that lifestyle.

Q: What have you been missing most?

BAI: Missing the up close and personal with the fans, missing the audience in front of the stage. I also miss traveling and performing.

Q: What new music have you made?

BAI: In 2020 we released the lyric video for “Samson Strength”, a track from the Living Dread EP then we released the track called “Kings of Kings” and most recently “The Edge”. Despite COVID we have also shot the music video for “The Edge,” which I am grateful for QuipMag for featuring. I didn’t have any collaborations last year, but for 2021, fingers crossed I hope to do so.

Q: Do you have any past streams you’d like to share?

BAI: When we released the track called “King of Kings” we curated a pandora playlist in honour of H.I.S Majesty’s earthstrong none in the future that I know of as yet, but I believe my next appearance might be a live stream.

Q: Anything you’d like to share with your fans?

BAI: I would say to my fans: Be proactive in this pandemic  CPOVID-19, it is A serious thing, prevention is best. We must take the necessary precaution to avoid the spread, life is the key, save yours so you can save mine and much more. Stay safe, walk good, see you soon …

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Black Am I curated playlist, exclusively for Quip:

photo Credit: Tiesha Pough aka Tizzy Tokyo

The post Retrospective: Black Am I leaning into the new virtual ways appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Dugong Jr focuses on DIY and eclectic innovation when it comes to making music. His adventurous take on electronic music is a genre-bending production of melodic tracks that recently came together into the Pleasure Principle EP. The record features collaborations with Jordan Dennis, Evangeline, Rromarin (Kult Kyss) and is “a testament to Dugong Jr’s deep roots in the global landscape of forward-thinking electronic music”.

Quip: How has 2020 been for you? 

Dugong Jr: Yeah 2020 was pretty wild lol. It definitely had its ups and downs but I feel extremely fortunate that I had such supportive people around me. I spent a lot of time focusing on my physical and mental health during the lockdown, which I think really helped me in my ability to stay creative and I was able to release my 2nd EP Pleasure Principle which came out in November 2020. 

Q: Have you learned anything about yourself, your fans, or the industry? 

DJ: As lovely as it is to create work in an amazing studio space, I learned that I can be creative anywhere as long as I’m inspired. I’ve also been super impressed with people’s willingness to engage with art and music in new ways. 

Q: What have you been missing most? 

DJ: Definitely missing live IRL shows, both going to them as a punter and performing myself. 

I’ve also really missed being in the studio with people, but Melbourne has recently relaxed its lockdown restrictions so I’ve been able to do a few sessions with other artists over the last couple of months which has been really exciting. 

Q: What new music have you made? 

DJ: I made a LOT of new beats during the lockdown. I’m starting to flesh a bunch of them out now with other vocalists/artists, I don’t want to mention any names just yet cause they aren’t finished, but there will definitely be some familiar faces and some new ones too.  

Q: Do you have any streams you’d like to share? 

DJ: I just recently did a live stream for this year’s edition of LA GIVES BACK [top of the page]. I was lucky enough to share the bill with some amazing artists like Tom Morello, Eric Andre, A-Trak, Snakehips, and more, all coming together with the goal of raising money for the homeless. Big shout out to Chad from Brownies and Lemonade for inviting me to be a part of that amazing event. 

Q: Anything you’d like to share with your fans?

DJ: It’s been a hard year, don’t be too hard on yourself. Take care of your mental health and check in on your friends.  

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Dugong Jr curated playlist, exclusively for Quip:

The post Retrospective: Dugong Jr on being creative in the lockdown appeared first on Quip Magazine.

American singer-songwriter Norma Jean Martine is her own musician and co-writer for a list of pop stars around the world. Her most recent single, “Basketball,” is an upbeat Wankelmut remix and a song that’s sure to improve your mood, whatever the mood might be. Currently working on her next EP Visiting Hours’ Martine is on a mission to share her husky voice and strong writing skills with the world.

Quip: How has 2020 been for you?

Norma Jean Martine: 2020 started off with me staying in a little apartment in Kaiserslautern, Germany with my boyfriend at the time. His family lives there, so it’s a place that I’ve visited often. Experiencing New Year’s Eve there was a little anxiety-provoking for me because I’m afraid of fireworks, but also extremely beautiful. In the US fireworks are much more controlled, whereas in Germany it felt like anyone who wanted to could just set one-off, so they were literally EVERYWHERE. It’s something I will never forget, ringing in 2020.

Shortly after I moved back to London and was living in a warehouse in Manor House with 18 other people. That was a fun time, meeting other creatives, and feeling like a part of a community. That’s where I was when the world ended in March, and very quickly I had to make the decision to put everything I owned in London into a storage unit and fly back to New York to be with my family before the border closed. I bought my flight on a Friday, packed the storage unit on Saturday, flew on Sunday, and the border closed Monday night. I just made it! Since then I’ve been home, living in the house I grew up in, with my mom. That experience started with watching Governor Cuomo’s updates each morning over coffee and then sewing countless masks.

