Today we’d like to introduce you to Treble NLS.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story is one of someone who beat the odds. I grew up in the “Homewood” neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. It was once an accepted truth amongst the hood that we wouldn’t make it past 18, and if we did our cut-off point was 21. That’s how violent things were at a point in time. I even took part in the violence myself for the sake of protection, but one thing I knew since age nine was the fact that I wanted to do something with rap. Ever since learning about poetry in 4th grade, I spent long nights writing in attempt to perfect my craft. I joined online forums for battle rap and got a few bars off for practice.
By the time I hit 15, I had notebooks full of raps. That’s when I learned of an organization by the name of Center of Life (COL). They had a program called The KRUNK Movement that gave young artists like myself the opportunity to work on and showcase my talent and be paid for it. That’s where my performance journey began. While in the program, I met a rapper by the name of Ron. We became tight because I respected his pen HEAVY. He was from a neighboring hood called Lincoln, and historically our hoods don’t get along. That made our friendship that much more monumental. He would eventually create a movement by the name of NLS that meant “Next Level Shit” at the time. It was a movement that challenged us to “make our next thing our best thing” (shoutout Pastor Tim Smith, the founder of COL). It later evolved to mean Never Lose Sight as we were striving towards greatness and didn’t want to forget the goal. I had reached a point where I was coaching AND playing the game of performance art due to how well I had excelled in my craft.
Once I left the KRUNK Movement, I was tasked with creating my own name in my city and building up my craft on my own. I never lost sight of the vision and would later end up a lead teaching artist with 1Hood Media. Through my relationship with 1Hood, a plethora of doors opened up to me. To name a few; I produced the score for a play titled “Pipeline”, met a pop artist by the name of Brittney Chantelle who I would later write and produce for on multiple projects, and was invited to recite a poem at a protest in response to the murder of George Floyd that would later get picked up by Ryan Lowe of Public Source and win me my very first Emmy. Now this rapper from Homewood, Pittsburgh, PA can say that he is a multi-hyphenate Emmy Award Winning artist with many more accomplishments to come.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road at all. One of the hardest things along the way would be to define who I was. I’m looking at business models where a specific niche can be attributed to the success of a brand, but my dilemma was defining my niche when I feel too multifaceted to define. I had dabbled in acting, played instruments, gained production credits on plays and musical projects, written and taught poetry, dabbled in energetic healing, and pretty much followed my heart wherever it wished to take me. It was hard to accept that I had multiple niches. Especially in a world that tells you how difficult it can be to stretch yourself too thin. This identity crisis was only one of a plethora of struggles. Another struggle I faced was a declining mental health in the year 2017. I was becoming aware of the world and myself for what felt like the first time. I had a lot of judgments. A lot of egoic thoughts telling me what should and shouldn’t be. It eventually led to a yearning to be liberated from the struggles of the world in whatever way was most accessible to me, and at the time it felt like suicide was the easiest route. After an unsuccessful attempt, I would go on to spend a week and some change in the mental hospital working on my safety plan. The hardest part of my journey was realizing that NLS extended to more than just my music. I had to accept responsibility over how I show up in the world and ask myself a lot of hard questions about the impact I wanted to have versus the impact I was having. I had to face some difficult emotions and go through the excruciatingly hard process of breaking bad habits and replacing them with more helpful ones. I vowed to adopt a growth mindset and love on myself unconditionally, and that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. There’s a lot of grief in that process. A lot of shame and guilt as well. I had to fall in love with the journey and trust that the outcome would be in my best benefit, even if I couldn’t envision it, as long as I stuck to the hard work.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As I mentioned before, I am a multi-hyphenate artist who has explored multiple disciplines. I’m very proud of the fact that I can say that. Sometimes my list of work is too extensive to mention in one sitting. I started out as just a rapper. I became a performing/teaching artist when I was 15. I would perform around the city of Pittsburgh while also teaching kids much younger than me the art of the craft. When I got to college, I learned to engineer from my roommate at the time. He had his own studio set up, and that was the first time I had ever considered recording and mixing my own music. It saved me so much money and allowed me the space to experiment with my sound until I found a tonality that worked for me. I later ventured into production in 2018 when I found myself with more instruments than I knew what to do with. This gave me a platform to take my stories to the next level and truly express myself through every piece of the music from the production to the lyrics and even the mix.
I’m known around my city for the storytelling aspect of my music. People note how my performances always captivate them in the same ways theater does. My art and theater intermix a lot. It was through musical theater that I found my stage presence in high school. It was also through a partnership between 1Hood Media and City Theater that gave me a shot at producing/writing the score for a play. This showed me the different avenues I could travel down musically and eventually turned into me writing and coproducing for a pop album by the name of “Fire on Venus” by Brittney Chantele. I would later produce the score for a dance recital with Brittney called “Lion and Lamb” which turned into a musical titled “Milton”. I’m heavy on experimenting creatively and pushing your boundaries as an artist. This is what led me to accept Ryan Lowe of Public Source’s invitation to turn my poem, “Don’t Clip Our Tails” into a video that would later earn an Emmy. I’m most proud of the creative risks I’ve taken and the accomplishments that came to be as a result. I create from an intention to embody the NLS message. Never Lose Sight that you can do Next Level Shit.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson I’ve learned along my journey is the lesson of authenticity. It is of vital importance not just as an artist but as a human being to be completely authentic and true to yourself. It’s through that authenticity that we can take the reigns of life and begin to use intention as a tool to select the direction we’d like to go. You have to connect with who you are, what you love, and what lights you up. Joy is a radical act of self-love that can arise from getting to know your own unique heart. I used to think I had to box myself in to be successful. I was ashamed that I got kicked out of college until I realized that the unique path I was on didn’t require formal education. I was ashamed of how difficult it was to box myself in until I fell in love with the expansive nature of my spirit. Without authenticity, I would’ve been living a life I felt I should be living based off of external standards rather than intentionally building the life I want to live based on internal thoughts and feelings. Authenticity helped me to connect with my internal locus of control and take control over the way I live my life. It helped me to see that life happens, but it doesn’t happen to me. I will always have the power to choose how I respond to life. Stephen R. Covey opened my eyes to this beautiful power we have as humans in the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” when he stated, “Responsibility is response ability. It’s our ability to choose how we respond to life’s uncontrollable circumstances. Now I live my life from a standpoint of radical responsibility that focuses my attention to the role I play in building the world we know.
Pricing:
- Performance Services ($500+)
- Production services ($500+)
- Workshops/Speaking Engagements ($1,000+)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/treblenls
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treblenls/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trebleminded/?ref=bookmarks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/treblenls
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCelnvF6IS1_itOYSx6C5Sdg
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/reb1e
Image Credits
– Nathanielle Louis – Emmai Alaquiva – Victor Musgrove – Maxine Kelly
