Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Over the next year and a half, Tyler and I still talked every day whether it was via phone call, facetime, texting, or us emailing ideas riffing off one another. Somehow, someway, in the midst of him working on his album, he has helped me bring mine to life. It was amazing! I made most of the beats on my own with some assistance from him with instrumentals. He even had Frank hook me up with some connections to have features on some songs as well. Everything was going smoothly.
My song "Something Special" on SoundCloud ended up gaining a TON of traction which ended up in me receiving more followers on ALL my social media handles, and phone calls and emails out the ass. Labels were trying to get me to sign with them, Artists asking me to get on a track with them, do a track for them, write for them. It was overwhelming, to say the least. The only thing I wanted to do was talk to Tyler and vent it out. Artist to Artist, Mentee to Mentor, Bestie to Bestie.
Akeylah: (yelling into her Mac camera) I'm not sure how to handle this dawg. It's all so new to me and scary as shit!
My eyes were currently being met with a shirtless Tyler, stretched across his bed on his back while holding his phone up to his face
It was 7 am here on the east coast while it was 4 am where Tyler was on the west coast. (I sucked at remembering the time differences). I've done this so many times that he's just used to it now. Not happy about it by a long shot, but used to it.
Tyler: (mumbles still half-sleep) Well for starters nigga, tone it down. It's way too early for you to be yelling on EITHER coast. Secondly, take a deep breath and bask in the attention for a while until your nerves come down and decide what you want to do from there.
Akeylah: (nods) Do you have any advice about the labels situation? How should I approach them?
I asked looking at my hands only to hear snoring on the other end. I sighed then looked at the camera to see nothing but pitch black. He had fallen back asleep and the phone dropped out of his hand.
Akeylah: (whispers) He'll call back later.
I ended the facetime call. As the day progressed, I took some time to think about what I wanted for my career.
I heard tons of things about record labels and receiving the correct amount of earnings has been one of them. Most of the artists that I grew up listening to had money issues with their label and I was sure that I didn't want that same thing happening to me. I decided to stay independent and release music on my terms and conditions. That way, I know where the money flow is going at ALL times.
Then I began to look through the many emails from different artists that wanted to work with me carefully. Overall, I ended up replying to only three of the hundreds of emails. One collab, one producing, and one writing. I AM only one person so I can't do too many things at once and luckily none of the due dates were anywhere close to one another so I had time to solely focus on one task at a time.
