Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: Well I was born in Cameroon, Africa and I moved to the USA when I was 8 years old. We moved to Salisbury, MD. Currently, I’m a Club Manager for the Boys & Girls Club in the same neighborhood I grew up in. As for music, I started making music in high school. I was extremely creative with my music but I noticed people around wasn’t “hip” to my music because I wasn’t just rapping about the streets even though I was a kid who grew up in the hood and hangout with a lot of street dudes. I wanted to step outside those boundaries with my music. So realizing this I kept making music in secret and private; I only made music mainly for me to listen too. I recorded with a family close friend of ours but we call each other cousins LOL. So for many years I did music secretly and wasn’t putting out for the public to hear. It wasn’t until December of 2022 when I made the conscious decision to start putting my music out publicly. The reason was because I went through years of just life hardships and I lost everything. When I only had “myself” that’s when I had a “life awakening” call that made me understand that I was wasting my talent and letting my purpose in life slip away. When I realized this I then stepped forth with my music to pursue my passion and live with a meaning.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “Noc Beteck”?
A: I plan on growing my fan base through social media and other marketing and promotion tactics. For example I create content by using a movie clip and just adding my music as a theme to the movie clip. I then post it on all my social media accounts for people to watch a scene from a movie and they get to hear my music. At times people will then go checkout my music and then contact me telling me that “they checked out my music and loved it.” This is one of my ways I grow my fan base and engage with them. Musically, my overall purpose is to send a message of morality and self-reflection. When people listen to my music I want them to grasp the feeling of bettering yourself and just wanting more out of life. Love yourself first and then spread that love unto others. The reason for this is because I understand that no one man/woman can change the world single handedly. But if each person were to make a change within themselves then the change in the world we would want to see can happen. That is my purpose and I’m using music as the driving force to spread that message. As the saying goes “One candle can light a thousand others.” For those getting ready to discover me I just want them to know I’m a very humble artist with a great attitude and a will to always grow and learn.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: This is a tough question because I listen to Finesse 2Tymes, Kevin Gates, and YG Teck a lot LOL. But if I had to choose I’ll say Finesse 2Tymes because I can relate to him in a lot of ways through music. Even though I don’t sound like him or even rap like him, his expression of using your voice and life experiences to flow on tracks inspires my music in some ways. My inspiration for making music just comes from life experiences and just looking at the outside world around me. I’ve been through a lot and I’m still experiencing life as a man growing in knowledge and wisdom. I look at the world around me and I see a lot of death, trauma, disaster, and destruction. But I also see hope, miracles, joy, and peacefulness. I realize each of us are masters of our own reality and we have the divine nature within us to take control of our “personal” world. So I’m simply just inspired by everything in this known and unknown universe. As I like to say “we live in the universe and the universe lives within us.” So just digging deep in consciousness in that aspect of life is where my inspiration comes from for music.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the song, “NOC (No Other Champion).”?
A: “NOC (No Other Champion)” defines who I am as a person. I’ve made many mistakes, I’ve had many failures and regrets, but still I continued to push through all the trials and tribulations to better myself and just want more out of life. This song talks about some of the mental issues I’ve faced but through understanding who I am is how I overcome those issues. This track is not just an inspiration for myself but to the people listening as well. The song inspires the listeners to let them know that they are “champion” of their own life story.
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: I would say my sound is ambient, simply because my music evokes conscious feelings. I want to touch the spirit of the audience and let my voice and lyrics resonate within their feelings and subconscious.
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “NOC (No Other Champion)”?
A: I didn’t face, I would say, tough challenges but I do remember when I first wrote the song and rehearsed it over a few times I shed some tears because it took me into a state where I just had flashbacks of a lot of the things I had been through from feeling as kid, feeling as an outcast, then growing up and just experiencing some of the dangers of life and surviving them. I saw how I felt as a kid impacted everything growing up as a teenager even up to now as a man. The song takes me back to everything in my life.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: As mentioned before, my purpose with music is to spread a message of morality and self-reflection. I want people to be impacted by my music in a positive way. My goal is to redefine the rapper image. I’m an artist coming into the music industry with street smarts and academics. I want to show that it’s cool to be educated and articulate as a rapper from the hood. I also want to be a Billboard top chart artist as well as creating my own record label and signing artists.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: Dead, I’ll say Tupac. Alive, I’ll say Drake.
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: Stay true to yourself and have a good meaning behind why you want to be involved in the music industry. Never follow the “trending” type of music, but rather be the trend and create something that will last for generations.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Live for yourself and not others. Listen to the inner you that wants better for you and don’t let your love for others distract you from that. There’s a divine conscious within you that seeks greatness, follow it and nothing else.
