Today we’d like to introduce you to VANCE.
Hi VANCE, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I feel like when creatives are asked this question, they always go to ‘I’ve been doing music since I was 3, in a choir.’ That’s not quite my story, I’ve always known I’d be successful in some form, but at first, it wasn’t music. My first passion was football. I thought I was going to the league. I trained, worked out, practiced, played, every single day. However, my family moved around so much, I could never really get comfortable with any team after the first one.
That led me to writing. I connected with music. I’ve always had a talent writing poetry. I loved writing poetry. Then I started noticing that writing a song was just like poetry. And once I started, I never looked back, and that was back in 2008-2009.
My early inspirations were Travis Porter and Wale. So my music would be lit, and poetic at the same time haha. For whatever reason though, I stopped writing for a minute in 2015 and started focusing on business. Entrepreneurship. That lasted until late 2016, and I was back. My original dream was to write for other artists because I didn’t think I’d like being on stage.
That original dream faded when I realized how difficult it was to get someone to let you write for them with nothing to show for yourself. In 2020, during everything, my wife and I found out we were having a baby. Then finding out it was a boy. That just lit a huge fire under me to pursue my dreams so that he and his brother could have the best life. So, 30 days after Josiah was born, I released ‘Change Your Life’. Then once I found out my 5-year-old, Caden, LOVES my music and supports every song, the rest was history.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
NO! Haha. There has been nothing smooth about this journey. It’s a cute story to say my son was an inspiration to follow my dreams, but you know when you’re on the path God wants you to be on, it will never be easy. I believe the biggest challenge is managing time. Time between family and passion.
During my first album, Fuel to the Fire, I was under such a time crunch for myself that I would literally work on the album ALL DAY for like 4 months straight. I had the album prepared for release on a certain date in July, the distributer literally never put the project out. So for the next 2 months, I wouldn’t record anything or very little, and ended up realizing how absent I’ve been to my family. Lesson learned.
Another difficult thing is getting my wife to understand the future. She’s a terrible visionary, and most of my life is visualizing things that aren’t there. So trying to help her see the picture I was painting has been a struggle as well.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m an US Afrobeat artist. I like to think of myself as a pioneer in US Afrobeat. My goal is to really change the game though. Create a new genre, if you will. Kinda like Capella, what’s he’s doing for the industry is wicked, and I’m on that path as well. We’re actually talking in our music. Like, saying shit that people connect with versus just guns and drugs and cars and scamming. I’m just doing it on the Afrobeat, Afro-R&B vibe. It’s about to be crazy.
Nobody else is touching this right now.
How do you define success?
I’m successful now. I don’t have a big picture view of success because that gets scary when you don’t see yourself close to it. So success to me comes in small little pieces along the way. So basically, accomplishing any goal or task is success for me.
Contact Info:
- Email: Industryvance@gmail.com
- Website: offcampusmg.com Coming Soon
- Instagram: Instagram.com/vance4l
Image Credits:
Ryant Sims
