The DJ Sessions Virtual Sessions welcomes New York-based artist Meecah for an inspiring conversation about her multi-dimensional career and creative vision. Known for her soulful voice and commanding stage presence, Meecah describes her music as a “soulful wellness hug,” blending elements of R&B, gospel, and pop while embracing dance, theatrical, and global influences. From her Broadway experience in Hamilton to her rising solo career, Meecah shares how music has always been an innate passion and a form of self-expression that flows naturally alongside her stage work.
Her latest release, “Answers,” reflects both personal obstacles and triumphs, offering two versions that embody the emotional and celebratory sides of her journey. She opens up about working with acclaimed choreographer Jamal Douglas to bring visual storytelling to her music, while also exploring the balance between wellness, fitness, and creativity. With roots in a deeply musical family and inspired by legends like Whitney Houston, Meecah highlights her desire to break industry molds by moving fluidly between genres, from R&B to rock, country, Afrobeats, and beyond.
Throughout the session, she discusses the challenges of building an authentic audience in a social media-driven era, her commitment to organic growth, and the role her fans play in keeping her motivated. Reflecting on sold-out performances, viral social moments, and her evolving artistry, Meecah emphasizes her mission to inspire and connect with people worldwide. This episode showcases an artist dedicated to her craft, passionate about her community, and determined to create timeless music that resonates across boundaries.
Show Notes – The DJ Sessions: Virtual Sessions with Meecah
Host: Darran Bruce Guest: Meecah Location: Virtual Studios, Seattle WA & New York, NY Series: The DJ Sessions - Virtual Sessions Length: Full Episode
Overview: Darran Bruce speaks with vocalist, songwriter, and Broadway performer Meecah about her music career, inspirations, creative process, and the balance between art, wellness, and personal growth.
Topics Covered:
- Defining her music as a “soulful wellness hug”
- Broadway experience with Hamilton and transition to solo artistry
- The story behind her latest release “Answers” and its two versions
- Collaboration with choreographer Jamal Douglas on visual storytelling
- Inspirations from Whitney Houston, Paramore, and Blake Shelton
- Breaking genre boundaries by moving between R&B, rock, Afrobeats, and country
- Personal wellness journey: vegan lifestyle, fitness, and balance
- Reflections on sold-out shows versus navigating digital streaming numbers
- Building authentic connections with fans in a social media-driven industry
- Aspirations for future projects in film, television, and cross-genre collaborations
Call to Action: Follow Meecah on Instagram @meecah and stream her music on all major platforms. Discover more exclusive interviews and live sessions at thedjsessions.com.
About Meecah -
Meecah is a quintessential New York City powerhouse: a vocalist, songwriter, and performer whose dynamic stage presence and soul-stirring voice leave an indelible mark on every audience.
While she’s captivated countless fans in leading roles for acclaimed musical theater productions like the Tony Award-winning Hamilton, The Harder They Come, and The Wiz Revival Workshop (earning her an Audelco Award nomination in 2023), her artistry extends far beyond the stage.
Meecah has graced iconic venues including Radio City Music Hall, Barclays Center, and 54 Below, solidifying her reputation as a must-see live performer. A testament to her burgeoning impact, she achieved a significant career milestone in November 2024 by selling out her debut headline show at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. With over 140,000 streams and a loyal online community exceeding 15,000 followers, Meecah is a rapidly rising star in the music industry.
A proud South Florida native, Meecah's sound is an unmistakable blend of soulful R&B infused with vibrant '80s pop influences, drawing comparisons to legends like Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, and Bruno Mars.
This unique sonic tapestry will be fully unveiled in 2025 with the release of her highly anticipated debut EP, For Your Love. This six-track project promises a modern take on timeless music, featuring powerful ballads, infectious pop hooks, and lush R&B me
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions.
I'm your host, Darran, and right now I'm sitting in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington, and coming in all the way from New York City, we have Meecah on the other end of the line today.
How you doing, Meecah?
I'm great, how are you, Darran?
I'm doing awesome, had a little bit of pre-show warmup, pre-show notes, so glad to have you on the show.
(00:30):
I know people like to be on Showtime, and I used to take a little bit of a laissez-faire approach to it, but you know what, I need to get on my stage manager, I need a stage manager to get over here and be like, Darran, you're supposed to go live, right now, five, four, three, two, one.
And all that buzz up, but thank you, yeah, thank you so much for being here today.
Feel excited, you got a lot going on right now, a lot to your resume, your bio, and everything going on out there.
(00:53):
You know, I wanna start off by introducing, you know, a lot of times we have DJs and producers on the show, you're an artist, you're a musical vocalist, and all that fun stuff, but, and we're gonna get into some of this stuff, because I'm excited, because I still, you'll see why I'm excited about it, because some of your work I haven't seen, I'd love to see it sometime.
But, you know, let's start out with, if you could describe your music in three words, what would you call it?
(01:17):
A soulful wellness hug.
A soulful wellness?
Hug.
Hug?
That's awesome, I'm gonna shut my window over here.
Yeah.
There we go, no city noises coming in.
Yeah.
Soulful wellness hug, awesome.
You know, I'm excited to get in depth with more of your music and everything here.
(01:39):
And you just had something recently released, Answers.
And it's both, there's a dance and inspirational version.
Versions, can you tell us a little bit, our viewers and I, a little bit more about that?
Yeah, it was inspired really by an obstacle that I had in my life, and it was overcome, and it was an answered prayer.
(02:02):
That's why we got the name Answers.
And the obstacle had two versions to it.
It was a time to feel sentimental, and there was also a time to dance.
And once you get through it, you move to it.
So that's really why I wanted two separate mixes, yeah.
And now, do you work with, when you make, is it a dance track, or is it supposed to be, have like a choreographed act that goes with it?
(02:29):
We are working on the choreographic element to it, sorry.
No, that's all good.
The choreographic element to it, we are for sure.
But really, it's just a dance mix.
You know how you have like a 90s dance mix to Whitney Houston or Deborah Cox's songs, very similar to that.
Okay, awesome.
Do you do your own choreographing, or do you work with a choreographer or anyone?
(02:52):
Yeah, my choreographer, oh my God.
Choreographer, I know, me too, don't worry.
My choreographer is Jamal Douglas.
He's an exceptional dancer.
I met him actually in college.
He's gone to do Broadway.
He's done a film in television.
He does music videos.
He's very, very, very talented.
And I've had the pleasure of working with him already on a production that we did in college.
(03:14):
But it was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship.
And he's an incredibly hard worker, and I'm so excited to release this project with him.
Where'd you go to school at?
Pace University in New York City.
Pace University.
Pace University, awesome.
You know, we'll be visiting, hopefully I'll be visiting out there.
Just got an offer to be out there in September.
(03:36):
Was planning to be out there in October, but I definitely loved going to New York.
Only been there once.
I should have been there more often growing up.
But, you know, loving being in Manhattan and being around the city and the magic and everything that happens there is just phenomenal.
Yeah, I'll tell you what, like on tour, I was away from the city for two years plus the pandemic.
(03:58):
So I thought, oh, I'm going to go on tour.
The city's going to change.
I'm not going to know it anymore.
I got right back and it was just the same way as it was when I left it.
I think, you know, one time, okay, but like when you come back, you're going to feel similarities and you're also going to see new things.
Building is, the word building is very befitting for the city of New York because we are always building something.
(04:23):
Yeah, you know, we just had in Seattle a few years back, we had the most cranes on the West Coast in Seattle for a few years here in Seattle with it just booming.
I mean, I grew up here my whole life and watching the city skyline transform, you know, it's just interesting.
Occupancy, that's a different story.
(04:44):
But buildings being built really, I mean, just neighborhoods you used to go to and you're like, where's this at?
Where's this at?
Where's this at?
It's crazy.
But yeah, I've always, I never knew, never really had a conceptual inkling in my mind except for what I see and you see in TV and film just how big it is there.
(05:07):
You know, I think the biggest one for me was going to Central Park and realizing that Central Park is two and a half miles long and a half a mile wide.
Yeah.
It doesn't look like that in pictures.
No.
Video on TV.
And home alone.
Yeah.
And so, you know, I realized that that's like from what you would call our downtown area, from our space, you know, our main attraction to our stadiums almost, even a little bit longer, but from the waterfront to Fifth Avenue, to our Fifth Avenue.
(05:36):
And if you think that's just the park, like, I know there's a bunch of stuff in the park, but like that, and that's just the park and the island.
Yes.
Yes, I'll go outside of the screen because we've got to do a big in New York, right?
You know, I was like, holy crap, I did not get that.
(05:57):
But yeah, very awesome city.
I, you know, realized that in Seattle can have a little bit of, it takes time.
I used to say it comes into New York, then it's Miami, then Chicago, then LA kind of thing.
And then comes the rest of the world goes, or nation goes, you know, is how it kind of filters in.
So very, very awesome, vibrant city.
(06:17):
You know, it's funny, I'm going to jump ahead to one question I had almost the last question.
I like it when I get to jump around and the guests don't know what I'm going to ask.
So, you know, after weeks or months of heavy touring, what do you like to do to relax and enjoy life?
When I got off of tour, I immediately booked a show called The 100 Day Club.
(06:37):
And then right after that show ended, I booked another show called The Wiz.
And it wasn't until after The Wiz, so now we're talking about two to three years after I came home from Hamilton, that I got a break.
And that was just the beginning of this year.
So I think I'm still learning.
I think I'm trying to figure out new hobbies.
Obviously, you know, I do pick up projects every now and then, but really now it's about pouring into what I want to do.
(07:05):
It's about my music.
It's about fitness.
I'm really passionate about that as well.
And cooking, I love to cook.
I'm a vegan.
Always trying to find the mix between soul food and healthy.
Is that an oxymoron?
Is that- I know.
(07:26):
I'm constantly fighting my family, trying to convince them that just because I put the word vegan in front of it does not mean it's not edible.
We have to.
We gotta try.
You know, I'm a foodie myself.
I like, I prep food all the time, make food all the time.
And I'm not vegan, but- Yeah.
(07:49):
Yeah.
I am getting up there in age, so I gotta kind of watch what I put in my belly.
Of course.
Not a lot of hamburgers and then, you know, pop-tarts.
Not that I eat pop-tarts, but you know.
Sometimes they're good, but I have a little bit of a sweet tooth.
So, you know, gotta watch out for that, but- Same, I love sugar.
Yeah, that's- But we just shift to natural sugar and not gluten.
(08:09):
There you go.
I need more like sweet tarts and Jolly Ranchers.
Yeah.
Chocolate.
But no, go back up to the music though.
You also just had a debut EP come out, For Your Love, and you're working on new music.
I guess, you talk about your touring and your shows.
Where do you find time to make all this music?
(08:30):
Is it, can you do that while on the road?
Is it now with technology is accessible or you got a break and then you're like, oh, I gotta rush to the studio.
Okay, now I'm on tour.
Can you manage both of those at the same time?
Is that easily to juggle?
Easy to juggle?
I think because one, there are two different types of passions, but Broadway, musical theater, that was a passion I later developed.
(08:50):
But music is something that is innately inside of me.
And so just as much as I have to breathe air, I have to create.
And it's not something that I have to juggle.
It's just something that I do.
And so when I was actually on tour with Hamilton, I was the standby.
So I wasn't on stage every single night.
I did a tour within the tour.
(09:11):
So every city that we stopped in, I did something called the coffee house tour, where we jokingly call it a coffee house because I thought that I couldn't fill a room bigger than a coffee house.
So we would just rent out coffee houses and have people come and it would be great.
But after a while, after the second or third one, we started getting people out of the lines, like droves outside.
(09:33):
And we had to like kind of elevate to bigger spaces because not only were my castmates coming, but people from the city that we were in were coming to see the coffee house tour.
And so that was something that was apparent to me in that moment that I can't stop what I'm doing because obviously there's a niche and a need for it, but also it just makes me so happy.
(09:53):
So I don't feel that it's laborious.
I feel like it's just something I do.
That's always, it's that balance between what they say is, find something you love doing and find a way to make money at it.
And then it doesn't work.
Right.
Yeah.
Unfortunately running a multinational international live streaming show is a lot of work.
(10:15):
And the thing is though, I love that.
That's why I got into the industry that I'm in.
I love the back end work.
I like being the executive producer.
I was never supposed to be the host of the show, but as you know, in the same, in the show business, the show must go on.
And if I don't have talent or I don't have somebody to do interviews, I'm not gonna sit around going, well, wait till I have an actor or actress or host.
No, I got to do this thing.
(10:36):
And thousands of interviews later, hey, here I am, I'm having fun.
So, next coming up though for you after For Your Love, the EP, you have Raising Cane, can I?
So For Your Love is actually, Answers is a song off of that EP.
It's not yet released.
(10:57):
It's going to come and we are so excited about it because it's a collection of songs that I have spent the last two years writing and pouring my heart into.
And it is my sound and I'm very passionate about that.
And so I am on Raising Cane.
My episode premiered in April and then I have another episode coming out in this last season.
(11:18):
Oh, it was on the show Raising Cane.
Yes.
Okay, I got you.
I don't watch.
Okay, I have my selection.
I'm a sci-fi guy.
