Music
Meet Skywalker Davinci
Skywalker DaVinci has many titles, Artist, Engineer, producer, foundational instrumentalist, just to name a few. Native of Columbus, Georgia, with sonic and visual arts as his insatiable passions, Davinci has incessantly used these tools throughout his life since the early ages of childhood, to survive the challenges South of the Mason-Dixon line. Fueled by love, and driven through pain, he engineered his obsession into a journey of lifelong learning.
Get to learn more on Davinci as he gets interviewed by V-Henny.
V-Henny: What inspired you to pursue music?
Skywalker Davinci: Music has always been a big part of who I am. From being a child listening to songs on the radio, to playing instruments and singing in church, I’ve always been surrounded by musical influences. I had family members I looked up to musically. My mama would blast RnB music some Saturday mornings and my siblings and I knew it was time to get up and clean up. While cleaning I would sing along. These were some of the best times of my life looking back on it. Instances like these are what helped fuel me into becoming the Artist I am today.
V-Henny: How would you describe yourself and your style of music in third person?
Skywalker Davinci: A multi talented artist, engineer, and producer. He is extremely dedicated to his craft. Working tirelessly to make his lifelong dream a reality, driven by the ups and downs of life, and the world around him, Skywalker DaVinci conveys his thoughts and emotions vividly through his music. From being openly transparent and unfiltered about his struggles with suicide, to his expression of gratitude to God, his family, and fans, for being there for him through it all. Skywalker Davinci not only creates music for survivors; people who’ve been through similar experiences or worse, but also for the people who want to just forget about their problems, if only for a moment, and dance; appreciate life; unwind and feel a blissful sense of happiness.
V-Henny: What qualities make you different and unique from everyone else in the industry?
Skywalker Davinci: I don’t have to pretend to be something or someone I’m not, and I think that’s a very underrated superpower. My story is what sets me apart. Even the words that come to me in my creative process are divinely given to me specifically, so that I can reach and touch exactly who I need to. But aside from the spiritual aspect, just me being able to produce my own music and not have to wait on anyone else to recreate my vision is extremely powerful for me. I get an idea in my head, like a melody, and I can instantly bring it to reality. Having the ability to record, mix and master songs, and create quality music through years of trial and error have shaped me into a top tier, self sufficient Artist.
V-Henny: Have you ever felt discouraged by the industry and if so how did you overcome the thought/feeling?
Skywalker Davinci: When you’ve been creating music for a long as I have there will definitely be times when you feel discouraged and want to give up. At times I felt stagnant and wasn’t getting the results I’d hoped and worked for. There was even a time earlier on in my career when I performed in a live showcase in Atlanta, GA and forgot every single word of the song due to recording it the night before, and also stage fright. I never wanted to perform again! But I knew I was destined for something greater, and knowing my purpose and passion is what kept me going.
V-Henny: In order to succeed in life you have to know how to give credit and give back . Who would you give credit to for your success thus far? Who would you give back to?
Skywalker Davinci: God is first and foremost. Without him I wouldn’t possess the mind, the gifts, and talents that I have. Secondly, my family. I’ve been tremendously blessed with a strong support system of people who believe in me, even at times when I didn’t believe in myself. And last but not least my fans, who also believe in me. The fact that they are willing to invest their time and energy into me as not only an artist, but a man, speaks volumes on their dedication and appreciation for who I am and what I represent. I will definitely be giving back to those who supported me through it all. No questions asked. No doubt about it.
V-Henny: What would you be doing right now, if it wasn’t for your music career?
Skywalker Davinci: Honestly I don’t know what I’d be doing. Once I officially started creating music it completely changed my outlook on life. I saw the people I was reaching with my voice and messages, and instantly knew that this is what I was put here to do. I never had a plan B.
V-Henny: Let’s talk about your album “The Dark Side”
How long did it take you to complete it?
Skywalker Davinci: It’s hard to really put a number on it, but In all it took roughly about 6 months. Reason being is because some songs on the album were years old but just had to be completed. Other songs were new. The Dark Side is just a mixture of different songs from different times that happened to tell a similar story so it all fit well together.
V-Henny: What are we expecting from this album?
