Meet Res Lauren

Today we’d like to introduce you to Res Lauren.

Res, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
As far back as I can remember, I was someone who struggled to relate to the people who were expected to be my peers. It makes sense to me why I’m an artist. Art is how I engage with & disengage from the world. I was artistic from a young age, always singing to myself, writing poetry or drawing, but I didn’t grow up in what I would consider to be a very musical household. I was really drawn to sports because popularity and materialism didn’t matter. It only mattered whether or not you could perform, and I was really good. It was easy to choose sports over piano at 9 years old because I thought that my difficulty with reading music meant I would never be good at piano, even though I could play songs by ear with a lot of accuracies. But never voicing this fear, I quit piano and ended up playing softball into my first year of college. Very quickly though, my mental health started to take a dive due to the pressures of being a student-athlete at a really storied program. Plus, I was on an academic scholarship that I couldn’t afford to lose, so I left the team.

For the first two years of college, I studied chemistry, being under the notion that my parents had their sights on my studying to be something fancy like a doctor or a researcher. When I realized that this would eventually have me miserable and that my parents just wanted me to be happy, I changed my major to creative writing. I had always enjoyed writing poetry, and I supposed I could maybe pursue a career as a songwriter. Around this time, or shortly before, I stumbled on the first freestyle videos I had ever seen. I was alone in my bedroom over winter break watching Chance The Rapper and Childish Gambino spit freestyles, which I saw as just freeform poetry, and I remember thinking it was like nothing I had ever heard. Prior to this, I had only ever heard radio rap artists and big names. Seeing those videos not only sent me down the wormhole of discovering the hip-hop underground but what started me wondering if I could make poetry that way. I tried it aloud without a beat and started to do it with ease. I got so excited that I grabbed my computer and started typing the stream of consciousness as I spoke it, not stopping until I had filled like 2 or 3 pages of a Word document. It was the coolest thing to me. I couldn’t believe it.

Afterwards, I remember trying to put it to the instrumental for “Still Dre” just to see what I would sound like. It was definitely a mismatch, and I had no idea how to flow yet, but it wasn’t completely awful. To think that those moments were the beginning of the art form for me really blows my mind. I didn’t really have any close friends at the time, and those I did have didn’t really listen to hip-hop. I craved alone time and stayed writing raps any chance I could get… in class, at home, on commutes, even while at the bar trying to be social. I was always in my composition or in my notes pages constructing rhyme schemes, keeping cadence to a beat in my head. I knew one day I would take the leap and figure out how to actually flow, how to merge the music and the writing, but I was having too much fun doing it this way. A part of me didn’t want to ruin it, afraid of finding out that I was trash over music.

In the summer of 2015, I was in Chicago and met someone at a music festival who was really blown away by a verse I had spit for him. I remember he gave me one of the most mind-boggling comparisons I’ve received to date. That week, he went out of his way to make sure he got me in the studio before I left Chicago. It was very minimal, just a bedroom studio setup and a handheld mic in the Northwest part of the city, but it was everything to me. I gave the two producers there a reference and we built a beat from scratch around a melody one of them had laid on the piano. While they constructed it, I was playing around with different deliveries of the written I had written earlier that week. When the beat was done, I started what was supposed to be a test, but ended up being a 6-minute flow of multiple verses with a delivery that was very clearly unsure of itself but oddly on point. It remains one of my favorite compositions to date. We repeated the process and the exact same thing happened. My words over music felt so natural to me. Those 2 demos were the validation I had gone so long without feeling. Four years later, it’s 2019 and I’m a version of that artist I knew existed but didn’t yet know how to access. At the end of May, I put out my first project, Antifake (The Tape, The Letter), and I couldn’t be happier. So much so that on October 22nd, I’m releasing its next iteration, called Antifake (The Letter, The Memory). It’s wild to me how far I’ve come as an artist. I even sing now. I really think by developing better breath control with my rap delivery transformed my singing voice.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The road has definitely not been smooth; it’s a struggle to keep a firm grip on mental health. I’ve seen a tumultuous go of that because of my mood disorder, being hospitalized, being self-defeating… A close second to those are the frustrations with self, fixed identity vs. responsibility, and the constant internal questioning which I’ve heard is called “imposter syndrome,” which I believe is a product of my isolating habits. I get to this place of feeling like because I am a product of my own efforts, or because my approach feels so different, that I’m doing something wrong, or that it’s somehow “the wrong way.” I constantly have to coax myself off of that ledge, because I know that there’s no singular way. Expression is expression. I stepped away from music for almost a year because of internal questioning. But it ended up being so crucial for my growth, and transformative for the writing. I often remind myself of what my good friend Cofey once told me, and that’s what our art isn’t for us. As artists, we’re given these gifts and it’s so easy to think of them selfishly or get caught in the place of valuing the monetization of the art before the art itself, which poses a negative pressure and affects the work. Of course, we need to eat, and we ought to be in a place with our art where it’s pleasing to us and it’s not about someone else’s opinion, but to me being selfish with a gift is withholding what for someone might be transformative, for reasons that cater to the ego. James Baldwin spoke frequently about how it’s the artist’s responsibility to reveal darkness to those in darkness, and then to use his gifts to lighten it. But the part that I always revisit is the part where he says, “it does not matter what happens to you.” Obstacles, torment, etc.–it’s all relative. By activating our gifts, we sign up for it all. My thoughts center on all those that live in the darkness Baldwin speaks of, and even more specifically, on those who are affected by the actions and ideals of the ones oblivious to the darkness altogether. That’s a shade of anguish that I had to unpack before I could continue the pursuit of my art, and the burden of that is something I think true artists carry with them every day. But to whom much is given, much is required. It’s not for me.