It's okay, no worries.
Awesome.
No worries.
Yeah, we're excited about it.
It's good news.
Do you come from a musical family?
It sounds like you come from a family of chefs who like to make soul food.
(11:39):
I come from both, I come from both.
My dad, he used to be a studio musician with the Commodores and he was very tightly knit with Lama Ritchie and most of the Commodores because they all shared space in Tuskegee.
They went to college there and they all come from that backwoods Alabama church sound that infuses church with like R&B.
(12:04):
So it's very heavily my inspiration.
And you hear that a lot in my music.
And my grandmother and my aunts and most of my family members are singers, whether they were famous in their day or just big in our church.
And I grew up singing, being their predecessor or sorry, their successor because we would have five or six services a day and they wouldn't wanna sing.
(12:29):
So it'd be my turn.
In terms of chefs, yes, my mom did own a bakery and she taught me a lot.
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
Yeah, like I said earlier, I'm a foodie.
I'm a foodie at heart.
My favorite thing is the all you can eat buffet where you can just get a bit of everything.
Golden corrals.
(12:49):
Yeah.
We have this one place my friend took me to the other day.
I was thoroughly amazed with it.
45 bucks a person, all you can eat.
On Saturdays they do all you can eat snow crab and I think dungeons.
And yeah, I know, right?
And then on Sundays they do all you can eat lobster tails.
45 bucks.
I was like, and they got everything you'd ever want.
(13:10):
I've never seen a buffet like this.
It's like, you would think, oh, it's a Chinese buffet.
No, they have seafood.
They have the Mongolian grill.
They have salad bar.
They have all the fried foods, fish.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's huge.
My dad used to work.
Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.
My dad used to work.
(13:31):
I'm from West Palm Beach, Florida.
So if anybody's from West Palm Beach listening, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Palm Beach Lake Boulevard.
It is by origin an Asian store.
You do have like the Asian food, but they do branch out.
They have the Dungeness crabs.
They have the snow crab legs.
They have the desserts, any kind of dessert you want.
They have like Asian desserts.
(13:51):
They have traditional American desserts.
And you, I think when I was going, it was like $15 a person.
It's so freaking good.
I didn't say it before, unfortunately, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's good for the soul.
Yeah, I like that.
(14:12):
That foodie in me follows through in a lot of things that I do, whether it's a show and we have like, with my first broadcast television show, it was one show.
Then I had three shows.
Then that turned into eight separate shows that got approved on 13 stations on the West Coast.
And then I went into broadcasting shows and live streaming.
And under my live stream umbrella, under the DJ sessions, I have like eight other shows that I do with different topics and everything.
(14:38):
This being one of them, the virtual sessions.
And it's like, I want to give people a little bit of everything on their plate.
If you want to hear music, great.
If you want to hear music, that's great.
We'll be talking about music later on too, because maybe we'll get some of your music on our site too.
That's great.
Here's a question for you.
Where's the weirdest moment you've ever heard one of your own tracks, one of your own songs play?
(15:01):
My sister is a part of a sorority called Alpha Kappa Alpha.
And it's a really big thing, especially in the black community.
It's like a big, big thing.
And she did what they call a crossing.
And so they had a crossing celebration.
And I was there and it was in the middle of the pandemic.
I had not released anything, but this one song called Melanated.
(15:23):
And I released it in like 2018.
The pandemic is 2020, 21.
I was there just like supporting my sister.
Me and my other sister, we were making cupcakes.
I was like the Betty Crocker, very not Meecah, just like the sister.
And then also on the DJ, I hear my song, da, da, da, da, melanated atmosphere.
(15:46):
And I'm like, what the heck?
My sister comes all the way across the line, like just, you're on the radio, you're playing the thing.
Breaking all type of tradition, like hundreds of years at this point, breaking tradition, just breaking the line.
It comes out and he's like, you're on the radio, oh my gosh.
So that was the weirdest place I've ever heard so far.
(16:08):
That's great.
That's a good one.
That's a really good one.
I mean, I hope she didn't get in trouble for it or punished.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, okay, cool.
Probably just.
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
You mentioned coming from a musical family and having your inspiration be your father, your mother and another artist, but who has really been your personal biggest influence when it comes to your career as an artist?
(16:34):
And this could be as a performing artist, a musical artist, and why?
I'm really inspired by Whitney Houston.
I love her.
I love every element about her.
We are very similar in that we grew up in the church and now we sing or sing in the R&B world, but it's never left.
(16:56):
You can always feel that essence, even though you're not singing a gospel song per se.
I also really love the fact that she had a movie career, a cinema career.
That is something I'm very passionate about.
I like sci-fi, and I would want to lean more romantic comedy slash sci-fi, your Avatar, your Star Trek, things like that nature.
(17:17):
But the fact that we do have that trajectory is something that I also very much so admire.
She broke a lot of barriers and that's something that I want to do, but mostly I just love how connected she was to her upbringing.
We all have things in our childhoods that we always want to forget, but we do also have things that are the microbiome of who we are emotionally.
(17:42):
And for Whitney Houston, when I look at her, I still see the intricacies and I want that to be my legacy as well.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, we'll get into a little bit about that, about going from stage to screen or artist to screen and how that transition is going for you in a minute here.
But yeah, it's definitely having, I guess is the term portfolio or background, resume?
(18:11):
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, a lot of artists don't make that jump from being a musical talent to screen, to screen, to movies, to acting and stuff.
And the ones that do, I don't,
I've never researched this
and being in the industry for 35 years,
I should know how this part of it works,
but when that artist,
(18:31):
I usually see like you have a television show person
and they jump to movies,
they usually don't go back to doing television again
or an artist that's performing,
they go to movies and then you see nothing really come
of them in the music world that much
or there isn't a lot of fanfare there.
Sometimes it goes backwards.
I've noticed that happened with a few artists.
(18:53):
It always reminds me of the movie Ocean's 12 when Brad Pitt's character is talking to the kid that played in that 70s show.
And he's like, in the beginning, he's teaching him poker in one of the first scenes in Ocean's 11.
And then he's talking about moving from, in the background, you listen to the background, he goes, oh, you went from TV to films.
I think he was like starting to star in movies.
(19:14):
He played in a film, movies, but what do you see this Topher Grace?
What do you see him in now?
Yeah.
He's not getting any TV calls, all this stuff.
And then the second one he shows, he has this like kind of breakdown, plays himself and has this break.
It's kind of interesting, but moving from stage to screen or artists to screen is a very bold jump, and you have a very awesome influencer there in your mind or in your soul that's pushing you through.
(19:40):
That's always good to have.
Yeah.
Outside of, who's your favorite artist outside of your specific genre?
Do you listen to other, I'm sure you listen to a lot of varieties of music.
100%.
But you have Whitney Houston, you have this Commodores back, and your father, your mother, but I can see that in a genre, the gospel, R&B, soul music, but is there anyone outside of that genre that really stands out to you and it could be an inspiration to you or did something that really surprised you?
(20:14):
Yeah, I love Paramore.
I'm really into American Idiot and Green Day.
I'm like a low-key rocker.
I love country.
It's like my guilty pleasure.
I can't really say that out loud, but here we are.
I love country music.
I'm a big Blake Shelton fan.
I love Chris Young, but country is, for me, it's just gospel with a twang, the same stories, just different people singing them.
(20:44):
So they have different meaning, but I really love country music as well.
I'm getting into, with this track, I'm getting into dance.
I really like Afrobeats.
I'm really a world listener, as long as it's a great trajectory, a beginning, middle, and end, a sonic delivery.
I love that.
(21:05):
I'm probably never gonna get into screamo, but other than that, I feel like I'll give most songs a chance.
You know, it's funny you mentioned country in there because every Sunday when we had to clean the house, growing up, my dad either put on country music or classical music.
And I have, you know, I got some tracks in my truck.
(21:25):
We got our mobile studio.
We drive around to Big Boom.
We call it the Boom Box.
It fit in really well in Manhattan.
Out here in Seattle, people sometimes go, turn that down.
I'll go, you live in the city.
You can hear us from like, not four Manhattan, New York blocks away, but four Seattle blocks away, which would be awesome if you could hear us from four New York blocks away.
(21:46):
Hey, that's something to aspire to.
But no, I mean, sometimes in my playlist, I'll drop some country tracks on there.
What I call the funnier ones, not the break your heart.
My heart's breaking.
Some of the better tracks, but yeah.
Listen to like, me personally, I was in that Garth Brooks, 90s Garth Brooks, you know, Eddie Chestnut type era.
(22:07):
Not so much now, but really cool stuff that, you know, I think it's in music or in the entertainment industry, it's definitely good to have, going back to my foodie thing, a good palette of diverse inspirations.
You might, oh, oh, that hit, you know, dang, you know, and that collaborations as well, or crossovers with other artists as well and producing stuff, you know, instead of just pigeonholing into one genre and being known for that one genre.
(22:33):
There's a lot of artists that then have to almost go out and create aliases.
I know a lot of producers that have to do that because they're like, oh, I produce dance here and house music, but I really want to dabble in drum and bass, but it's going to alienate my fans, so I have to go another alias and make drum and bass underneath that alias.
Yeah.
I think that that's such a box and I pray that I get to be a person that breaks out of that.
(22:59):
I say I get to be because this is a business, right?
Like you have to have investors.
The investors have to believe in the dream and the dream has to make sense, right?
Like you can't just say, I'm an artist and I can take everything.
The reality is, I am trained to sing classical arias.
I speak three different languages.
Like I can sing and put on a great show in any genre and I have full confidence about that.
(23:23):
If you buy a ticket to any show that I put on in that genre, you are going to be satisfied.
I call myself an R&B artist because that's what the world wants to call me right now, but I do want to break out of that box and I do want to have a rock album or a Latin collab.
Like these are things that make sense to me in my world and also make money.
(23:46):
But going back to like what you said about an artist, you know, when they go to the movies, like they don't really necessarily go back.
I do feel like Whitney Houston, for example, did make that great leap, right?
She did the bodyguard and that sent her music career into the stratosphere.
So I'm hoping that like I do have those opportunities as well.
(24:07):
You know, you mentioned one thing there that is always, it's been an ongoing, not an ongoing topic anymore because my person that I started working with early on in the industry that is on a hip hop public access television show.
And then later on broke away from that and did my own broadcast television shows is he came to me one day and he said, I told him, hey, you know, I'm doing all this.
(24:30):
I want sponsorships for my show.
I need money to continue my productions, to run a company.
And he came to me one day, he said, Jared, when did it stop becoming fun for you?
Stopped becoming fun and you started wanting to go after the money.
And I looked at him and said, oh no, I think that the line came up as well.
How do you define success?
And I said, oh, when I have the Learjet, my offices, a staff of people that I can travel around the world and you know, maybe three or four places, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, the black American express card, whatever.
(24:57):
And he came to me and he looks at me and he didn't really get it.
He goes, when did it all become about money and not about having fun?
And I went, what do you mean?
That would be having fun because I'm running a successful multimillion dollar international company that tours around doing everything.
And it's a media conglomerate and it takes money to hire the right people to do that.
It's not about me getting a paycheck at the end of the day.
It's about me being able to elevate and have sustainability that I can provide jobs and have some of the best talent and people around me.
(25:22):
And that's why I need 25 to $32 million a year, low budget for a show that's gonna air in 13 different states, you know, by standards of television production standards.
And he was like, oh, I didn't get it.
You know, he didn't get it.
And he thought I was like, I'm gonna do it after the money.
But you know that you have to hire a publicist or you have to hire, you have to pay for studio time or pay that artist to make your tracks, pay for the promotions and PR, social media management, all that stuff.
(25:50):
We were talking pre-show about 14 different hats, you know, that I got, I got web devs, I got app devs, I got photo people, you know, I got video editors and then AI is coming in and help me a little bit with some of the tasks that I do, which is awesome.
But you know, it takes, you can't, you can only run it on that free steam for so long.
(26:10):
And the saying I had in a show yesterday, it's like, you have a million people that say they have an idea, but the thing is gonna separate 10% of those people that spend 2,000 to $5,000 on their career.
It's gonna elevate them out of that pool.
And the next step, it's gonna elevate them out of the pool.
And the next step, and you may be looking like you're a successful, I have had people literally accuse me of making 250,000 to $500,000 a year with my brand when I've been on food stamps, disabled, going to food banks and not knowing how I'm paying rent the next month.
(26:41):
And this was going on for years and being attacked by local community people thinking, oh, he makes all this money and he doesn't pay anyone to be on our show.
And I'm like, I thought about taking out a penny stock.
So did anyone invested a penny into my company, I'd have to give them a financial report and go, this is how much in the red we are.
This is what I do.
And this is where we're going.
So do you wanna invest some more money in us to help us get to our goal?
(27:04):
You know, you mentioned that.
I just wanted to touch base on that.
It's not a lot of the behind the scenes stuff of the success and glamor that we do in the industry.
And that went into my next, one of my next questions is about, what measures do you take to actively promote yourself, release for your releases in your career?
And is PR an important asset for artists to have?
And you did, you had a success story recently with like 150,000 views and 15,000 followers, but you just told me you got a million views on a TikTok post too.
(27:33):
So it's like, dang, you're doing it.
