Talks w/D'Andre Adonis (Singer/Rapper)

Welcome back to another YNA Talks episode! Todays special guest is an up and coming artist, D'Andre Adonis. Join us as we have a conversation about studio life and so much more!

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Transcript

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all right deandre so uh we're here today is sunday what do we got going on today like what are the plans for today we've got to make some heat today a couple uh r b features i got to work on some crazy artists and we're about to have some fun so there's a female artist her name is evan evyn and there's another artist his name is ballard you can find both of them on streaming services where can people find you at instagram twitter um like what are your socials so instagram is at deandre underscore adonis on twitter it's under score adonis underscore 15 and then you can also find me on spotify apple music title soundcloud all that looks like today is going to be a great day and we're going to have fun at the studio

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so we're currently here at a studio on the south side of chicago recording a few songs with deandre adonis so far it's a good day and uh he's over here just chilling out in the studio recording a few tracks very unique process he's going through right now he is doing it just off of the uh the bpm no instrumental and yeah he's just he's just free ball on it there and then later on he'll probably put an instrument on there maybe he'll you know play the piano do something cool like that but yeah don't see that very often he's got the crazy vocals i forgot about that because he's like singing up here and also he's singing down here oh yeah yeah deandre has a definitely a very wide range of vocals i would say

hello hello welcome back to another episode of yna talks uh we got deandre here on the spotlight deandre just got done recording a song and he's got a few more that he's going to record tell the audience tell everybody kind of what you got going on in your life and uh where people can find you at well right now i'm just working on a new r b project uh you can find me on instagram d'andre underscore adonis or on twitter underscore adonis underscore 15 and then everywhere in terms of streaming services apple music spotify title soundcloud all of that nice so how long have you been making music for uh it's now it's been about five years five years wow who has inspired you as an artist like what are some big names you look up to when you're working on your own music like well just what comes to mind was in the very beginning the artist who got me into making music was chance the rapper because he was i remember i heard his voice without seeing everything and i was like what why he sound like that and then i started digging more and i was like oh okay chicago based helps the community real [ __ ] he likes to you know rap about yeah and how he started so young in high school and writing raps and songs in detention and stuff like that so it's very inspirational nowadays it's uh i'm more into smino he's definitely a very good inspiration for me so yeah so is it artists that inspired you or you know like why for you like why become an artist it just felt the best way i could express myself because i've always and i've always been an artist since i was a kid like in terms of drawing or painting or something like that so that was always a good way of expressing myself and then when i found out that i enjoyed creating music that became a whole another world of how i could be expressive in my feelings emotions stuff like that so when you're writing music or creating music have you ever kind of stumbled across um like issues when writing like let's say like writer's block or just kind of like a mental block that like prevents you from writing music or are you just 24 7 365 always kind of inspired to write music well i never the thing i tell people like that i don't have writer's block but that's only because i never try and force music i never try to force the art i always let it come to me so i never find myself in a moment where like oh i'm trying to make something and i can't i just can't figure out what that is i just always let it naturally come so then it's it just flows smoothly gotcha so like when when you're creating music everything is just always so like genuine and you know it really like comes from a place inside yeah so with that being said does making music does it make you feel these emotions or does it kind of just help you express them but you know like not feeling it in the moment or like how like how does how do you go about doing that well the emotions come first and then music the music part just expands that so it doesn't necessarily make me feel the emotions it just spreads the emotion out even more so i can figure out how i can express it and within the lyrics or something like the vocal harmonies or how smooth or yeah the kind of character i put into the into my voice so what are what are some pros and cons to collaborating with other artists you know you have to like match their energy uh you know what what are you doing in a collaboration with another artist like do you go based off them do they go based off you well i i think a lot of the struggles people have when they collaborate ours is trying to match their energy rather than just going in their own bubble because that's what the beauty of collaborating with artists is is that you get to express yourself in your way at the same time as they express themselves in their way and then you combine that and make something completely different yeah when it comes to these collabs have you like because i know this happens a lot uh where like they won't get back to you or you know they're it's hard to match up the schedules does that like kind of throw you off of your game like when you're recording or you know does the frustration like get to you or you just kind of let bygones be back up it used to a little bit in the beginning but then i over time i started to realize that you know everybody has different lives everybody has their own life so like everyone's not on my schedule so i use that as like it doesn't necessarily irritate me ever if someone can't like meet up or you know something like that it doesn't i just be like okay you know i live my life if i had an issue like this i understand why it happened on the other end too yeah like you you kind of like put yourself into their their shoes and yeah like really kind of understand it well that's good that you don't like let it get in the way yeah i know sometimes that could be like a major issue like especially in an industry where everything's kind of fueled by a lot of egos yeah you know it can become a mess so i want to ask you like could you name a few emotions that you find easy to write about like what what do you find easiest to express when you're sitting behind the mic getting your emotions out i think love is the easiest thing because i mean we've all felt it even if it's not super you know loving and like it's always like love with family members are you loving your friends or your girlfriend or boyfriend or something like that so love is definitely because it's so expendable there's so many different ways you can describe love everyone describes love differently everyone loves differently so yeah and it's you know like you definitely hear a lot of like love songs love stories especially uh in r b uh which i would say that you're like more prominent in is like a r b space it's a category of music where people kind of freely express their emotions to others and you know it's it's always a vibe always i also want to say like uh r b music is filled with love songs such pure raw emotions uh we have amazing singers in both hip hop and r b so i i wanted to mention like a few elite song writers such as frank ocean little nice x young ma kevin abstract who takes such great strides in the music industry while also representing part of the lgbtq plus community at events or even in their songwriting where would you place yourself in comparison as a young up-and-coming artist do you