Skywalker Davinci: The Dark Side has many different styles to suit a number
of different moods. It will make you dance, vibe out, happy, and hype, but it also has the power to take you to a place within yourself that will make you face certain traumas that were left unhealed. I guess you can say it will take you on an emotional roller coaster. With tracks like ‘Vibe Check’ that will make you want to dance and have a good time, but then ‘Better Days’, that will give you raw emotion and pain with hope that things will get better if you’re feeling down and out. This album is sure to speak to a vast and diverse community of people for sure.
V-Henny: What song would you say took you out of your comfort zone? Why?
Skywalker Davinci: Definitely ‘Better Days’ by far. I recorded this song back in 2018 while living in my car. At that time I was located in Atlanta, GA. I had just started driving for Lyft and was provided a rental car through the program they offered. My life had no absolute direction at that point and I was down to one of my lowest moments. But I always had faith that things would get better. Eventually they did. This song was like my escape from everything I was going through. It’s hard to listen to sometimes though because I can still feel every emotion from that time like it was just yesterday. It’s the most vulnerable track from the album for me.
V-Henny: What’s your creative process like?
Skywalker Davinci: My creative process is actually very abstract. Nothing concrete. I don’t have a set schedule to go by. No routine. I simply do what I feel. Some songs may take hours. Other songs may take years, in which I might come back to them purposely or stumble across them in pursuit of another song, and I’m pretty sure that in itself sounds abstract. I also find that being locked in a room for so long blocks my thoughts and creativity, so to combat that I like to go outside to give myself a sense of freedom and openness. It spaces my mind out and allows the creativity to flow again naturally.
V-Henny: What were some of the steps you had to take to get to where you’re at in your career?
Skywalker Davinci: Discipline and consistency are the two biggest factors for me right now. Had I had more of the two earlier on in my career I think I would be a lot further along on my journey. I also had to sacrifice time. There have been many sleepless nights but I was so locked in on becoming the greatest version of myself musically that I didn’t let anything deter me from achieving what I set out to do.
V-Henny: How long have you had this creative vision and what pushes you to be consistent ?
Skywalker Davinci: ‘The Dark Side’ was a vision that I had for many years. The concept came to me around 2018 while I was going through a deep depression in life and over the years I just cultivated the idea until it was the right time to finally present it to the world. The title represents the dark side of myself, the world and the people in it. We all have our flaws. Nobody’s perfect. It’s all about the dualities of life.
V-Henny: What do you want people to know about you on a personal level?
Skywalker Davinci: I want people to know that I care. Plain and simple. I know what it’s like to live in this beautiful, yet cruel world, and feel as if nobody truly cares. I’m an empath. It gets overwhelming at times but I can’t fight that part of who I am. I’m just learning to embrace it and protect myself from evil forces. I want to love and be loved. So I think part of my destiny was to help heal the world with my voice and music.
V-Henny: What’s next for you?
Skywalker Davinci: I have plans of touring, meet and greets with my fans and supporters, more live performances, and overall just elevating my craft to its highest potential. But ultimately, what’s next for me is whatever God has planned. I just want to keep creating the best music and content that I can and watch how it all unfolds. I stopped setting expectations and learned to go with the flow of life because things can change in the beat of a heart.
Make sure to check out Skywalker Davinci music and follow him on all social media platforms.
Website: https://
Twitter: https://twitter.com/
Music:
Crowns Heights lyrical thoroughbred Skanks The Rap Martyr and Queens producer TRE EIHT present their collaborative project ‘2 Sided Story.’ Out now, the album features Daddie Notch, Eloh Kush, Sughee, D. Goynz, Mommy Bars, Aïda, Makeba Mooncycle & Treble Queen. Hip Hop heads gear up for an addictive dose of raw NY Hip Hop and connect below.
Connect
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BankaiFamOfficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flowfessional
YouTube: (7822) Bankai Fam – YouTube
https://skankstherapmartyr.bandzoogle.com/2-sided-story-epk-for-radio-and-curators
April Fools’ jokes are meant to be a day when you pull a prank on your friend, but these two tech founders saw it as the perfect opportunity for a genius marketing stunt. The founders of Tapped Ai, Ilias Anwar and Johannes Naylor, had heard of each other in college but were working on separate sides of campus. Ilias was running a media company known as TCC Entertainment, organizing events for college kids and booking big celebrities for shows, while Johannes was running hackathons for software engineering students and working on a tech startup known as “In The Loop” – a Tik-Tok for producers. They eventually connected a couple of years after college when Johannes’ podcast co-host reached out to interview Ilias for his work with TCC Entertainment.