But I think team.
It's hard, right?
Because people think a view equals a dollar and that's just not the case.
A view or a stream equals 60 cents, maybe.
I heard about it.
(27:53):
And when a stream, it's 150 streams to count one buy of one track.
Exactly.
And I think it's, yeah, I think it's like, I think it's at 150,000 for an album or something like that.
Like, yeah, that's Spotify numbers.
I saw somewhere.
And then you have to split that with everybody who helped you make the track.
Thank God, like I live in New York and everybody's a hustler.
(28:15):
You know, the young crowd, we wanna, we all wanna band together because we all wanna make the dream come true.
And you scratch my back and I scratch your back, but I've been here 11 years now, save for three years from tour.
But I've been able to make the connections just now with people who are like willing to offer things and not have strings attached in a way that I can't, you know, give back.
(28:41):
That it's really hard.
And it's also like, when you go to investors, they wanna see your numerical value, but you're going beyond comparison because you're comparing with labels who may or may not buy streams or may or may not buy things for people.
And I'm saying I want an organic audience.
I think my biggest challenge is that, as mentioned earlier, if I were to ever put on a show, period, anywhere in the world, I know I could sell that venue out.
(29:12):
One, because I'm not going to overshoot.
And then two, because I know what I bring to the table.
Unfortunately, the people that always come to my venue don't always equate to the times or the amount of times that they stream.
So I can say, hey, November 11th, I just showed, I sold out Joe's Pub.
That's a huge venue in New York City.
(29:33):
Like Adele had her start there.
Janelle Monae had her start there.
I sold it out.
But they look on my streams and they're like, hmm, I don't know if we can invest in you.
And that is really, that's a stressful thing because how can you prove like, this is a real dollar.
This is a fake dollar.
You're looking at fake dollars?
That is the biggest thing in the industry that I see right now after doing this show for 16 years, being in the nightlife electronic music world for 35 years, basically.
(30:04):
Don't get me wrong, I turned 51 this week, but I still look really young.
But I was out there in the clothes when I was 15.
And the thing is, is that a lot of artists, you see artists that have been doing stuff for 30 years.
They will sell out, just like you said, they will sell out a show.
People will know, will go see them, but they don't focus on their social media.
And then you have a new front runner coming along and they got 200,000 people on their social media.
(30:27):
They're getting the engagement debt and they're getting booked for shows.
Well, these artists have been killing it.
Major shows and festivals have been for years.
They're not old news, they're just as good.
But the barrier to entry for these ones is zero.
Making music, zero.
DJ music selection, zero.
(30:49):
Almost a negative strip scene where you have DJs going up and performing on stage now.
I know this is a little bit more electric.
You can't really do this in the musical world unless you want to be Milli Vanilli.
But basically they're going up there and they're playing these shows and they're not wearing headphones.
And they know the shows are pre-programmed and they have to be because of the lighting and all of it's timed.
(31:11):
They say some DJs can be up there like, oh, I can do my own show and they can make the visuals go with me.
But you're not gonna get that at the major like EDC, Tomorrowland, big shows because they have lighting that all goes with it.
If you screw up something, that lighting is gonna keep going.
If you train up or do something bad, they're not gonna risk it.
They want a pre-recorded set.
Here's how everything goes.
They know, boom, cue one, cue, you know, Broadway lighting and show.
(31:34):
I did that little play once and I was the lighting designer for it.
And I had my whole scrapbook with my notes with all the lighting cues and everything that needed to go.
They couldn't just go improv and go off camera.
But I would move off stage.
They're not set for that lighting cue.
They're in the dark.
Like, what do you do?
I don't have a chase, you know?
Yeah.
Wow, that was a fun time.
My little theater set.
(31:55):
But, you know, it's very, you know, well, I kind of lost my train of thought there.
It very rarely happens on the show.
But, you know, it's going and performing, you know, digital clout and social clout versus talent clout, you know?
And a lot of them, you know, and it's that jump that it's like, I saw a pie graph a year or two ago and it said a musical, an artist would spend 80% on booking tours, getting shows and doing all that stuff and 20% on social media.
(32:27):
Now it's like 80% on social media and 20% on booking the tours.
And just in a conversation with Mariah, I rested in DJs the other day.
He's a great, phenomenal artist, but he's having this trouble breaking through because there's no middle management really here in Seattle.
And yeah, he can submit to all the booking agents around town, but they already got a roster.
(32:48):
So what's his overall bottom line dollar value?
We're going to book you on tour.
The booking agent is going to look and go, well, if I make 10% or 15% of what I'm going to book you on and I have an artist over here, I can take and make $100,000 a year and make 15 grand.
And I got 10 of those artists.
Okay, I'm making 150 grand a year, but I got to spend the same amount of time with you and I'm only going to make 20 grand a year.
(33:11):
Sorry.
So how do you, I'm not asking you that question rhetorically, I'm asking rhetorically, how does one break into that and become of commodity?
It says, hey, I sell out shows.
Book me, I sell out shows.
And that's it.
And I'm learning that and I'm really grateful for my PR, Nancy, because she's tough on me, but she's like, she knows what she's talking about because I started really applying myself to socials.
(33:40):
I'm a very organic person.
It's who I am, 360.
I hate social media, but it is a necessity in our career until a major wants to sign me or I just have a really big investor.
I have to really lean into that social media.
And since I have been, it's made the difference.
I have to be honest.
(34:01):
Yeah, it's something you got to manage.
I got the tools in the background to help me out, especially pumping out as much content that I have.
It's eight interviews a week.
It's exclusive mixes.
It's our mobile sessions for another four episodes.
So I got 12 to 16 episodes I'm pushing out every week.
(34:23):
Yeah.
And I can't just let that just, oh, it's on YouTube.
No, I mean, I have my social media tools that help me out.
It has to go out to all my socials.
I have to make sure everyone's tagged, like Meecah gets tagged with her Instagram and then it hits you and you're gonna say, oh yeah, this interview I was on.
And this cool tool that I have that we didn't get working today, I'm gonna talk to Restream, but we could tap in and get social views to your viewers and all that type of stuff.
(34:49):
It's a lot to manage.
It sounds like you're able to do this full-time though, which is awesome.
Yes, I am a full-time programmer.
There you go.
That is a blessing.
I definitely have the cushion of Hamilton and all the jobs that I've worked previously so that I can have this time.
I'm very grateful and blessed because some people do have to work other jobs and do this at the same time.
(35:13):
And I'm grateful I'm not in that position, but it's a challenge still, even with that luxury.
Yeah, in my own crew, I communicate using our communications platform and they're like, if I don't talk to them and give them the roadmap, they just see a lot of text messages coming through basically.
And they're like, there, you got all so many things going on, do, do, do, do, do.
(35:34):
I'm like, if you were in the office, I was doing a reality television show, you'd see 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, you would see this whole show that I got going on and this, that, this, you'd be able to piece it together.
I'm even thinking about making a bubble map,
like things, when I make something,
I go check the message,
see the bubble map of how this connects the dots,
(35:54):
or do they really have to worry about that
and let them know,
I'm pushing the brand forward,
I'm letting you know about it
because there's a lot of producers
and execs in my position
that they don't pass that information onto their team
so that people, their team gets a lot of,
I don't knows what's happening.
If they're, especially if they're not in a management or upper, you know, white collar, upper management role like that, they aren't in the communication pattern.
(36:18):
So I intend to have a very open door policy with my artists that I work with and people I work with.
I believe that's good for business, it's good for relationships and, you know, don't hide any secrets, except I do have a promise that I used to give away 98% of my information to people, but after Pandy, I put that down to 97% because a lot of people were asking me how to do this so they could become my competitors.
(36:42):
And I'm like, why don't you just work with me?
I've already got the infrastructure.
No thank you.
So going to stage,
going to your stage stuff that you do,
do you, and this is taking out obviously
the acting side of it,
but going on stage and being a performer,
do you become a different person when you get on stage
or are you a different person when you're off stage
(37:04):
or is Meecah, Meecah, and this is me
and I can just bust out in the middle of the streets
on 5th Avenue and here you go and walk away?
Or does that, how do you work with, how do you deal with that?
I really try to stay away from the idea of like an alter ego.
I do believe that both personalities, I guess, are a part of me.
(37:27):
I feel like just as you change yourself when you're having a conversation with your best friend versus your grandma, that's the same kind of place that I live.
I'm on stage now and so my objective is to perform and so that is what I'm doing.
When I'm not on stage, I want to be in sweats with no makeup on and eat the next vegan meal.
(37:50):
Like that's just who I am.
I do love the different type of energy that comes when I am on stage performing, specifically my music because I'm sharing something that I've written, something that means so much to me and it seems to be well received and that is something that I take pride in.
(38:10):
So of course I get a little more excited but as far as like I'm a different person, I think no, I think it's just who I am but I'm not going to bust out in Fifth Avenue.
No, I had somebody years ago
when I was working for Nordstrom's,
I had jobs in customer service, retail,
sales a lot growing up
(38:31):
and somebody came to me one day
and I never thought about it like this
because I'm there to do a job
and I was up on like the top honors of the company,
customer service, all-star board, pay setter,
all the sales goals and all that stuff,
same with Apple when I was with them
but I always enjoyed my job and did what I did
but I would hang out with my co-workers after work
and one time, this is years, almost like eight, 20,
(38:55):
wow, 28 years ago?
Okay, wow, long time ago but it stuck with me all this time and the girl says to me, she goes, Darran, how do you do it?
No idea what she was referencing to.
I go, how do I do what?
She goes, you're over here at your house, we're sitting here having some wine, we're kicking back, every other word that's coming out of your mouth is either F-bomb or S-bomb or something and da-da-da-da-da but when you hit that sales floor, you are a completely different person.
(39:20):
You are Mr. Customer Service, spot on.
We know because we sit back and watch you run from this department to this department to this department, you're kind of all a team, kind of watching what's going on.
I have kind of a loud voice, like my friend, she said my voice was normal when she was 100 feet away from me on a paddle board last night.
She goes, I can stand this voice.
I go, you mean this one?
Does this mean we have a long distance relationship?
(39:40):
She goes, yeah.
I go, okay.
She goes, I, it's a joke.
I get excited and I talk like, I'm Italian.
I'm like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Come on, I'm not trying to stereotype myself but that being said is, how do you turn it off?
And I go, what do you mean turn it off?
I don't turn it off.
I'm at work.
I'm not gonna act like this at work, but it's not, I don't have an alternate personality or ego that I walk in and go, Nordstrom sales activate.
(40:09):
I'm like, I know how to talk proper and kind and awesome and professional but I'm off the clock.
It's sweatpants.
No, well, I don't wear makeup, but actually that's not true.
When I'm having fun with my friend, we can kind of do some fun stuff.
But anyway, no, I mean, sweatpants is my common attire.
Kicking back, making food and watching movies and stuff is a lot of people think I'm an extrovert because of the show and the business I'm in.
(40:33):
And I do a lot of wild, crazy things, but really I can sit back and watch an anime or like binge watch or watch Netflix and chill.
And like, what's up?
So, yeah, but there's that personality.
Do you create an alter ego and that stage for it?
You're trying to sell this presence, but then behind the scenes, you're a different person.
(40:54):
You say, nope, you manage that awesome.
So I can relate with that.
Speaking of stage and backstage, who's the most inspiring person you've ever met backstage and why were they such an inspiration to you?
Hmm.
That's a hard one.
I've never been asked that actually.
(41:16):
I've met a lot of role models backstage.
I've had the honest pleasure of like working with Debra Cox and Wayne Brady and you got me.
You got me.
I feel, let me think.
(41:43):
I will say this.
I will say this.
Because the top of mind is Wayne Brady, I will say him.
He is, like you said, like very extroverted on camera, like very, just everything that you would imagine him to be, right?
But then when you're working with him, it is a very different thing.
(42:04):
It is more intimate.
It feels connected.
I felt like he was really invested in every scene that we had together.
I feel like our off work relationship is very genuine and I was very impressed because somebody of that stature and he's a household name, everybody of multi-generations knows who he is.
(42:26):
He was able and is able to maintain in my experience, humility.
And that is something that I really, really try to advocate for.
I'm a very proud Caribbean.
I'm a very proud African American and that can sometimes bleed into a lot of things.
And so we sometimes do have to practice toning that down.
(42:47):
And then when you get on stage, it just amplifies.
But Wayne Brady definitely, for me, exemplified grace and humility and that's something that I admire a lot.
Nice.
Yeah, you meet a lot of people in this industry and the one thing I can take away from it, I've every experience, it's been so hard.
They ask me, what's the best show you've ever had?
(43:10):
And I'm like, I got 2,700 and counting.
Every show has been awesome.
Who would I pick?
There is one memorable experience that I do have and share from time to time.
But every single one of them have been so phenomenal.
And the people you meet, we were just talking about that stage persona, but you get them off screen, you get them back screen.
(43:31):
Sometimes I scare people because they're all calm and I'm calm before I do an interview.
I'll be like, all right, cool, it's all good.
This is how it's gonna go.
And then I get on camera and it's five, four, three.
Welcome back to the DJ set.
And they go, shit, real interview?
Okay, I wasn't expecting that from this guy.