In a world where it feels like you can just buy a mask, hand sanitizer, and gloves anywhere at any given moments, it’s hard to remember that in March and April you couldn’t find a mask anywhere, and people were selling tiny bottles of hand sanitizer for £12 (or more!!). So I sewed A LOT. I sold a few to people who could afford them to compensate for my time and the materials, but I also donated hundreds to local hospitals and to friends who could then hand them out to people they knew. It was a pretty cool memory being in Walmart and seeing multiple people from my hometown wearing the masks I had made. It made me feel really proud and that I was doing a good thing in helping to protect my community. Sewing is a skill that I’ve had since I was a little girl, making my barbies their own clothes. When I was 18 I sewed my own prom dress. So coming home, and dusting off my old sewing machine, and using that skill for good was really awesome.

Everything shifted again with the George Floyd murder. I felt my social media was just absolutely flooded with information, and since I had so much time to myself, I took the opportunity to educate myself further on the issues. It’s something I’d been interested in and focused on for some time, but given the vast information at my fingertips, and the time to dive into all of it, I certainly came to terms with my own racial bias in a deeper way. I even went as far as digging into my family history, and my ancestral traumas in terms of race, and how those experiences have trickled down to my own understanding and bias. I feel like that deep work really needs to be done to unlearn what is absorbed almost by osmosis in this society.

Protesting in my hometown was so powerful, and I felt so proud of my community. The town I grew up in is 86% BIPOC, yet our police force is mostly white. To see hundreds, if not thousands of people come out, and shut down Route 211, which is our main road, was incredible. It was pretty cool marching past my father’s car garage. I don’t think anything like that had ever happened in Middletown before. Through the protesting I met some new friends and got involved in community work here. We did a school supply drive for kids in need, and we did a lot of work educating the community on the illegal and toxic fracked gas power plant that was built on the outskirts of our town. It’s literally in my back yard, so I see it every day, but for people who live more in the center of town, it’s not in their face, so many people in Middletown do not know the power-plant exists, let alone the health and environmental impacts of its emissions.

I’d always been interested in activism, and am an activist in my own small personal ways through my diet and spending habits, but getting involved on a community level was a new thing for me, and something I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to shut off now that I’m involved. It’s sort of like, once you know these issues exist, and you find a group of people who feel the same way, you can’t not help make it better. A few community members and I have started a group to create a more equitable education system in our town, so that’s where my focus is now.

At the end of summer, I went through a break-up which was tough. It’s still something I’m working through. I think many people can relate right now with the lockdown, that the space of quarantine really makes issues more apparent than they were before. During the breakup, I started an herbalism course. That’s been a really beautiful experience, and I recommend diving into herbalism for anyone who is looking for a deeper connection to self and nature.

In October, I really started getting back into zoom sessions, and I’ve learned to record and compose my own vocals. It’s been incredibly empowering for me because I can suddenly create without depending on a producer to record me. I’ve also been intentionally doing a lot more all-female sessions, and those are literally the BEST. I met two really cool artists called TOMI and Talltale during a virtual camp, and we are writing some really cool stuff together.

At Thanksgiving, my parents and I had COVID. We did okay, but there were some scary moments. The one good thing about getting it is the release of anxiety, and the ability to see people again knowing that you can’t catch it or spread it anymore, at least for a little while. So in a way, I’m grateful I had it. The anxiety was literally driving me crazy all year.

I guess the other huge thing that I almost forgot that happened in 2020 is the crazy success of “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes!” That song was written right before the lockdown, and released in May. I’m so grateful for this song because I’ve been able to have really happy moments and feel accomplished and earn money in a time when a lot of things are pretty awful. It’s also opened up new doors for me, so I have some pretty exciting things in the works as a result. Overall, 2020 hasn’t been so bad!

Q: Have you learned anything about yourself, your fans, or the industry?

NJM: I learned a TON about myself. I learned that living in a small town, even my hometown isn’t that bad. Finding such a cool and purposeful community here through the movement has been really awesome. I used to feel so disconnected living in London, even though there were literally millions of people living around me. Yet here, in the town I ran away from because I hated it so much, I’ve somehow come back and found these amazing people all with a common purpose. This realization is something I want to bring forward anywhere I end up. I’ve toyed with the idea of LA for a while, and this experience has made me realize that I need normalcy in my life. I can’t just be friends with other music people. I need to find something more grounded wherever I am.

I’ve learned to move on and let go through my break up, two things that I’ve always really struggled with. I’ve realized that I might be one person, but I can make a huge difference to the collective through my mask making, but also through anything, whether that’s spreading valuable life-changing information, or making people dance during a pandemic.

