Today we’d like to introduce you to Heyobed.
Hi Heyobed, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia to parents who immigrated from Ethiopia to the United States in the 1990s. Growing up between cultures shaped my ear, my sense of language, and my understanding of identity early on. Those influences became part of how I listened to the world before they ever became part of how I created within it. Music has been embedded in my existence for as long as I could remember. Its presence that it has always had, from a child, felt as natural to me as speech or movement; something instinctive rather than learned. My mother has so many home videos of me, as a child, standing on kitchen counters and around the fireplace singing, dancing, and performing, turning rooms into stages and insisting on everyone’s attention. Even then, I seemed driven to perform well before I had the language to understand what that impulse meant. Long before I thought of myself as an artist, I was responding to sound, rhythm, and melody in ways that felt intuitive, almost inevitable. I could not stop. Singing, music, and movement became a private safe haven for me, a place where my emotions could live safely and where I could begin to understand myself without having to define myself.
I began pursuing music seriously in my teenage years, drawn not only to expression but to the discipline required to develop and sustain it. Writing, revising, and starting over became as essential to my process as performance. I joined choir at the age of 10, participated in talent shows throughout my early years going into my teenage years, and joined the musical theatre program at my high school; a formative environment where I was able to step into myself as a performer. Performing at state competitions in front of hundreds of people in the audience introduced me to a scale and intensity of presence and performance that I had not yet experienced at 16 besides the performances I would do outside of that where there were much smaller crowds, reshaping my understanding of embodiment, vulnerability, presence, and command. Alongside this, I was already writing and recording music independently in my bedroom and experimenting with how sound, movement, and art intersected with how I wanted to express myself. That path was rarely linear but fluid. There were points of uncertainty but those moments sharpened my understanding of what kind of artist I wanted to become and what it meant to work with intention rather than urgency. From there, my work became more intentional; rooted in discipline, repetition, and a willingness to evolve.
As I got older, that relationship deepened and grew more intensely. Music became both a refuge and a confrontation. I started performing at bars in Atlanta while simultaneously recording and writing records that I could stand by and released my debut single, Kiss Me Now, in 2023 the night of Valentine’s Day which is a sultry, emotionally charged record and a moment that felt like my first real step out of the private space I’d been creating in. A year later at 21, I had the opportunity to perform and open up in Los Angeles at The Virgil, performing Kiss Me Now, which was an experience that clarified my relationship to scale, presence, and audience. It affirmed that the work I had been shaping in isolation could hold its own and resonate in a room which ignited the fire in me even more! At this stage of where I am at with my music, my focus has shifted toward refinement. I’m more committed to clarity. The body of work that I have been working on for a while now reflects that evolution. It carries emotion in a way that feels powerful and present. It represents a deeper alignment with who I have arrived to be at this point based on all of what I’ve been through and what I’ve grown to realize about myself as an artist.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
To ask whether it’s been a smooth road feels unrealistic. It definitely hasn’t been. The process is inherently nuanced nowadays when it comes to chasing your goals and your dreams as a musician especially in an industry that rewards immediacy, while real growth requires time. Learning how to live inside that tension, balancing ambition with patience, has been one of the more formative struggles in my journey so far. There have been periods of self-doubt, both on a personal level and in relation to my work largely because of how deeply I care about what I do, create, and the standard I hold it to. Developing and putting discipline in place has required a lot of sustained intention.
Going through depression has probably been one of the most difficult experiences I have had to navigate with, particularly a little while after coming back from LA last year, especially when you feel helpless and feel as though nobody can spark you back up to where you need to be. I felt very isolated and alone. It inevitably bled into the way I viewed my work. My confidence began wavering and it started to affect my mobility. I feel that I put a lot of pressure on myself to just deal with struggle internally and figure it out which has kind of been my life to a degree. I don’t air out a lot of internal struggles or trauma dump on people and I keep a lot of things to myself. Although, my friends offered support, it didn’t immediately lift the weight.
However, it’s not solved all at once. I came to a realization that progress wouldn’t come from being “fixed” but from staying engaged. I had to stop waiting for clarity to arrive first and learn how to get my work to exist alongside the struggle. As I learned to be more patient with myself and the process, the weight of it began to dissipate gradually. In addition, translating my art in a way that feels completely authentic to me has been a continual task. Learning how to write my truth more honestly, learning how to understand structure without being confined by it, and to remain fearless in my expression have all been essential parts of that process. I’d like to say that my creativity tends to be all over the place and all in one place at the same time. Experimenting sonically, trusting my instincts, and believing that the work that I’m creating is sufficient have all been a part of that struggle. Working on the project set to be released in the new year has been such an awakening. Things I had long avoided slowly but surely began coming to the surface, ultimately strengthening this body of work.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
At my core, I am a singer, song-writer, and performer. I’m an artist. I’m a student of the game. What I am most proud of is my relentless commitment to honesty when it comes to myself as a human being and as an artist. There is a steadfast energy that I have with my art and with myself that is unshakeable, no matter what’s going on around me or who tries to make me feel otherwise. That clarity with who I am, what I know myself to be, and what I know I can do has created a confidence and a deeper connection with myself. What sets me apart would most likely be the way I approach identity and expression without dilution. I don’t separate who I am with what I create. I am more interested in creating work that hits the nerve and lingers. In addition, I have never really been driven or had an incessant need to be understood or to fit in. I have always stuck to being myself in all spaces and never try to be anything but that. My focus has always remained the same when it comes to my work and who I am as an artist. I strive for resonance and hitting the nerve.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I’d say a quality essential to my success would be self-trust. My ability to stay anchored in my instincts, even when outside noise threatens to distort or distract the work, is critical. That grounding that I have protects my passion and keeps my priorities consistent, aligned, and focused on longevity. What’s equally important is my willingness to sit through discomfort. Going through adolescence and transitioning into early adulthood is a very layered time, especially being an artist, because a lot of growth is happening. I view it as the testing period. It requires patience, tunnel-vision level of focus, self-acceptance, and hard work. I feel that refinement happens in ways that we can’t always see because it’s happening inward. I’m committed to my own individual process and I feel that consistency that I have cultivated within myself is what allows the art to not lose its center. My debut project, The Blindness Stings, feels like a coming-of-age and is a reflection of where I’ve arrived at this stage in my life that I’m so excited to share with the world and everything that it’ll come with and bring.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyobedx/?hl=en
- Twitter: https://x.com/heyobedx
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@heyobed
- Other: https://linktr.ee/heyobed