Because they don't usually get a chance to check out my shows when I'm backstage or on the red carpet of what's going on.
(43:55):
So it's kind of impromptu and they don't expect that professionalism just turn on and go boom.
But it's fun stuff.
But yeah, the sincerity or the...
I don't really encounter a lot of ego at the top levels.
(44:15):
If I've ever encountered an ego, they just were never on the show.
And I try to maintain a really good working relationships with the PR and booking managers so they know how well I'm working with their client.
So they're gonna let their other clients be on the show as well.
So I maintain a very high level degree of professionalism with people.
(44:36):
And what I love to sit down and have a glass of wine in the future or go to dinner with these people like, yo, this is cool.
But I'm also not a groupie like that.
I got a business and it's not, I don't try to take up their time and take my professional career and turn it into a fanboy or...
I have fanboyed a couple times in the past, like, oh, I'm gonna give a lead.
(44:59):
Yeah, but not very often.
It's pretty cool.
But most people are really chill and that's awesome.
You have that kind of relationship with Wade.
It reminds me that when I ever hear his name, it always clicks back to that whole Dave Chappelle segment that he did.
When he's in the bar with Tom.
Like, damn, that was funny.
Funny, funny as hell.
But going from stage to screen, are you able to talk about anything you have in the works?
(45:24):
And we know some of your stage stuff you've been doing in your bio and all that fun stuff.
But what do you have going in the screen?
You're working on, you say you want to move into movies and stuff.
Is there anything, any development deals in the way?
Anything you can talk about?
I know NDAs and all the studio and all that crap, but anything?
Currently, I am just auditioning.
(45:44):
And that is my reality today.
Tomorrow, I could get a call.
That's just the nature of the business.
But I am auditioning and I'm really excited about the projects that I'm auditioning for.
I've said no to a lot of things because I am very key on making sure that I am doing what's next and best for me and my career.
(46:04):
So I don't have anything in the works today.
But I am focused on making sure that the next thing that I do, do is transformative.
And I used to own a casting agency back in the day.
And- Did you?
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, it was short-lived.
But we had a number of talent on our series, got some jobs and we're working up.
(46:26):
This is 2005.
But is the process still the same where you show up for your audition with your comp card?
And everything's all digital now?
Everything's self-tape.
Yeah, which is hard.
Everything's self-tape?
Yeah.
Like you do a digital video and upload the video to them?
(46:48):
Yeah, you have somebody read the scene for you off camera.
You are at home.
I usually have like a blue background.
Oh, are they on like a Zoom now or?
No, you record it and you send it in.
Oh, okay, okay, yeah.
Because back in the day, we wanted to kind of refine that process.
Working for Apple, I knew how to build DVDs and video online wasn't there at all.
Of course.
(47:08):
And so instead of grabbing all the comp cards from all the agencies and coming back and then sorting them out into piles and then delivering them to the director or casting director, you know, I came up with this idea.
It's like, why don't we make a website?
We could put all the pictures of the people on the website, but we could also make a DVD of doing them all their reads.
And then we can send the DVD in and they could see the pictures of each person on the DVD and activate each one of those.
(47:34):
Pre-web, pre-video online technology, 2005, 2006.
Because I didn't see the web.
We didn't see YouTube coming out or video online like that coming out and let alone Zoom coming out and things or people recording video and do a lot for a few years.
So we thought we were gonna be on the forefront of the casting world of going, wow, we really like image productions because when we do a casting, they send us a DVD.
(47:58):
We can plop that in.
I mean, we were still working with VHS tapes back then.
And like, oh, and they'd have the camera in the room and hit record on the camera and then get a tape.
And then the thing is you'd have to scan through that whole tape to get to the audition down here at the end.
If you're already bored and have a stress that day, they could be a bad-ass person.
And be like, nah, I don't wanna watch this.
But you can look through all the pictures and go, we wanna see that person.
(48:21):
We wanna see that person.
And now if somebody really revolutionized that, they can do that online.
I don't know if it's still archaic or not in the industry, but it sounds like it got up to speed a little bit on there.
Yes, it's just a regular drop box.
Yeah, a regular drop box.
Like, here's my read.
There you go.
Now, going to performing on stage, you're on Hamilton, you're doing a lot of stuff on stage, you're doing sold-out shows.
(48:45):
What's the sweetest thing a fan ever has made for you or said to you?
I will see your scent and raise you in person.
I was in Canada and a fan flew out to Canada to see me perform.
Yeah, that was insane.
(49:06):
They are still very active on my Instagram and they are very like day one fan.
And they support me as an ex-Hamilton person and as a musician.
Everything I put out, they are very, very supportive.
But I came backstage one day, we walk out the back room and they go down to what we call stage door and she was there and she was like, Mina, I'm your biggest fan.
(49:32):
I've flown from this state to come see you in Ottawa, Canada.
And you are just an inspiration to me.
And that was a year and a half ago, two years ago.
And she's still so supportive.
Nice.
I will do whatever you can do to make your fans top priorities.
I'm doing it for her because she is such, she's like the reason I keep going sometimes.
(49:58):
Definitely, it's one of those things that a lot of sometimes social posts when I go to my personal Facebook and I'll put something out there just like, this is a big long post, get ready for it.
And just the end, it's like, and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for fans like you.
People tell me, dude, you keep going.
And I'm a person that believes in positive mental influence, putting a lot of stuff and people will come to me and go, Derrick, you were, I don't look for it.
(50:21):
I'm not looking for the ego stroking or the virtue signaling in any way, shape or form.
But just somebody comes along and go, like I took an eight and a half month hiatus up to last May, from this point last year till May, I was off the grid.
People were like, where'd he go?
What happened?
Like, you know, and I came back on with a furious vengeance.
Like I got to get back up and running and get everything going.
(50:43):
But people were like, we missed you.
Like seeing your daily posts.
You know, you're always out there positive, positive, making strides, going forward.
I don't get into drama or BS or politics or things like that that I could use my voice for, but I don't do that.
But I just like to be an inspiration to the next person that might, either they're a fan and they love what they see or if they're like, well, I want to do a podcast series or I want to do a live streaming series and, you know, help be an inspiration.
(51:09):
And that really does, that little push, just, yeah, it's nice to hear.
Nice to hear.
So how do you balance your career with your other obligations in life?
Other than chilling and sitting on the couch with no makeup and sweatpants, making food, what other things you got on?
(51:30):
You know, you got your career, full-time, awesome, but with other obligations in life.
I mean, hobbies, any things that you other like to do outside of this whole music business?
I think it's an ebb and flow.
There are days or weeks or months where I will go without acknowledging my personal life and that's unhealthy, but it's like die for the career.
(51:53):
But I typically now I'm starting a cycle of, you know, putting myself on a time schedule.
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I'm doing this related to work, 6 p.m. I'm just relaxing, 7 p.m. I'm going to the gym, you know, or reverse.
I'm starting at 7 a.m. going to the gym and doing this.
It's a good way to balance because I think so much of our culture, Gen Z and millennials, like we definitely believe in burnout.
(52:19):
Like we were raised on like, the show must go on.
Like one monkey doesn't stop the show.
Like, and it just completely tells us to forget about our wellness and health.
And that's also my brain.
Like I'm very much into wellness and health.
So I have to practice what I preach, right?
So I'm learning these days to breathe, take supplements, read into things before, you know, I participate and not really beat myself up for being tired because especially being in New York City, like you get burned out so quick.
(52:51):
Everybody has to hustle, bustle.
That is not changed.
So I'm just practicing every day, but it's a learning curve.
Mm-hmm, I can totally understand that.
2022, I decided to ramp up operations over here at the DJ sessions.
And I was, our current model was, just to relate to that is, you know, we were doing 40 emails a week for outreach.
(53:13):
I went to my VA.
I said, hey, we're going to step that up to 300 emails a week and see what happens.
And in the month of May, I booked like 47, 52 interviews.
My schedule was open Monday through Wednesday from like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mm-hmm.
Every hour on the hour, you know, in June, I had like 46 interviews, something like that in July.
(53:35):
And I came back and said, this is too much.
I'm not eating.
I'm not sleeping.
All the processing, all the back-end stuff that has to do to editing these shows or putting them up online was just too much.
And I came back and said, here's what I want to do.
It's Monday through Thursday, two times a day.
I can make exceptions of people like on tour and stuff like that if they're really not in position.
(53:55):
But yeah, it was just, I was like, okay, experiment worked, but damn, I wasn't ready for that.
You know, but now we know where our mechanism, our machine is.
I do want to increase that, but I increase it in increments.
Right.
And it is a Monday through Thursday thing.
I have my show that I do on Friday, Friday nights, but then I have weekends to- Relax.
(54:15):
Compress.
You know?
It's about sustainability.
And sometimes a lot of the back-end stuff is just hitting the right buttons and doing a lot of copy pasting stuff, but you have to do that.
Because I get backlogged and it's like, now I'm sitting here for two hours doing something where I could have taken 20 minutes and just finished it and got it off the plate.
You know, but definitely having that time management I think is a huge, huge thing for people to become successful.
(54:39):
And what I also got, I like showing this.
This only goes back to May 6th of 2025.
My to-do list.
Oh my goodness.
This is just from now until July now, this quarter.
Pretty much.
And I have a coffee table book, not that I'm pitching this, but I want to make one day.
(55:00):
And I think the title of it will just be to-do.
And it'll be different segments of all my to-do lists.
Like there's things in there like keywords I know.
I tried doing all this with interviews via on paper once, but now I got Calendly, which is just awesome.
It tells me set up everything.
But it could be a keyword that says laundry.
Okay, do the laundry.
Shave, shave.
(55:21):
Okay, cool.
But it could be just the name of a company, but that name of the company could be a long list of 85 things I want to talk with them about.
But that keyword is triggering me to make sure that I do that, cross it off, and then I have that conversation.
Emails went out, conversations start.
So I want to make that book and kind of have it like, okay, here's phase one, here's phase two, here's phase three, but here's all the to-do notes in between of what it took to make this successful.
(55:47):
It didn't happen overnight.
And there was a game plan.
The business plan is there.
Here's the to-do list to make that business plan happen.
Yeah.
Do you have any bad habits that are beneficial to your career?
Yes, I am a workoutaholic.
I love to hit the gym.
Sometimes I'll take two to three classes a day.
(56:09):
It's a bad habit, but it does keep my stamina up for sure.
During the pandemic, I decided to fall in love with fitness.
And my journey has been up and down, up and down.
And now I'm reaching a point of where healthiness and wellness meets results.
So I definitely have so much more to learn, but I'm obsessed with fitness, yeah.
(56:35):
And are you doing this in person or are you doing them virtually?
No, no, I take solid core classes.
I take Berries, which is a bootcamp.
Sometimes I'll just go to Planet Fitness and walk.
I love to walk Central Park, especially now that it's so beautiful outside.
I'll walk to the bottom and just get on the phone with a friend or just listen to the nature and people watch.
(56:57):
Anything to keep my body moving, because I know that when I hit 80 or 90, I wanna still be using my ligaments.
I'm very obsessed with Blue Zones.
I don't know if you've heard of them.
It's areas in the world where people are living from 90 upwards and they're healthy, they're doing what they need to do.
It's linked to diet, but also linked to fitness.
(57:19):
And when I read about that, I really decided to make that a part of, not only my music career, but also just my lifestyle.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, my dad turns 90 this year and you compare him next to another 90-year-old and he's the guy that can still kick the drawer shut with his leg from behind him.
(57:40):
He was very athletic growing up.
I grew up in a very athletic household.
My dad was a world-class athlete in sports and grew up in health clubs and all that fun stuff.
And so I, and my mom was a trainer of aerobics instructors.
They kind of launched aerobics back in the 80s to a huge health club chain on the West Coast here.
We're kind of in control of all that.
So grew up very health conscious in the family, in the household and all that stuff.
(58:04):
Do I practice a lot?
No, but I do go into VR and I got a VR workout program I'm starting to do.
It's really kick-ass, super excited to do that.
Yeah, maybe work off some of the candy that we talked about earlier.
Some of that, all you can eat buffet.
But speaking of going into food, working out a lot, what would you say the best restaurant is in New York to go to?
(58:25):
I know you have a certain menu palette, but you know what?
We used to have this really great vegetarian Chinese place not too far from where I live and they closed down during pandy.
And I was like, if you've got the General Tso's chicken, you thought you were eating General Tso's chicken but it was tofu.
It was so good.
It was so delicious and they went bye-bye and now I don't have anywhere to go.
What would you say the best restaurant in New York or in your neighborhood would be?
(58:48):
Hands Down, listen to me very closely.
Everybody zoom into the camera.
Hands Down is this place called Healthy as a Mother.
Their trademark is ham.
It is a Trinidadian and Dominican vegan restaurant.
It's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
And they, every time I take my carnivore friends or family members there, they can't believe that they're eating their food.
(59:13):
It's also like sustainable and it's healthier and it just tastes like home.
It's really great.
I would recommend their Bus Up Shut.
My partner loves their vegan steak.
It tastes just like steak.
And yeah, that's the best restaurant in New York City to me.
Hams, right?
(59:33):
Healthy as a mother.
Healthy as a mother, ham.
All right, I'm gonna check that out.