I’ve realized that one song can change your life. I’ve realized how strong, potent, and intuitive I am. In a ton of ways, I’ve been realizing and learning to firmly stand in my power. I’ve also learned that I am totally capable of anything I decide to do. If I want to learn logic, I can do it. If I want to learn to produce, I can do it. If I want to write a children’s book, I can do it. If I want to write songs that sound like radio hits, I can do it. I’ve struggled for years with feeling “not good enough”, and often that’s the emotion that makes me give up on my dreams and goals. But through therapy, I’ve really learned to sit with and feel that emotion and work past it so I can progress and finish projects, and manifest my dreams and goals.

Norma Jean Martine’s makeshift home studio setup

Q: What have you been missing most?

NJM: Just seeing people honestly. I’m home, but I rarely see anyone from my family but my mom and dad. I really miss my friends who are all over the globe. I also really miss traveling. Being still has been a wonderful spiritual exercise for me, since I’ve traveled so much in the past 10 years, but I have definitely come to terms with the fact that I am an adventurer at heart.

Q: What new music have you made?

NJM: I’ve been writing a lot over the past 2-3 months. I’m working on a lot of new dance tunes, but also working on a project called “songs to watch clouds to” which is more of a vanity project, but I’m honestly SO excited about it.

Q: Did you collaborate with anyone?

NJM: I’ve been working more with Hight and Quarterhead who I wrote “Head Shoulders” with, as well as Jonas Kroeper (Sam Feldt “Post Malone”), and Freedo (Chainsmokers “Takeaway”), among others on the dance/pop side. I wrote a really cool song with Alice Ivy from Australia that I can’t wait for everyone to hear.

As a writer for other artists, I’ve been working more with Girli, who is an artist that I’ve been helping to redevelop for over a year now with Max Mostley. She’s amazing, and her last single “Letter To My Ex” is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever been apart of. I’ve also loved working with TOMI and Talltale on the clouds project, as well as Brian West and Matthew Angus from Canadian indie band The Fast Romantics.

Q: Do you have any live streams coming up?

NJM: No I don’t, but I should do something like that sometime soon. I’m awful at social media. I honestly sometimes wish we could go back to the 90’s when it didn’t exist and we actually had to write physical letters to artists fan clubs.

Q: Anything you’d like to share with your fans?

NJM: Well, number one, COVID is real, please protect yourselves. Even if you don’t get it badly, you may pass it on to someone who will. Besides that, be kind and be vegan

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Norma Jean Martine curated playlist, exclusively for Quip:

The post Retrospective: Norma Jean Martine getting deep and personal about her year appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Houston-born artist Nick Vyner felt music was a calling at an early age. Originally trained as a classical musician Vyner widened his musical interests early on but one genre that really stood out to him was pop, which – in short – inspired his current musical career.

Vyner recently released his latest single and music video “Mood Swing” via Solo Brightest – Flighthouse’s brand-new joint venture with 10K Projects. The track was co-produced by Stevie Wonder’s drummer Stanley Randolph and mixed by Alex Tumay (Kanye West, Childish Gambino). In many ways, this track is Nick Vyner’s start to a promising musical career.

Quip: How has 2020 been for you?

Nick Vyner: Personally, I’ve been fine. I’ve been super lucky this year in that I have not yet gotten the coronavirus and am able to work from home. But almost everything that happened to the planet this year was fucking awful and it hurt to watch and hopefully 2021 is a step in the right direction.

Q: Have you learned anything about yourself, your fans, or the industry?

NV: This has definitely been an intense period of introspection for me as I’m sure it has been for most people who were stuck at home for long stretches of time. I’ve tried to apply most of that thinking into songs, so I don’t know if I’m ready to share all my personal discoveries yet. I spent a lot of time thinking about behavior.

Q: What have you been missing most?

NV: Packed shows and sharing things with people and impromptu events of literally any kind.

Q: What new music have you made?

NV: Nothing that you’ve heard yet, but some stuff that I’m really excited about. We’ll see how much of it makes it out into the world.

 Q: If you have where was it made & did you collaborate with anyone?

NV: I’ve been working on lots of music by myself and doing an occasional virtual session. Isolation has meant really trying to figure out production so that I am decently self-sufficient when I only have myself to work with.

Q: Do you have any live streams to share? 

NV: Nothing coming up as of right now, but you can watch a 20 minute set of mine over at We Found New Music‘s YouTube page. We did a live stream back in September that was a lot of fun.

Q: Anything you’d like to share with your fans?

NV: Find ways to support indie artists that you like and buy local everything if you have the ability to!!!!

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Nick Vyneryld curated playlist, exclusively for Quip:

Photo Credit: Joseph Morrison

The post Retrospective: Nick Vyner on learning self-sufficiency in isolation appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Earlier this month, SIIMBA dropped his newest EP VIICES and today he has a curated playlist as a part of the new Quip artist-curated playlists: “Essentially this is a compilation of music from people I consider homies and who’s music I respect a lot. I’m happy to have worked and collaborated with many of these people in numerous ways and they all inspire me. I hope they can do the same for you.”

Stream below or save on Spotify here.

The post Artist curated playlist: SIIMBA SELASSIIE appeared first on Quip Magazine.