The two ended up clicking after the podcast and talked for a couple of hours. Despite hearing about each other throughout college, they didn’t officially meet until that podcast where they discussed more about how the music industry needed change desperately. Ilias saw many problems with the live booking industry, and Johannes knew there was a boom in the independent music scene. They had come up with a couple of ideas, and they decided to just stay connected. After he finished the call, he didn’t even think Johannes would want to work with him.
A few months later, Johannes called Ilias to express his interest in expanding on those ideas. Johannes had the option to keep working for Capital One but chose to join a startup. However, both had planned to move from their home states: Johannes to Barcelona and Ilias to Los Angeles. Despite the distance, they decided to work together even though they both knew they were leaving for opposite sides of the world in a couple of weeks.
During this time, they explored different ideas for their startup, initially focusing on a badge verification platform for events and then shifting to a LinkedIn-style platform for the music industry before settling on an Ai record label concept. This ended up going really well for them as they started seeing over hundreds of thousands of views online and had multiple publications write stories about them. However, they realized that their tools wouldn’t scale in time and that ChatGPT could basically do the same thing that their Ai record label tools could do. They kept pushing regardless and tried to stay optimistic. They knew they couldn’t beat ChatGPT, but for right now they had a lot of buzz, and they were solving problems for independent artists, and had paying customers. In the back of their minds, they knew the day was coming when they would have to make a massive change.
Regardless, this caught the attention of the Antler program. The Antler “Residency” helps entrepreneurs find co-founders and teams to help develop their business idea and invests in early startups. Keep in mind, Antler has more than 50,000 annual applicants, less than 5% are accepted to join their residencies. This was a big deal for the duo, and they knew they had to go. They wanted to make the move to the NYC residency program, but the only opening they had was for Austin, Texas. After leaving their jobs and coming from across the world, they threw out their plans of moving to NYC and pulled the trigger to move to Austin, Texas full time. They made this decision out of nowhere and it seemed a little too impulsive, but Johannes and Ilias knew that this was the right move.
So they went and moved to Austin, Texas to get accustomed to their new life for the next couple of months. Where they would go into the Antler office every day and were the last to leave the office every single day. Not because they were hustlers, but because the hotel they stayed at had terrible wifi, so they couldn’t even use their laptop or phones properly. So they would be at the office until midnight every day. Which they even admitted was ten times better than their living conditions at the hotel. Nonetheless, this kept them busy and they kept thinking of how to iterate.
Realizing they couldn’t compete with ChatGPT, they contemplated throughout the whole program and spoke with multiple mentors. They even went to New York Tech Week to speak at an Ai Furnace event where they spoke in front of 300+ investors and engineers. To which they then got approached by multiple VC’s, angel investors, and even a director to potentially film a documentary on the two. This made them realize, it was not only their product that was exciting but that people were initially sold on them. So, even if they were scared to experiment and shift the focus a little bit people would still believe in whatever direction they take. They also decided not to take any funding until they were fully sold on their idea.
They didn’t change anything until the last week of the program when they spoke with Tyler Norwood, a VC from the Antler program who they took a liking to. “Tyler is someone who leads with passion and his authenticity. He seemed genuine, and I don’t usually see that from the tech world. Everyone wears suits and talks about all their accolades. But, Tyler just pulls up with a vest and talks to you like a friend. Tyler is one of those guys that you can trust; he sees PEOPLE not users.” Is what Ilias had to say about Tyler after his time at the Antler program. Him and Johannes really looked up to him, and this was the final nail in the coffin for them to make the pivot as he also told them to focus on live music. Despite having hundreds of users and paid subscribers, they decided to shift away from being an Ai record label. They worked privately for a few months after the program before launching a matchmaking service for performers and venues, which later evolved into a live music data analytics company.
With April Fool’s coming up, Ilias knew he had a chance to capitalize on a great marketing campaign. To which they could finally leave the Ai record label in the past and focus on the new direction which is “create a world tour from your iPhone” as a live music data analytics company. Ilias brainstormed the idea of announcing the sale of their company as an April Fools’ joke, knowing it would generate buzz.