I may be coming there in September.
I may be pushing off to October.
We'll find out.
Gotta check on some booking dates, places to stay.
But it's been a great interview with you.
We're gonna wrap it up here.
Where's the, is there anything else you wanna share with our DJ Sessions fans that you'd wanna talk about, we didn't get a chance to talk about, reiterate or anything, plug in there?
(01:00:01):
Yeah, I'm just really grateful for the love and the reception of answers.
We are now at 20,000 streams on Spotify.
I'm very excited about that.
And I'm just really grateful for all the love they've shown me.
And I really want to continue to pour into that relationship.
I'm gonna have more music coming out for you.
So follow me on Instagram.
(01:00:23):
Follow me on TikTok, Spotify, and yeah.
What is the Instagram at mention and TikTok at mention?
It is at Meecah, M-E-E-N-C-A-H.
There we go, right there.
Boom, you know how we do it.
Awesome, well, Meecah, thank you so much for coming on the DJ Sessions.
Again, we will be following up with you, following your career.
(01:00:45):
We always love to invite our guests back on the series.
Hopefully get some of your music up on our site to share with our viewers as well.
We'll talk about that and more in the future.
And thank you again for coming on the DJ Sessions today.
Yes, thank you for having me.
You're welcome.
On that note, don't forget to go to our website, thedjsessions.com.
Go ahead and use that QR code right there.
(01:01:07):
Spam, snap it, do what you want.
Share it with a friend.
We have over 700 news stories a day, 2,700 plus past episodes, new music coming out, our virtual reality nightclub, mobile app, radio, site-wide radio player, possibly a radio station, internet station coming up here soon in the future.
But all of that and more in our socials, obviously are all there at thedjsessions.com.
(01:01:28):
I'm your host, Darran.
That's Meecah coming in from New York City.
I'm coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington.
And remember, on the DJ Sessions, the music never stops.
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions.
I'm your host, Darran, and right now I'm sitting in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington, and coming in all the way from New York City, we have Meecah on the other end of the line today.
How you doing, Meecah?
I'm great, how are you, Darran?
I'm doing awesome, had a little bit of pre-show warmup, pre-show notes, so glad to have you on the show.
(00:30):
I know people like to be on Showtime, and I used to take a little bit of a laissez-faire approach to it, but you know what, I need to get on my stage manager, I need a stage manager to get over here and be like, Darran, you're supposed to go live, right now, five, four, three, two, one.
And all that buzz up, but thank you, yeah, thank you so much for being here today.
Feel excited, you got a lot going on right now, a lot to your resume, your bio, and everything going on out there.
(00:53):
You know, I wanna start off by introducing, you know, a lot of times we have DJs and producers on the show, you're an artist, you're a musical vocalist, and all that fun stuff, but, and we're gonna get into some of this stuff, because I'm excited, because I still, you'll see why I'm excited about it, because some of your work I haven't seen, I'd love to see it sometime.
But, you know, let's start out with, if you could describe your music in three words, what would you call it?
(01:17):
A soulful wellness hug.
A soulful wellness?
Hug.
Hug?
That's awesome, I'm gonna shut my window over here.
Yeah.
There we go, no city noises coming in.
Yeah.
Soulful wellness hug, awesome.
You know, I'm excited to get in depth with more of your music and everything here.
(01:39):
And you just had something recently released, Answers.
And it's both, there's a dance and inspirational version.
Versions, can you tell us a little bit, our viewers and I, a little bit more about that?
Yeah, it was inspired really by an obstacle that I had in my life, and it was overcome, and it was an answered prayer.
(02:02):
That's why we got the name Answers.
And the obstacle had two versions to it.
It was a time to feel sentimental, and there was also a time to dance.
And once you get through it, you move to it.
So that's really why I wanted two separate mixes, yeah.
And now, do you work with, when you make, is it a dance track, or is it supposed to be, have like a choreographed act that goes with it?
(02:29):
We are working on the choreographic element to it, sorry.
No, that's all good.
The choreographic element to it, we are for sure.
But really, it's just a dance mix.
You know how you have like a 90s dance mix to Whitney Houston or Deborah Cox's songs, very similar to that.
Okay, awesome.
Do you do your own choreographing, or do you work with a choreographer or anyone?
(02:52):
Yeah, my choreographer, oh my God.
Choreographer, I know, me too, don't worry.
My choreographer is Jamal Douglas.
He's an exceptional dancer.
I met him actually in college.
He's gone to do Broadway.
He's done a film in television.
He does music videos.
He's very, very, very talented.
And I've had the pleasure of working with him already on a production that we did in college.
(03:14):
But it was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship.
And he's an incredibly hard worker, and I'm so excited to release this project with him.
Where'd you go to school at?
Pace University in New York City.
Pace University.
Pace University, awesome.
You know, we'll be visiting, hopefully I'll be visiting out there.
Just got an offer to be out there in September.
(03:36):
Was planning to be out there in October, but I definitely loved going to New York.
Only been there once.
I should have been there more often growing up.
But, you know, loving being in Manhattan and being around the city and the magic and everything that happens there is just phenomenal.
Yeah, I'll tell you what, like on tour, I was away from the city for two years plus the pandemic.
(03:58):
So I thought, oh, I'm going to go on tour.
The city's going to change.
I'm not going to know it anymore.
I got right back and it was just the same way as it was when I left it.
I think, you know, one time, okay, but like when you come back, you're going to feel similarities and you're also going to see new things.
Building is, the word building is very befitting for the city of New York because we are always building something.
(04:23):
Yeah, you know, we just had in Seattle a few years back, we had the most cranes on the West Coast in Seattle for a few years here in Seattle with it just booming.
I mean, I grew up here my whole life and watching the city skyline transform, you know, it's just interesting.
Occupancy, that's a different story.
(04:44):
But buildings being built really, I mean, just neighborhoods you used to go to and you're like, where's this at?
Where's this at?
Where's this at?
It's crazy.
But yeah, I've always, I never knew, never really had a conceptual inkling in my mind except for what I see and you see in TV and film just how big it is there.
(05:07):
You know, I think the biggest one for me was going to Central Park and realizing that Central Park is two and a half miles long and a half a mile wide.
Yeah.
It doesn't look like that in pictures.
No.
Video on TV.
And home alone.
Yeah.
And so, you know, I realized that that's like from what you would call our downtown area, from our space, you know, our main attraction to our stadiums almost, even a little bit longer, but from the waterfront to Fifth Avenue, to our Fifth Avenue.
(05:36):
And if you think that's just the park, like, I know there's a bunch of stuff in the park, but like that, and that's just the park and the island.
Yes.
Yes, I'll go outside of the screen because we've got to do a big in New York, right?
You know, I was like, holy crap, I did not get that.
(05:57):
But yeah, very awesome city.
I, you know, realized that in Seattle can have a little bit of, it takes time.
I used to say it comes into New York, then it's Miami, then Chicago, then LA kind of thing.
And then comes the rest of the world goes, or nation goes, you know, is how it kind of filters in.
So very, very awesome, vibrant city.
(06:17):
You know, it's funny, I'm going to jump ahead to one question I had almost the last question.
I like it when I get to jump around and the guests don't know what I'm going to ask.
So, you know, after weeks or months of heavy touring, what do you like to do to relax and enjoy life?
When I got off of tour, I immediately booked a show called The 100 Day Club.
(06:37):
And then right after that show ended, I booked another show called The Wiz.
And it wasn't until after The Wiz, so now we're talking about two to three years after I came home from Hamilton, that I got a break.
And that was just the beginning of this year.
So I think I'm still learning.
I think I'm trying to figure out new hobbies.
Obviously, you know, I do pick up projects every now and then, but really now it's about pouring into what I want to do.
(07:05):
It's about my music.
It's about fitness.
I'm really passionate about that as well.
And cooking, I love to cook.
I'm a vegan.
Always trying to find the mix between soul food and healthy.
Is that an oxymoron?
Is that- I know.
(07:26):
I'm constantly fighting my family, trying to convince them that just because I put the word vegan in front of it does not mean it's not edible.
We have to.
We gotta try.
You know, I'm a foodie myself.
I like, I prep food all the time, make food all the time.
And I'm not vegan, but- Yeah.
(07:49):
Yeah.
I am getting up there in age, so I gotta kind of watch what I put in my belly.
Of course.
Not a lot of hamburgers and then, you know, pop-tarts.
Not that I eat pop-tarts, but you know.
Sometimes they're good, but I have a little bit of a sweet tooth.
So, you know, gotta watch out for that, but- Same, I love sugar.
Yeah, that's- But we just shift to natural sugar and not gluten.
(08:09):
There you go.
I need more like sweet tarts and Jolly Ranchers.
Yeah.
Chocolate.
But no, go back up to the music though.
You also just had a debut EP come out, For Your Love, and you're working on new music.
I guess, you talk about your touring and your shows.
Where do you find time to make all this music?
(08:30):
Is it, can you do that while on the road?
Is it now with technology is accessible or you got a break and then you're like, oh, I gotta rush to the studio.
Okay, now I'm on tour.
Can you manage both of those at the same time?
Is that easily to juggle?
Easy to juggle?
I think because one, there are two different types of passions, but Broadway, musical theater, that was a passion I later developed.
(08:50):
But music is something that is innately inside of me.
And so just as much as I have to breathe air, I have to create.
And it's not something that I have to juggle.
It's just something that I do.
And so when I was actually on tour with Hamilton, I was the standby.
So I wasn't on stage every single night.
I did a tour within the tour.
(09:11):
So every city that we stopped in, I did something called the coffee house tour, where we jokingly call it a coffee house because I thought that I couldn't fill a room bigger than a coffee house.
So we would just rent out coffee houses and have people come and it would be great.
But after a while, after the second or third one, we started getting people out of the lines, like droves outside.
(09:33):
And we had to like kind of elevate to bigger spaces because not only were my castmates coming, but people from the city that we were in were coming to see the coffee house tour.
And so that was something that was apparent to me in that moment that I can't stop what I'm doing because obviously there's a niche and a need for it, but also it just makes me so happy.
(09:53):
So I don't feel that it's laborious.
I feel like it's just something I do.
That's always, it's that balance between what they say is, find something you love doing and find a way to make money at it.
And then it doesn't work.
Right.
Yeah.
Unfortunately running a multinational international live streaming show is a lot of work.
(10:15):
And the thing is though, I love that.
That's why I got into the industry that I'm in.
I love the back end work.
I like being the executive producer.
I was never supposed to be the host of the show, but as you know, in the same, in the show business, the show must go on.
And if I don't have talent or I don't have somebody to do interviews, I'm not gonna sit around going, well, wait till I have an actor or actress or host.
No, I got to do this thing.
(10:36):
And thousands of interviews later, hey, here I am, I'm having fun.
So, next coming up though for you after For Your Love, the EP, you have Raising Cane, can I?
So For Your Love is actually, Answers is a song off of that EP.
It's not yet released.
(10:57):
It's going to come and we are so excited about it because it's a collection of songs that I have spent the last two years writing and pouring my heart into.
And it is my sound and I'm very passionate about that.
And so I am on Raising Cane.
My episode premiered in April and then I have another episode coming out in this last season.
(11:18):
Oh, it was on the show Raising Cane.
Yes.
Okay, I got you.
I don't watch.
Okay, I have my selection.
I'm a sci-fi guy.
It's okay, no worries.
Awesome.
No worries.
Yeah, we're excited about it.
It's good news.
Do you come from a musical family?
It sounds like you come from a family of chefs who like to make soul food.
(11:39):
I come from both, I come from both.
My dad, he used to be a studio musician with the Commodores and he was very tightly knit with Lama Ritchie and most of the Commodores because they all shared space in Tuskegee.
They went to college there and they all come from that backwoods Alabama church sound that infuses church with like R&B.
(12:04):
So it's very heavily my inspiration.
And you hear that a lot in my music.
And my grandmother and my aunts and most of my family members are singers, whether they were famous in their day or just big in our church.
And I grew up singing, being their predecessor or sorry, their successor because we would have five or six services a day and they wouldn't wanna sing.
(12:29):
So it'd be my turn.
In terms of chefs, yes, my mom did own a bakery and she taught me a lot.
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
Yeah, like I said earlier, I'm a foodie.
I'm a foodie at heart.
My favorite thing is the all you can eat buffet where you can just get a bit of everything.
Golden corrals.
(12:49):
Yeah.
We have this one place my friend took me to the other day.
I was thoroughly amazed with it.
45 bucks a person, all you can eat.
On Saturdays they do all you can eat snow crab and I think dungeons.
And yeah, I know, right?
And then on Sundays they do all you can eat lobster tails.
45 bucks.
I was like, and they got everything you'd ever want.
(13:10):
I've never seen a buffet like this.
It's like, you would think, oh, it's a Chinese buffet.
No, they have seafood.
They have the Mongolian grill.
They have salad bar.
They have all the fried foods, fish.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's huge.
My dad used to work.
Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.
My dad used to work.
(13:31):
I'm from West Palm Beach, Florida.
So if anybody's from West Palm Beach listening, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Palm Beach Lake Boulevard.
It is by origin an Asian store.
You do have like the Asian food, but they do branch out.