Blessed By Association – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I am definitely most known for my music, even though I only recently released my first project. I had a few Soundcloud releases that I put out, but the bulk of what I was making in 2018, I never released. I was all about preserving my first impression as long as I could with a body of work because I was holding myself to the standard of the music I was listening to. I just didn’t really ever get to that feeling with the music I had created. It was good, but it felt more like stuff that I needed to get out of my system than it did stuff that I was excited to present to a potential listening audience. In the meantime, people came to know me through sporadic performances at Poetic Soul, a long-running Wednesday night open mic in the community. I would perform the few verses I had memorized, sometimes with the band, sometimes with music. I would occasionally perform at First Friday or random cyphers with artists in the community. Other than that, I would say I am always styling with my thrifted pieces and supporting events in the community as often as I can. While on break from making music and performing, I was collecting a lot of footage of the underground scene, which I aim to continue here and there.

What most people don’t know is what I’m most proud of, and that’s the way I’ve seen myself grow into a multi-faceted artist, who does more than just write and make music. Over the past year or so, I have been developing a business, which is an extension of my other talents. I am still in the developmental stages, but I am working on a business platform that makes available promotion, graphic-design and micro-publishing services through e-commerce. In addition to being a music artist, I am also a graphic design artist, specializing in digital collage. I also dabble in physical collage, which is a more tedious, traditional version of what I do in the digital medium, which naturally provides a lot more freedom. With the exception of the album cover for my first project, I have designed all the art for my releases, which includes various singles. I would like to create pdfs and chapbooks to be available showcasing my art, and create really cool lyric books available for purchase at a low cost, and extend this service to other creatives and music artists. I spend a lot of time on my lyrics, and it’s different to read them in your hand, like a book, with alternate content, then it is to view them online. With streaming, artists don’t need to put out CDs until they’re able and have a purchasing audience. So, these would be like the printout that comes with a CD but more like a poetry book.

In addition to my graphic design, I do a lot of drawing by hand. I am really inspired by what Tyler, The Creator has done with Golfwang, creating an external brand rather than artist name-branded merch. I remember when I first saw some of his T-shirt designs, it reminded me of the type of stuff that I would draw. I have been working on a lot of T-shirt concepts in pre-launch with my clothing brand, called “Nothing False” (Rien de Faux), which I’m aiming to launch in 2020 with merch for my “Antifake” albums. As time goes on, I’d like to build into other streetwear designs.

As a creative individual, I see my creativity bleed into everything I do. I think I bring a perspective to the music that I don’t really see, more so because of how I just don’t care about getting really emotional in one song and then rapping my brains out on the net. Or doing both within the same song. I had someone preview this project that’s coming out on the 22nd, who told me that people might be thrown off by the way I go straight from rapping to singing and back the way I do. I just figured I may as well, because I had developed both skills, so I don’t need to outsource for my hooks unless they’re out of my range. I know people aren’t used to hearing it that way, but I think they also aren’t used to hearing a woman who snaps that can also sing.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
To me, success is balance. The reason I like this definition is because not only is it adaptable to what’s going on in my life, it’s very easy to tell when it’s present and when it’s missing. Everybody’s picture of balance is going to look different, but it’s recognizable for every individual who is engaging with an understanding of his or her needs. My large scale scheme of balance is the integration of each of my art forms into business that I engage with, on a sustainable income that will allow me to pursue and achieve other goals that I have. This is a long term goal, but it’s something that daily balance and progress will build towards. For example, accomplishing goals like touring or designing a clothing line are goals that I have. Right now, in my life, I am out of balance because there are a lot of personal goals that I have not achieved measured against the weight of what I am currently engaged with. But with the balance model, I am not measuring those goals by their reception, just by my ability to pursue and accomplish them in a sustainable fashion. Obviously I don’t want to design a clothing line or go on a tour that people hate, but I would never allow myself to produce something that I hate. If you measure your success or your balance on money or the approval of others, you’re setting yourself up for a volatile existence that can dwindle. If balance wavers, it can always be regained.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://music.apple.com/us/album/antifake-the-tape-the-letter/1465456956
• Email: thereslauren@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/resdontdie/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/reslauren

Image Credit:
Personal Photo Photographer: India Love (@india33x)

Antifake (The Tape, The Letter) front cover (pink background featuring heart with dagger) by Tim Greene (@timanimalgreene)

All other art by Res Lauren

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