This is because there are two things that are talked about the most when it comes to tech founders’ journeys – if your company shuts down and fails, and if you sell your company. So Ilias decided to combine the two by getting an article written to pretend that they had just done that. Which was a play on headline culture because most people don’t even read full articles. Ilias did want to be honest about it so they got the article written and he made sure to put at the end of the article that it was just a joke. He wanted to be truthful, but if people wanted to be lazy and think otherwise he wasn’t going to stop them. All that preparation seemed like it was for no reason because Ilias ended up deciding that he was going to scrap the whole campaign and throw it out. He was scared it would get backlash or maybe even come off as unprofessional.
Despite initial hesitation, Ilias called Johannes and they both decided to do it. Ilias was sitting in a Panera Bread, and Johannes was telling him to just press enter. Which he did and the next 24 hours their phones were blowing up constantly. The joke garnered significant attention, leading to over 300 people reaching out, including investors and friends they hadn’t talked to in years. This unexpected success had them rekindling with people who then got them connected to other people they thought could help the two.
After a day, they decided to start telling people that it was a joke, but even the people who fell for the joke commended them. In a day where people get lost in the void of the internet, they were able to cut through and make noise, which had people talking about them again. This then led to speaking engagements at the #1 University in the state of Virginia. Alongside, also bringing attention towards their first-ever music tech mixer “Tapped Mixer,” which then sold out not once, not twice, but four times in a row. Not to mention also getting featured on the front page of Lu.ma, an event ticketing platform. They were able to bring multiple industry heavy-hitters to their event, including Alisha Outridge (former CTO of TuneCore), and execs from major labels and other affiliates of celebrity artists.
“Tapped Mixer” Founder Panel – Future of Ai, Exploiting artists, and Investors
They couldn’t even fully decompress from the weekend because a couple of days later they were headed over to the University of Virginia. Anwar and Naylor were invited to speak at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. They shared their journey with postgraduate students, providing valuable insights into entrepreneurship and innovation in the digital age. Their visit to UVA also included participating in a postgraduate entrepreneurship class, which enriched their understanding of current academic approaches to business challenges.
Ilias Anwar and Johannes Naylor speak at UVA Business discussing Tapped Ai
Fresh off the chaotic week they had with Tapped Mixer in NYC and speaking at the business hall in UVA. Tapped AI announced a partnership with NY Tech Week and venture firm a16z to host a summer soiree, an event which will be going on June 3rd at Tailor Public House with AI Furnace, the largest AI community in NYC. This event aims to bring together investors and startup founders, further establishing Tapped AI’s presence in the tech and music landscapes.
Right after this announcement, they got a call from a close friend of Ilias’ known as Adonis. Who got them connected to an executive from Warner Records, who asked the two to come back to NYC about investing in Tapped Ai.
From a simple April Fool’s joke, Ilias and Johannes have been able to take a simple marketing gimmick to the biggest building in the music industry – Warner Records.
And it cost them absolutely nothing.
Richpockets announces the release of his new single “HipHop Made” featuring Hip Hop vet Ras Kass. The record serves as a tribute to the essence of Hip Hop. Listeners will grip onto a supreme blend of raw lyricism and infectious rhymes. Richpockets’ arrangements set the stage for Ras Kass to deliver an emotive performance fueled by his signature razor-sharp wit. The record exudes themes of resilience, authenticity, and the power to keep Hip Hop in the forefront of music. Stream “HipHop Made” and connect below.
HipHop Made on preferred platforms – https://songwhip.com/richpockets/hiphop-made
FOLLOW @RICHPOCKETS
www.drugmusicink.com
*
-
Indie2 weeks agoWynn Trip 2 Daygo ft. B-Rell (Official Video)
-
Videos2 weeks ago@itsLebraJolie Will Make You Say “Yeah” Feat. @BiaBia (Prod. @PierreBourne)
-
Music2 weeks agoJosvani Releases New Single “Low Lights” Ahead Of Tour
-
Artist2 weeks agoPoiison Enlists Styles P For Street Love Visual “Big Boys”
-
Music1 week agoGlobal Pro Ent Drops “777”: A Mixtape Channeling the Soul of the Streets
-
Audio6 days agoCincinnati native Big Lotion drops his new single “Green A Go”
-
Interview6 days agoBehind the Music: Creating KOKOmotion
-
Featured Video3 weeks agoSugarhill Ddot Is On The Narrow Road “Tweakin”