They have the Dungeness crabs.
They have the snow crab legs.
They have the desserts, any kind of dessert you want.
They have like Asian desserts.
(13:51):
They have traditional American desserts.
And you, I think when I was going, it was like $15 a person.
It's so freaking good.
I didn't say it before, unfortunately, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's good for the soul.
Yeah, I like that.
(14:12):
That foodie in me follows through in a lot of things that I do, whether it's a show and we have like, with my first broadcast television show, it was one show.
Then I had three shows.
Then that turned into eight separate shows that got approved on 13 stations on the West Coast.
And then I went into broadcasting shows and live streaming.
And under my live stream umbrella, under the DJ sessions, I have like eight other shows that I do with different topics and everything.
(14:38):
This being one of them, the virtual sessions.
And it's like, I want to give people a little bit of everything on their plate.
If you want to hear music, great.
If you want to hear music, that's great.
We'll be talking about music later on too, because maybe we'll get some of your music on our site too.
That's great.
Here's a question for you.
Where's the weirdest moment you've ever heard one of your own tracks, one of your own songs play?
(15:01):
My sister is a part of a sorority called Alpha Kappa Alpha.
And it's a really big thing, especially in the black community.
It's like a big, big thing.
And she did what they call a crossing.
And so they had a crossing celebration.
And I was there and it was in the middle of the pandemic.
I had not released anything, but this one song called Melanated.
(15:23):
And I released it in like 2018.
The pandemic is 2020, 21.
I was there just like supporting my sister.
Me and my other sister, we were making cupcakes.
I was like the Betty Crocker, very not Meecah, just like the sister.
And then also on the DJ, I hear my song, da, da, da, da, melanated atmosphere.
(15:46):
And I'm like, what the heck?
My sister comes all the way across the line, like just, you're on the radio, you're playing the thing.
Breaking all type of tradition, like hundreds of years at this point, breaking tradition, just breaking the line.
It comes out and he's like, you're on the radio, oh my gosh.
So that was the weirdest place I've ever heard so far.
(16:08):
That's great.
That's a good one.
That's a really good one.
I mean, I hope she didn't get in trouble for it or punished.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, okay, cool.
Probably just.
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
You mentioned coming from a musical family and having your inspiration be your father, your mother and another artist, but who has really been your personal biggest influence when it comes to your career as an artist?
(16:34):
And this could be as a performing artist, a musical artist, and why?
I'm really inspired by Whitney Houston.
I love her.
I love every element about her.
We are very similar in that we grew up in the church and now we sing or sing in the R&B world, but it's never left.
(16:56):
You can always feel that essence, even though you're not singing a gospel song per se.
I also really love the fact that she had a movie career, a cinema career.
That is something I'm very passionate about.
I like sci-fi, and I would want to lean more romantic comedy slash sci-fi, your Avatar, your Star Trek, things like that nature.
(17:17):
But the fact that we do have that trajectory is something that I also very much so admire.
She broke a lot of barriers and that's something that I want to do, but mostly I just love how connected she was to her upbringing.
We all have things in our childhoods that we always want to forget, but we do also have things that are the microbiome of who we are emotionally.
(17:42):
And for Whitney Houston, when I look at her, I still see the intricacies and I want that to be my legacy as well.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, we'll get into a little bit about that, about going from stage to screen or artist to screen and how that transition is going for you in a minute here.
But yeah, it's definitely having, I guess is the term portfolio or background, resume?
(18:11):
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, a lot of artists don't make that jump from being a musical talent to screen, to screen, to movies, to acting and stuff.
And the ones that do, I don't,
I've never researched this
and being in the industry for 35 years,
I should know how this part of it works,
but when that artist,
(18:31):
I usually see like you have a television show person
and they jump to movies,
they usually don't go back to doing television again
or an artist that's performing,
they go to movies and then you see nothing really come
of them in the music world that much
or there isn't a lot of fanfare there.
Sometimes it goes backwards.
I've noticed that happened with a few artists.
(18:53):
It always reminds me of the movie Ocean's 12 when Brad Pitt's character is talking to the kid that played in that 70s show.
And he's like, in the beginning, he's teaching him poker in one of the first scenes in Ocean's 11.
And then he's talking about moving from, in the background, you listen to the background, he goes, oh, you went from TV to films.
I think he was like starting to star in movies.
(19:14):
He played in a film, movies, but what do you see this Topher Grace?
What do you see him in now?
Yeah.
He's not getting any TV calls, all this stuff.
And then the second one he shows, he has this like kind of breakdown, plays himself and has this break.
It's kind of interesting, but moving from stage to screen or artists to screen is a very bold jump, and you have a very awesome influencer there in your mind or in your soul that's pushing you through.
(19:40):
That's always good to have.
Yeah.
Outside of, who's your favorite artist outside of your specific genre?
Do you listen to other, I'm sure you listen to a lot of varieties of music.
100%.
But you have Whitney Houston, you have this Commodores back, and your father, your mother, but I can see that in a genre, the gospel, R&B, soul music, but is there anyone outside of that genre that really stands out to you and it could be an inspiration to you or did something that really surprised you?
(20:14):
Yeah, I love Paramore.
I'm really into American Idiot and Green Day.
I'm like a low-key rocker.
I love country.
It's like my guilty pleasure.
I can't really say that out loud, but here we are.
I love country music.
I'm a big Blake Shelton fan.
I love Chris Young, but country is, for me, it's just gospel with a twang, the same stories, just different people singing them.
(20:44):
So they have different meaning, but I really love country music as well.
I'm getting into, with this track, I'm getting into dance.
I really like Afrobeats.
I'm really a world listener, as long as it's a great trajectory, a beginning, middle, and end, a sonic delivery.
I love that.
(21:05):
I'm probably never gonna get into screamo, but other than that, I feel like I'll give most songs a chance.
You know, it's funny you mentioned country in there because every Sunday when we had to clean the house, growing up, my dad either put on country music or classical music.
And I have, you know, I got some tracks in my truck.
(21:25):
We got our mobile studio.
We drive around to Big Boom.
We call it the Boom Box.
It fit in really well in Manhattan.
Out here in Seattle, people sometimes go, turn that down.
I'll go, you live in the city.
You can hear us from like, not four Manhattan, New York blocks away, but four Seattle blocks away, which would be awesome if you could hear us from four New York blocks away.
(21:46):
Hey, that's something to aspire to.
But no, I mean, sometimes in my playlist, I'll drop some country tracks on there.
What I call the funnier ones, not the break your heart.
My heart's breaking.
Some of the better tracks, but yeah.
Listen to like, me personally, I was in that Garth Brooks, 90s Garth Brooks, you know, Eddie Chestnut type era.
(22:07):
Not so much now, but really cool stuff that, you know, I think it's in music or in the entertainment industry, it's definitely good to have, going back to my foodie thing, a good palette of diverse inspirations.
You might, oh, oh, that hit, you know, dang, you know, and that collaborations as well, or crossovers with other artists as well and producing stuff, you know, instead of just pigeonholing into one genre and being known for that one genre.
(22:33):
There's a lot of artists that then have to almost go out and create aliases.
I know a lot of producers that have to do that because they're like, oh, I produce dance here and house music, but I really want to dabble in drum and bass, but it's going to alienate my fans, so I have to go another alias and make drum and bass underneath that alias.
Yeah.
I think that that's such a box and I pray that I get to be a person that breaks out of that.
(22:59):
I say I get to be because this is a business, right?
Like you have to have investors.
The investors have to believe in the dream and the dream has to make sense, right?
Like you can't just say, I'm an artist and I can take everything.
The reality is, I am trained to sing classical arias.
I speak three different languages.
Like I can sing and put on a great show in any genre and I have full confidence about that.
(23:23):
If you buy a ticket to any show that I put on in that genre, you are going to be satisfied.
I call myself an R&B artist because that's what the world wants to call me right now, but I do want to break out of that box and I do want to have a rock album or a Latin collab.
Like these are things that make sense to me in my world and also make money.
(23:46):
But going back to like what you said about an artist, you know, when they go to the movies, like they don't really necessarily go back.
I do feel like Whitney Houston, for example, did make that great leap, right?
She did the bodyguard and that sent her music career into the stratosphere.
So I'm hoping that like I do have those opportunities as well.
(24:07):
You know, you mentioned one thing there that is always, it's been an ongoing, not an ongoing topic anymore because my person that I started working with early on in the industry that is on a hip hop public access television show.
And then later on broke away from that and did my own broadcast television shows is he came to me one day and he said, I told him, hey, you know, I'm doing all this.
(24:30):
I want sponsorships for my show.
I need money to continue my productions, to run a company.
And he came to me one day, he said, Jared, when did it stop becoming fun for you?
Stopped becoming fun and you started wanting to go after the money.
And I looked at him and said, oh no, I think that the line came up as well.
How do you define success?
And I said, oh, when I have the Learjet, my offices, a staff of people that I can travel around the world and you know, maybe three or four places, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, the black American express card, whatever.
(24:57):
And he came to me and he looks at me and he didn't really get it.
He goes, when did it all become about money and not about having fun?
And I went, what do you mean?
That would be having fun because I'm running a successful multimillion dollar international company that tours around doing everything.
And it's a media conglomerate and it takes money to hire the right people to do that.
It's not about me getting a paycheck at the end of the day.
It's about me being able to elevate and have sustainability that I can provide jobs and have some of the best talent and people around me.
(25:22):
And that's why I need 25 to $32 million a year, low budget for a show that's gonna air in 13 different states, you know, by standards of television production standards.
And he was like, oh, I didn't get it.
You know, he didn't get it.
And he thought I was like, I'm gonna do it after the money.
But you know that you have to hire a publicist or you have to hire, you have to pay for studio time or pay that artist to make your tracks, pay for the promotions and PR, social media management, all that stuff.
(25:50):
We were talking pre-show about 14 different hats, you know, that I got, I got web devs, I got app devs, I got photo people, you know, I got video editors and then AI is coming in and help me a little bit with some of the tasks that I do, which is awesome.
But you know, it takes, you can't, you can only run it on that free steam for so long.
(26:10):
And the saying I had in a show yesterday, it's like, you have a million people that say they have an idea, but the thing is gonna separate 10% of those people that spend 2,000 to $5,000 on their career.
It's gonna elevate them out of that pool.
And the next step, it's gonna elevate them out of the pool.
And the next step, and you may be looking like you're a successful, I have had people literally accuse me of making 250,000 to $500,000 a year with my brand when I've been on food stamps, disabled, going to food banks and not knowing how I'm paying rent the next month.
(26:41):
And this was going on for years and being attacked by local community people thinking, oh, he makes all this money and he doesn't pay anyone to be on our show.
And I'm like, I thought about taking out a penny stock.
So did anyone invested a penny into my company, I'd have to give them a financial report and go, this is how much in the red we are.
This is what I do.
And this is where we're going.
So do you wanna invest some more money in us to help us get to our goal?
(27:04):
You know, you mentioned that.
I just wanted to touch base on that.
It's not a lot of the behind the scenes stuff of the success and glamor that we do in the industry.
And that went into my next, one of my next questions is about, what measures do you take to actively promote yourself, release for your releases in your career?
And is PR an important asset for artists to have?
And you did, you had a success story recently with like 150,000 views and 15,000 followers, but you just told me you got a million views on a TikTok post too.
(27:33):
So it's like, dang, you're doing it.
But I think team.
It's hard, right?
Because people think a view equals a dollar and that's just not the case.
A view or a stream equals 60 cents, maybe.
I heard about it.
(27:53):
And when a stream, it's 150 streams to count one buy of one track.
Exactly.
And I think it's, yeah, I think it's like, I think it's at 150,000 for an album or something like that.
Like, yeah, that's Spotify numbers.
I saw somewhere.
And then you have to split that with everybody who helped you make the track.
Thank God, like I live in New York and everybody's a hustler.
(28:15):
You know, the young crowd, we wanna, we all wanna band together because we all wanna make the dream come true.
And you scratch my back and I scratch your back, but I've been here 11 years now, save for three years from tour.
But I've been able to make the connections just now with people who are like willing to offer things and not have strings attached in a way that I can't, you know, give back.
(28:41):
That it's really hard.
And it's also like, when you go to investors, they wanna see your numerical value, but you're going beyond comparison because you're comparing with labels who may or may not buy streams or may or may not buy things for people.
And I'm saying I want an organic audience.
I think my biggest challenge is that, as mentioned earlier, if I were to ever put on a show, period, anywhere in the world, I know I could sell that venue out.
(29:12):
One, because I'm not going to overshoot.
And then two, because I know what I bring to the table.
Unfortunately, the people that always come to my venue don't always equate to the times or the amount of times that they stream.
So I can say, hey, November 11th, I just showed, I sold out Joe's Pub.
That's a huge venue in New York City.
(29:33):
Like Adele had her start there.
Janelle Monae had her start there.
I sold it out.
But they look on my streams and they're like, hmm, I don't know if we can invest in you.
And that is really, that's a stressful thing because how can you prove like, this is a real dollar.
This is a fake dollar.
You're looking at fake dollars?
That is the biggest thing in the industry that I see right now after doing this show for 16 years, being in the nightlife electronic music world for 35 years, basically.