write openly about your sexuality or do you aim to inspire others to follow in your footsteps yeah i definitely openly write about my sexuality because i mean it's art so there's no rules to it you can express yourself through that art form whatever art form it is whether it's music or not however you want and everyone's unique so there's not like a set way to express your sexuality with art like frank ocean for example like he makes music about you hear him talking about guys you hear him talking about girls too everyone still loves him regardless because of how true to himself that he is yeah and that's that's great to hear because i mean really uh when it comes to love it like it's kind of a language of its own and you know it can be talked about in multiple different aspects it can be appreciated in multiple ways and it's it's almost refreshing to see more and more that in today's music you know like people like openly coming out or like representing these different communities you know because a lot of the times they don't have like that much representation so like it's good that you have that stance on it and also um i wanted to ask you too how is being a part of the lgbtq plus community affected you mentally and how does it tie into the emotion you portray in your music in the beginning when you're a part of that community you're discovering yourself it's always going to be tough because it's so like broadly not accepted by a lot of different people but you just gotta look at that and not make let that get in the way of you finding yourself and loving yourself because i mean you're you they're them everybody is their own unique individual so yeah yeah i just try to stay within myself stay true to myself and just express well that's great you know because like again like you said like it's sometimes it's not accepted and like a lot of the times that can deter people from you know expressing these emotions or you know it can like really get to their heads and they can like be depressed they can be super anxious like leading to many mental health issues so i'm glad that you're very open about uh kind of where you stand and that you know love is just one language so we also wanted to ask you like have you um in like relation to music or in your personal life have you run into any kind of like mental health issues whether it's like were you you felt depressed or if you were anxious um like does music kind of help you cope with it or like how how does music fit in with your mental health in like a day to day life or when you're in a studio space like this most like mental health issue i've had is usually just it's seasonal depression actually when the wintertime comes no sun it's always every day is gray it's cold every day that that affects me a lot and that's usually when i do a lot of my writing is during those times that's usually when it comes to me a lot is because that's when i'm feeling all those emotions yeah but uh yeah i recording it getting it out getting my voice memos recording it on my ipad however way i can get those out so i can keep listening back or just writing it down simply and not recording it or ever recording it that's a good way that i help cope with that science so on that when you're writing you know maybe just in general or maybe it's specifically an emotional song you know mental mentally do you need to feel those emotions do you need to be going through something related to the music that's going on you know can you just write i can just write but i it feels better if i'm actually going through it so like gives you better end results yeah yeah and it makes me execute it a lot better too because it's not like because it would kind of feel like i'd fake it a little bit if i'm not actually going through those emotions or something like that so yeah so like what your writing says like you in some way like you need to like kind of express what you're feeling in the moment or like it has to be like recent right when it comes to you expressing yourself through music or artistry i mean you're such a multi-dimensional artist like you you draw you record you play instruments what what do you think you would do if you weren't able to kind of get that out in song because i know a lot of people have a hard time expressing their emotions or how they feel inside like what like what what else like would you almost kind of like advice that you would give to somebody who's like going through like seasonal depression or like doesn't really know how to express themselves like what would be a different avenue that you would try out so i would just tell these people to just keep keep searching keep finding that one thing that will help you express yourself the best because there's an unlimited amount of things it could be it could be recording music painting drawing writing poetry exercising anything like that motivational speaking anything interviewing so there's so many different outlets that could help people get through stuff like that so i think that i would just say just keep looking keep searching um i think you kind of hinted at it when we were originally talking about you know writer's block but you know handling kind of like that mental burnout specifically have you hit that point at all and like is that kind of the same aspect of what you follow with a writer's block you kind of step back take a break yeah because i mean rest is just as important if not more important than the work so i think taking care of yourself the best way you can do that is to rest because you don't always have to be 24 7 working you don't always have to be on top of every little thing you do so i think people should take as much time to rest as they do to work describe the world that music puts you in it's free that's that's the main thing it's freedom there's no like i said there's no rules to it like you can do it however you feel is best for you so that's that's the best way i could describe it is freedom because there's a lot of different ways where people can feel trapped whether it's at work at school in a relationship with family so when they find that one thing that they can express themselves then that is the most freeing feeling to me what kind of piece of advice or like what would you tell somebody kind of going through the same thing that you do as an artist and as a person like what what are some words that you would give to me other than you know finding that one thing that you love more than anything talking to people there's a lot of different perspectives that you can get from different situations there's a lot of people who have been through similar things than you and uh things like therapy stuff like that parents friends parents are that are cool with you um so there's always a bunch of people that you can talk to and you're not alone and there's a whole there's a whole world of different people who probably went through some exact same things you went through so those are good examples of people that you can reach out to to talk about your stuff and uh once again uh just uh throw your socials out there let people know like where they can find your music at and kind of what you got going on if you got a and any a new album coming out or if you're writing or if you're you plan on performing soon uh just what you got so i got um got a show june 3rd in chicago got another show at uh kent lawrence pride in kansas june 24th through the 25th uh you can find me on twitter underscore adonis underscore 15 and on instagram at deandre underscore adonis and then you can find me on apple music spotify soundcloud title pandora all of them yo well thank you so much for uh coming out here to the studio kind of taking us through a day in the life of deandre and kind of what gets done at the studio thanks for being honest no problem thanks for having me haters try to stop me out they try to get the best of me little dude they know they just seasoned into the recipe spicy attitude got me sneezing while others blessing me high about the two got me scheming i ain't no rest in me pillowcase to the face these over the head money over sex i'm taking these overhead i don't want your weak apologies now i'm