(30:04):
Don't get me wrong, I turned 51 this week, but I still look really young.
But I was out there in the clothes when I was 15.
And the thing is, is that a lot of artists, you see artists that have been doing stuff for 30 years.
They will sell out, just like you said, they will sell out a show.
People will know, will go see them, but they don't focus on their social media.
And then you have a new front runner coming along and they got 200,000 people on their social media.
(30:27):
They're getting the engagement debt and they're getting booked for shows.
Well, these artists have been killing it.
Major shows and festivals have been for years.
They're not old news, they're just as good.
But the barrier to entry for these ones is zero.
Making music, zero.
DJ music selection, zero.
(30:49):
Almost a negative strip scene where you have DJs going up and performing on stage now.
I know this is a little bit more electric.
You can't really do this in the musical world unless you want to be Milli Vanilli.
But basically they're going up there and they're playing these shows and they're not wearing headphones.
And they know the shows are pre-programmed and they have to be because of the lighting and all of it's timed.
(31:11):
They say some DJs can be up there like, oh, I can do my own show and they can make the visuals go with me.
But you're not gonna get that at the major like EDC, Tomorrowland, big shows because they have lighting that all goes with it.
If you screw up something, that lighting is gonna keep going.
If you train up or do something bad, they're not gonna risk it.
They want a pre-recorded set.
Here's how everything goes.
They know, boom, cue one, cue, you know, Broadway lighting and show.
(31:34):
I did that little play once and I was the lighting designer for it.
And I had my whole scrapbook with my notes with all the lighting cues and everything that needed to go.
They couldn't just go improv and go off camera.
But I would move off stage.
They're not set for that lighting cue.
They're in the dark.
Like, what do you do?
I don't have a chase, you know?
Yeah.
Wow, that was a fun time.
My little theater set.
(31:55):
But, you know, it's very, you know, well, I kind of lost my train of thought there.
It very rarely happens on the show.
But, you know, it's going and performing, you know, digital clout and social clout versus talent clout, you know?
And a lot of them, you know, and it's that jump that it's like, I saw a pie graph a year or two ago and it said a musical, an artist would spend 80% on booking tours, getting shows and doing all that stuff and 20% on social media.
(32:27):
Now it's like 80% on social media and 20% on booking the tours.
And just in a conversation with Mariah, I rested in DJs the other day.
He's a great, phenomenal artist, but he's having this trouble breaking through because there's no middle management really here in Seattle.
And yeah, he can submit to all the booking agents around town, but they already got a roster.
(32:48):
So what's his overall bottom line dollar value?
We're going to book you on tour.
The booking agent is going to look and go, well, if I make 10% or 15% of what I'm going to book you on and I have an artist over here, I can take and make $100,000 a year and make 15 grand.
And I got 10 of those artists.
Okay, I'm making 150 grand a year, but I got to spend the same amount of time with you and I'm only going to make 20 grand a year.
(33:11):
Sorry.
So how do you, I'm not asking you that question rhetorically, I'm asking rhetorically, how does one break into that and become of commodity?
It says, hey, I sell out shows.
Book me, I sell out shows.
And that's it.
And I'm learning that and I'm really grateful for my PR, Nancy, because she's tough on me, but she's like, she knows what she's talking about because I started really applying myself to socials.
(33:40):
I'm a very organic person.
It's who I am, 360.
I hate social media, but it is a necessity in our career until a major wants to sign me or I just have a really big investor.
I have to really lean into that social media.
And since I have been, it's made the difference.
I have to be honest.
(34:01):
Yeah, it's something you got to manage.
I got the tools in the background to help me out, especially pumping out as much content that I have.
It's eight interviews a week.
It's exclusive mixes.
It's our mobile sessions for another four episodes.
So I got 12 to 16 episodes I'm pushing out every week.
(34:23):
Yeah.
And I can't just let that just, oh, it's on YouTube.
No, I mean, I have my social media tools that help me out.
It has to go out to all my socials.
I have to make sure everyone's tagged, like Meecah gets tagged with her Instagram and then it hits you and you're gonna say, oh yeah, this interview I was on.
And this cool tool that I have that we didn't get working today, I'm gonna talk to Restream, but we could tap in and get social views to your viewers and all that type of stuff.
(34:49):
It's a lot to manage.
It sounds like you're able to do this full-time though, which is awesome.
Yes, I am a full-time programmer.
There you go.
That is a blessing.
I definitely have the cushion of Hamilton and all the jobs that I've worked previously so that I can have this time.
I'm very grateful and blessed because some people do have to work other jobs and do this at the same time.
(35:13):
And I'm grateful I'm not in that position, but it's a challenge still, even with that luxury.
Yeah, in my own crew, I communicate using our communications platform and they're like, if I don't talk to them and give them the roadmap, they just see a lot of text messages coming through basically.
And they're like, there, you got all so many things going on, do, do, do, do, do.
(35:34):
I'm like, if you were in the office, I was doing a reality television show, you'd see 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, you would see this whole show that I got going on and this, that, this, you'd be able to piece it together.
I'm even thinking about making a bubble map,
like things, when I make something,
I go check the message,
see the bubble map of how this connects the dots,
(35:54):
or do they really have to worry about that
and let them know,
I'm pushing the brand forward,
I'm letting you know about it
because there's a lot of producers
and execs in my position
that they don't pass that information onto their team
so that people, their team gets a lot of,
I don't knows what's happening.
If they're, especially if they're not in a management or upper, you know, white collar, upper management role like that, they aren't in the communication pattern.
(36:18):
So I intend to have a very open door policy with my artists that I work with and people I work with.
I believe that's good for business, it's good for relationships and, you know, don't hide any secrets, except I do have a promise that I used to give away 98% of my information to people, but after Pandy, I put that down to 97% because a lot of people were asking me how to do this so they could become my competitors.
(36:42):
And I'm like, why don't you just work with me?
I've already got the infrastructure.
No thank you.
So going to stage,
going to your stage stuff that you do,
do you, and this is taking out obviously
the acting side of it,
but going on stage and being a performer,
do you become a different person when you get on stage
or are you a different person when you're off stage
(37:04):
or is Meecah, Meecah, and this is me
and I can just bust out in the middle of the streets
on 5th Avenue and here you go and walk away?
Or does that, how do you work with, how do you deal with that?
I really try to stay away from the idea of like an alter ego.
I do believe that both personalities, I guess, are a part of me.
(37:27):
I feel like just as you change yourself when you're having a conversation with your best friend versus your grandma, that's the same kind of place that I live.
I'm on stage now and so my objective is to perform and so that is what I'm doing.
When I'm not on stage, I want to be in sweats with no makeup on and eat the next vegan meal.
(37:50):
Like that's just who I am.
I do love the different type of energy that comes when I am on stage performing, specifically my music because I'm sharing something that I've written, something that means so much to me and it seems to be well received and that is something that I take pride in.
(38:10):
So of course I get a little more excited but as far as like I'm a different person, I think no, I think it's just who I am but I'm not going to bust out in Fifth Avenue.
No, I had somebody years ago
when I was working for Nordstrom's,
I had jobs in customer service, retail,
sales a lot growing up
(38:31):
and somebody came to me one day
and I never thought about it like this
because I'm there to do a job
and I was up on like the top honors of the company,
customer service, all-star board, pay setter,
all the sales goals and all that stuff,
same with Apple when I was with them
but I always enjoyed my job and did what I did
but I would hang out with my co-workers after work
and one time, this is years, almost like eight, 20,
(38:55):
wow, 28 years ago?
Okay, wow, long time ago but it stuck with me all this time and the girl says to me, she goes, Darran, how do you do it?
No idea what she was referencing to.
I go, how do I do what?
She goes, you're over here at your house, we're sitting here having some wine, we're kicking back, every other word that's coming out of your mouth is either F-bomb or S-bomb or something and da-da-da-da-da but when you hit that sales floor, you are a completely different person.
(39:20):
You are Mr. Customer Service, spot on.
We know because we sit back and watch you run from this department to this department to this department, you're kind of all a team, kind of watching what's going on.
I have kind of a loud voice, like my friend, she said my voice was normal when she was 100 feet away from me on a paddle board last night.
She goes, I can stand this voice.
I go, you mean this one?
Does this mean we have a long distance relationship?
(39:40):
She goes, yeah.
I go, okay.
She goes, I, it's a joke.
I get excited and I talk like, I'm Italian.
I'm like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Come on, I'm not trying to stereotype myself but that being said is, how do you turn it off?
And I go, what do you mean turn it off?
I don't turn it off.
I'm at work.
I'm not gonna act like this at work, but it's not, I don't have an alternate personality or ego that I walk in and go, Nordstrom sales activate.
(40:09):
I'm like, I know how to talk proper and kind and awesome and professional but I'm off the clock.
It's sweatpants.
No, well, I don't wear makeup, but actually that's not true.
When I'm having fun with my friend, we can kind of do some fun stuff.
But anyway, no, I mean, sweatpants is my common attire.
Kicking back, making food and watching movies and stuff is a lot of people think I'm an extrovert because of the show and the business I'm in.
(40:33):
And I do a lot of wild, crazy things, but really I can sit back and watch an anime or like binge watch or watch Netflix and chill.
And like, what's up?
So, yeah, but there's that personality.
Do you create an alter ego and that stage for it?
You're trying to sell this presence, but then behind the scenes, you're a different person.
(40:54):
You say, nope, you manage that awesome.
So I can relate with that.
Speaking of stage and backstage, who's the most inspiring person you've ever met backstage and why were they such an inspiration to you?
Hmm.
That's a hard one.
I've never been asked that actually.
(41:16):
I've met a lot of role models backstage.
I've had the honest pleasure of like working with Debra Cox and Wayne Brady and you got me.
You got me.
I feel, let me think.
(41:43):
I will say this.
I will say this.
Because the top of mind is Wayne Brady, I will say him.
He is, like you said, like very extroverted on camera, like very, just everything that you would imagine him to be, right?
But then when you're working with him, it is a very different thing.
(42:04):
It is more intimate.
It feels connected.
I felt like he was really invested in every scene that we had together.
I feel like our off work relationship is very genuine and I was very impressed because somebody of that stature and he's a household name, everybody of multi-generations knows who he is.
(42:26):
He was able and is able to maintain in my experience, humility.
And that is something that I really, really try to advocate for.
I'm a very proud Caribbean.
I'm a very proud African American and that can sometimes bleed into a lot of things.
And so we sometimes do have to practice toning that down.
(42:47):
And then when you get on stage, it just amplifies.
But Wayne Brady definitely, for me, exemplified grace and humility and that's something that I admire a lot.
Nice.
Yeah, you meet a lot of people in this industry and the one thing I can take away from it, I've every experience, it's been so hard.
They ask me, what's the best show you've ever had?
(43:10):
And I'm like, I got 2,700 and counting.
Every show has been awesome.
Who would I pick?
There is one memorable experience that I do have and share from time to time.
But every single one of them have been so phenomenal.
And the people you meet, we were just talking about that stage persona, but you get them off screen, you get them back screen.
(43:31):
Sometimes I scare people because they're all calm and I'm calm before I do an interview.
I'll be like, all right, cool, it's all good.
This is how it's gonna go.
And then I get on camera and it's five, four, three.
Welcome back to the DJ set.
And they go, shit, real interview?
Okay, I wasn't expecting that from this guy.
Because they don't usually get a chance to check out my shows when I'm backstage or on the red carpet of what's going on.
(43:55):
So it's kind of impromptu and they don't expect that professionalism just turn on and go boom.
But it's fun stuff.
But yeah, the sincerity or the...
I don't really encounter a lot of ego at the top levels.
(44:15):
If I've ever encountered an ego, they just were never on the show.
And I try to maintain a really good working relationships with the PR and booking managers so they know how well I'm working with their client.
So they're gonna let their other clients be on the show as well.
So I maintain a very high level degree of professionalism with people.
(44:36):
And what I love to sit down and have a glass of wine in the future or go to dinner with these people like, yo, this is cool.
But I'm also not a groupie like that.
I got a business and it's not, I don't try to take up their time and take my professional career and turn it into a fanboy or...
I have fanboyed a couple times in the past, like, oh, I'm gonna give a lead.
(44:59):
Yeah, but not very often.
It's pretty cool.
But most people are really chill and that's awesome.
You have that kind of relationship with Wade.
It reminds me that when I ever hear his name, it always clicks back to that whole Dave Chappelle segment that he did.
When he's in the bar with Tom.
Like, damn, that was funny.
Funny, funny as hell.
But going from stage to screen, are you able to talk about anything you have in the works?
(45:24):
And we know some of your stage stuff you've been doing in your bio and all that fun stuff.
But what do you have going in the screen?
You're working on, you say you want to move into movies and stuff.
Is there anything, any development deals in the way?
Anything you can talk about?
I know NDAs and all the studio and all that crap, but anything?
Currently, I am just auditioning.
(45:44):
And that is my reality today.
Tomorrow, I could get a call.
That's just the nature of the business.
But I am auditioning and I'm really excited about the projects that I'm auditioning for.
I've said no to a lot of things because I am very key on making sure that I am doing what's next and best for me and my career.
(46:04):
So I don't have anything in the works today.
But I am focused on making sure that the next thing that I do, do is transformative.
And I used to own a casting agency back in the day.
And- Did you?
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, it was short-lived.
But we had a number of talent on our series, got some jobs and we're working up.
(46:26):
This is 2005.
But is the process still the same where you show up for your audition with your comp card?
And everything's all digital now?
Everything's self-tape.
Yeah, which is hard.
Everything's self-tape?
Yeah.
Like you do a digital video and upload the video to them?
(46:48):
Yeah, you have somebody read the scene for you off camera.
You are at home.
I usually have like a blue background.
Oh, are they on like a Zoom now or?
No, you record it and you send it in.
Oh, okay, okay, yeah.
Because back in the day, we wanted to kind of refine that process.
Working for Apple, I knew how to build DVDs and video online wasn't there at all.
Of course.
(47:08):
And so instead of grabbing all the comp cards from all the agencies and coming back and then sorting them out into piles and then delivering them to the director or casting director, you know, I came up with this idea.
It's like, why don't we make a website?
We could put all the pictures of the people on the website, but we could also make a DVD of doing them all their reads.
And then we can send the DVD in and they could see the pictures of each person on the DVD and activate each one of those.
(47:34):
Pre-web, pre-video online technology, 2005, 2006.
Because I didn't see the web.
We didn't see YouTube coming out or video online like that coming out and let alone Zoom coming out and things or people recording video and do a lot for a few years.
So we thought we were gonna be on the forefront of the casting world of going, wow, we really like image productions because when we do a casting, they send us a DVD.
(47:58):
We can plop that in.
I mean, we were still working with VHS tapes back then.
And like, oh, and they'd have the camera in the room and hit record on the camera and then get a tape.
And then the thing is you'd have to scan through that whole tape to get to the audition down here at the end.
If you're already bored and have a stress that day, they could be a bad-ass person.
And be like, nah, I don't wanna watch this.
But you can look through all the pictures and go, we wanna see that person.
(48:21):
We wanna see that person.
And now if somebody really revolutionized that, they can do that online.
I don't know if it's still archaic or not in the industry, but it sounds like it got up to speed a little bit on there.
Yes, it's just a regular drop box.
Yeah, a regular drop box.
Like, here's my read.
There you go.
Now, going to performing on stage, you're on Hamilton, you're doing a lot of stuff on stage, you're doing sold-out shows.
(48:45):
What's the sweetest thing a fan ever has made for you or said to you?
I will see your scent and raise you in person.
I was in Canada and a fan flew out to Canada to see me perform.
Yeah, that was insane.
(49:06):
They are still very active on my Instagram and they are very like day one fan.
And they support me as an ex-Hamilton person and as a musician.
Everything I put out, they are very, very supportive.
But I came backstage one day, we walk out the back room and they go down to what we call stage door and she was there and she was like, Mina, I'm your biggest fan.
(49:32):
I've flown from this state to come see you in Ottawa, Canada.
And you are just an inspiration to me.
And that was a year and a half ago, two years ago.
And she's still so supportive.
Nice.
I will do whatever you can do to make your fans top priorities.
I'm doing it for her because she is such, she's like the reason I keep going sometimes.
(49:58):
Definitely, it's one of those things that a lot of sometimes social posts when I go to my personal Facebook and I'll put something out there just like, this is a big long post, get ready for it.
And just the end, it's like, and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for fans like you.
People tell me, dude, you keep going.
And I'm a person that believes in positive mental influence, putting a lot of stuff and people will come to me and go, Derrick, you were, I don't look for it.
(50:21):
I'm not looking for the ego stroking or the virtue signaling in any way, shape or form.
But just somebody comes along and go, like I took an eight and a half month hiatus up to last May, from this point last year till May, I was off the grid.
People were like, where'd he go?
What happened?
Like, you know, and I came back on with a furious vengeance.
Like I got to get back up and running and get everything going.
(50:43):
But people were like, we missed you.
Like seeing your daily posts.
You know, you're always out there positive, positive, making strides, going forward.
I don't get into drama or BS or politics or things like that that I could use my voice for, but I don't do that.
But I just like to be an inspiration to the next person that might, either they're a fan and they love what they see or if they're like, well, I want to do a podcast series or I want to do a live streaming series and, you know, help be an inspiration.
(51:09):
And that really does, that little push, just, yeah, it's nice to hear.
Nice to hear.
So how do you balance your career with your other obligations in life?
Other than chilling and sitting on the couch with no makeup and sweatpants, making food, what other things you got on?
(51:30):
You know, you got your career, full-time, awesome, but with other obligations in life.
I mean, hobbies, any things that you other like to do outside of this whole music business?
I think it's an ebb and flow.
There are days or weeks or months where I will go without acknowledging my personal life and that's unhealthy, but it's like die for the career.
(51:53):
But I typically now I'm starting a cycle of, you know, putting myself on a time schedule.
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I'm doing this related to work, 6 p.m. I'm just relaxing, 7 p.m. I'm going to the gym, you know, or reverse.
I'm starting at 7 a.m. going to the gym and doing this.
It's a good way to balance because I think so much of our culture, Gen Z and millennials, like we definitely believe in burnout.
(52:19):
Like we were raised on like, the show must go on.
Like one monkey doesn't stop the show.
Like, and it just completely tells us to forget about our wellness and health.
And that's also my brain.
Like I'm very much into wellness and health.
So I have to practice what I preach, right?
So I'm learning these days to breathe, take supplements, read into things before, you know, I participate and not really beat myself up for being tired because especially being in New York City, like you get burned out so quick.
(52:51):
Everybody has to hustle, bustle.
That is not changed.
So I'm just practicing every day, but it's a learning curve.
Mm-hmm, I can totally understand that.
2022, I decided to ramp up operations over here at the DJ sessions.
And I was, our current model was, just to relate to that is, you know, we were doing 40 emails a week for outreach.
(53:13):
I went to my VA.
I said, hey, we're going to step that up to 300 emails a week and see what happens.
And in the month of May, I booked like 47, 52 interviews.
My schedule was open Monday through Wednesday from like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mm-hmm.
Every hour on the hour, you know, in June, I had like 46 interviews, something like that in July.
(53:35):
And I came back and said, this is too much.
I'm not eating.
I'm not sleeping.
All the processing, all the back-end stuff that has to do to editing these shows or putting them up online was just too much.
And I came back and said, here's what I want to do.
It's Monday through Thursday, two times a day.
I can make exceptions of people like on tour and stuff like that if they're really not in position.
(53:55):
But yeah, it was just, I was like, okay, experiment worked, but damn, I wasn't ready for that.
You know, but now we know where our mechanism, our machine is.
I do want to increase that, but I increase it in increments.
Right.
And it is a Monday through Thursday thing.
I have my show that I do on Friday, Friday nights, but then I have weekends to- Relax.
(54:15):
Compress.
You know?
It's about sustainability.
And sometimes a lot of the back-end stuff is just hitting the right buttons and doing a lot of copy pasting stuff, but you have to do that.
Because I get backlogged and it's like, now I'm sitting here for two hours doing something where I could have taken 20 minutes and just finished it and got it off the plate.
You know, but definitely having that time management I think is a huge, huge thing for people to become successful.
(54:39):
And what I also got, I like showing this.
This only goes back to May 6th of 2025.
My to-do list.
Oh my goodness.
This is just from now until July now, this quarter.
Pretty much.
And I have a coffee table book, not that I'm pitching this, but I want to make one day.
(55:00):
And I think the title of it will just be to-do.
And it'll be different segments of all my to-do lists.
Like there's things in there like keywords I know.
I tried doing all this with interviews via on paper once, but now I got Calendly, which is just awesome.
It tells me set up everything.
But it could be a keyword that says laundry.
Okay, do the laundry.
Shave, shave.
(55:21):
Okay, cool.
But it could be just the name of a company, but that name of the company could be a long list of 85 things I want to talk with them about.
But that keyword is triggering me to make sure that I do that, cross it off, and then I have that conversation.
Emails went out, conversations start.
So I want to make that book and kind of have it like, okay, here's phase one, here's phase two, here's phase three, but here's all the to-do notes in between of what it took to make this successful.
(55:47):
It didn't happen overnight.
And there was a game plan.
The business plan is there.
Here's the to-do list to make that business plan happen.
Yeah.
Do you have any bad habits that are beneficial to your career?
Yes, I am a workoutaholic.
I love to hit the gym.
Sometimes I'll take two to three classes a day.
(56:09):
It's a bad habit, but it does keep my stamina up for sure.
During the pandemic, I decided to fall in love with fitness.
And my journey has been up and down, up and down.
And now I'm reaching a point of where healthiness and wellness meets results.
So I definitely have so much more to learn, but I'm obsessed with fitness, yeah.
(56:35):
And are you doing this in person or are you doing them virtually?
No, no, I take solid core classes.
I take Berries, which is a bootcamp.
Sometimes I'll just go to Planet Fitness and walk.
I love to walk Central Park, especially now that it's so beautiful outside.
I'll walk to the bottom and just get on the phone with a friend or just listen to the nature and people watch.
(56:57):
Anything to keep my body moving, because I know that when I hit 80 or 90, I wanna still be using my ligaments.
I'm very obsessed with Blue Zones.
I don't know if you've heard of them.
It's areas in the world where people are living from 90 upwards and they're healthy, they're doing what they need to do.
It's linked to diet, but also linked to fitness.
(57:19):
And when I read about that, I really decided to make that a part of, not only my music career, but also just my lifestyle.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, my dad turns 90 this year and you compare him next to another 90-year-old and he's the guy that can still kick the drawer shut with his leg from behind him.
(57:40):
He was very athletic growing up.
I grew up in a very athletic household.
My dad was a world-class athlete in sports and grew up in health clubs and all that fun stuff.
And so I, and my mom was a trainer of aerobics instructors.
They kind of launched aerobics back in the 80s to a huge health club chain on the West Coast here.
We're kind of in control of all that.
So grew up very health conscious in the family, in the household and all that stuff.
(58:04):
Do I practice a lot?
No, but I do go into VR and I got a VR workout program I'm starting to do.
It's really kick-ass, super excited to do that.
Yeah, maybe work off some of the candy that we talked about earlier.
Some of that, all you can eat buffet.
But speaking of going into food, working out a lot, what would you say the best restaurant is in New York to go to?
(58:25):
I know you have a certain menu palette, but you know what?
We used to have this really great vegetarian Chinese place not too far from where I live and they closed down during pandy.
And I was like, if you've got the General Tso's chicken, you thought you were eating General Tso's chicken but it was tofu.
It was so good.
It was so delicious and they went bye-bye and now I don't have anywhere to go.
What would you say the best restaurant in New York or in your neighborhood would be?
(58:48):
Hands Down, listen to me very closely.
Everybody zoom into the camera.
Hands Down is this place called Healthy as a Mother.
Their trademark is ham.
It is a Trinidadian and Dominican vegan restaurant.
It's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
And they, every time I take my carnivore friends or family members there, they can't believe that they're eating their food.
(59:13):
It's also like sustainable and it's healthier and it just tastes like home.
It's really great.
I would recommend their Bus Up Shut.
My partner loves their vegan steak.
It tastes just like steak.
And yeah, that's the best restaurant in New York City to me.
Hams, right?
(59:33):
Healthy as a mother.
Healthy as a mother, ham.
All right, I'm gonna check that out.
I may be coming there in September.
I may be pushing off to October.
We'll find out.
Gotta check on some booking dates, places to stay.
But it's been a great interview with you.
We're gonna wrap it up here.
Where's the, is there anything else you wanna share with our DJ Sessions fans that you'd wanna talk about, we didn't get a chance to talk about, reiterate or anything, plug in there?
(01:00:01):
Yeah, I'm just really grateful for the love and the reception of answers.
We are now at 20,000 streams on Spotify.
I'm very excited about that.
And I'm just really grateful for all the love they've shown me.
And I really want to continue to pour into that relationship.
I'm gonna have more music coming out for you.
So follow me on Instagram.
(01:00:23):
Follow me on TikTok, Spotify, and yeah.
What is the Instagram at mention and TikTok at mention?
It is at Meecah, M-E-E-N-C-A-H.
There we go, right there.
Boom, you know how we do it.
Awesome, well, Meecah, thank you so much for coming on the DJ Sessions.
Again, we will be following up with you, following your career.
(01:00:45):
We always love to invite our guests back on the series.
Hopefully get some of your music up on our site to share with our viewers as well.
We'll talk about that and more in the future.
And thank you again for coming on the DJ Sessions today.
Yes, thank you for having me.
You're welcome.
On that note, don't forget to go to our website, thedjsessions.com.
Go ahead and use that QR code right there.
(01:01:07):
Spam, snap it, do what you want.
Share it with a friend.
We have over 700 news stories a day, 2,700 plus past episodes, new music coming out, our virtual reality nightclub, mobile app, radio, site-wide radio player, possibly a radio station, internet station coming up here soon in the future.
But all of that and more in our socials, obviously are all there at thedjsessions.com.
(01:01:28):
I'm your host, Darran.
That's Meecah coming in from New York City.
I'm coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington.
And remember, on the DJ Sessions, the music never stops.
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