ARTIST PREMIERE: Meet whoswyLee
You know those people who have that power to capture and turn the energy of a room all the way up? That’s whoswyLee, the Johannesburg-based singer-songwriter (and sometimes rapper). Not only does whoswyLee have the dazzling ability to capture all attention, but she is unquestionably known as one to rock the mic and the stage.
whoswyLee’s journey as an artist began early. Before her formal debut in 2017, she wrote hundreds of songs in different journals over the years. She formally hit the scene in 2017 with her debut single ‘voicenote_105,’ a song that has since garnered more than 12k streams on Soundcloud. Her second single, ‘Inside out’, had nearly 3x the success of her first. whoswyLee has a voice that can masterfully navigate the genres of R&B and Hip-Hop alike, her creative ability allows her to write, record, produce and perform songs that simultaneously feel familiar, exploring feelings and scenarios that we all know, while still striking the listener as something new, someone special.
Though still early in her career, whoswyLee has made a name for herself as a master of any stage. She has opened for Mykki Blanco, D.R.A.M., bbymutha, Dounia, and AlunaGeorge and performed on Huffington Post Black Voice's BARS. Since then, she has headlined her own show at Alphaville in Brooklyn, New York.
“Stop pretending like you don’t dream about me” - whoswyLee sings in her newly released single ‘DREAMGIRL’.
The single, a blend of masterfully layered soulful vocals and bar after bar, is whoswyLee’s first self-produced track. Blk Girl Culture had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with whoswyLEe to talk about her new single DREAMGIRLS for the spectacular premiere of the song’s video:
Read our full interview with whoswyLee:
BGC: Hi, whoswyLee! Firstly, congratulations on the release of your new single ‘Dreamgirl' single and video. We’re excited to introduce you and your beautiful work to our readers.
What should the Blk Girl Culture audience know about you?
whoswyLee: Hello, dear readers of Blk Girl Culture! I am so so excited that you are engaging with the noise that I am putting out into the world. I am whoswyLee – a Zimbabwean girl born and raised in South Africa. I have been making/writing music since about 2017.
BGC: Tell us about your name… how did whhoswyLee come to be?
whoswyLee: My name is a long journey (laughs) I’ll try to do this as quickly as possible. For a long time, I couldn’t find a name that fit me. For a minute, I thought I would just go by my first name, “Vanessa,” and then one day I was in the studio with my manager at the time working on some writing and he goes, “please pass the pencil bay b. Bop” and I was like “wait, that’s mad cute!” So I was bay b. Bop for some time.
I soon realized that felt too childish. Fast forward, I went back home to South Africa for the summer of 2018, and that summer for me was the summer of Swae Lee(eyes emoji). I was obsessed with him. He was all I was listening to. I started playing with his name and for whatever reason, I thought of Wile E. Coyote, the cartoon character, and thought, “...Cool cool cool! Wile E, that sounds fun.” I changed the spelling and stylization a little so that it would be one word and resemble Swae Lee’s, but I didn’t want to choose between names (bay b. Bop and wyLee), so I thought it’d be funny to feature myself on tracks, (enter bay b bop feat. wyLee lmao).
Fast forward some more to senior year of college and I had outgrown bay b. bop entirely. In the summer of 2019, I started to go by “feat. wyLee.” exclusively. At this stage, I had changed all my social media to @whoswylee, because people were always asking me “Who’s wyLee?? We know your bay b.bop but who is wyLee???” And I would never give them an answer. But then TuneCore and I got into an epic email battle (laughs) about my artist name being feat. wyLee because they were confused if I was a featuring artist or the main artist. It got to a point where the back and forth with them was going to delay my release, so I caved, I folded and became “whoswyLee.” So it’s truly s/o to TuneCore for the name. I am their son.
whoswyLee
BGC: As we mentioned, we are currently loving your newly released single and video, Dreamgirl. Tell us a little about the song and the process of writing and producing it?
whoswyLee: So Dreamgirl was written after a FaceTime I just had with the person I wrote it about. And so, I hopped off the phone with [redacted] and I was feeling all of the things and instead of sending a DM or a paragraph in his iMessage, I decided to write and put music to my feelings. I hopped onto miss Logic, started a new blank project, and the bassline was the first thing that came to me –– it grew from there. I don’t even know how many hours I worked in my room, but by the end of that stint, I had everything done. I had recorded demo vocals, backing vocals, and produced the whole beat. Just about everything you hear in the current final version was finished in that one session. By the end of it, I felt so good and clear. It felt like a therapy session, honestly.
And then I tucked it away for a little bit. I was very protective of it because it was the first song I had produced completely myself that I felt proud of. I knew the song felt like something I wanted to hear out in the world. Sidenote: I tend to sound like whatever I’m listening to at the time, and so it may come as no surprise that I was listening to a lot of Rico Nasty, specifically [her song] Ice Cream at the time. It was one inspiration for Dreamgirl.
But yeah, so I tucked it away. I didn’t want anyone to touch my baby. Then finally, in my senior year of college, some friends and I decided to polish the song up so that we could start making a music video for Dreamgirl. That wound up never happening so we shot the entire video using the demo version. And then after the video, my friend came to me and was like, “You know, V, this could be so much better. The song is great but we could take it to a new level.”
By then it had been a year since I wrote Dreamgirl in the summer of 2018, and so I was feeling a bit more open and flexible. I was interested to see what this new level could potentially sound and look like. We ended up reproducing the whole other track. It sounded completely different. There were guitars involved. It was more a ballad. I was singing a lot more. But then I was playing it for my boyfriend at the time and he was like, “the demo version is really it, it’s better.” I was like, “Honestly bro I think you’re right, you peep the vision.”
So we scrapped everything we had worked on for months and went back to the demo version and then started polishing it up, giving it new life, which is where Krishna Canning really came in as a co-producer. Krishna also mixed and mastered it ––did a killer job.
Once we finished the audio in March 2020, we sent it back to the video team and they began the editing process throughout this quarantine. So it has actually been a year since we recorded the video, but it just feels right. Even looking at it now, it feels like everything came together the way it should have, and I’m super grateful that the entire process has been incredibly collaborative. It doesn’t just feel like my baby, it feels like all of ours [my team]. I am incredibly grateful that it became a platform for all of us to explore our artistry and an opportunity for everyone who has worked on the project to demonstrate what’s at the core of themselves.
A still from whoswyLee’s video for DREAMGIRL.
BGC: The video and song for DREAMGIRL are such a vibe. If you had to describe the project in three words, which would you use?
whoswyLee: Pink, glittery, and wyLee, honestly. It feels very wyLee to me.
BGC: So, you hit the music scene in 2017 but have long been a songwriter. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and your development as an artist.
Word, so really what jump-started my career are a few important checkpoints. This is embarrassing to admit, but the first was when I went to this JIL show. I remember it was in Brooklyn, at Spike Lee’s studio or something called “40 acres and a mule”. I will never forget [laughs]. I was a baby freshman in college, and I was excited just to be out in New York. I went with my friends Jenny and Iyobosa. S/o to both of them. I love them so much. And it was such an experience. I had never been in a live performance where I felt so... captivated. It was like “This too much. What is happening to me lmao?'' It’s embarrassing lmao. We were fangirling at the time.
Afterwards, I was speaking to this girl I had known from school who said she was their manager. I was like, “Woah! People my age are managing artists? Wow.” So the idea of getting involved in the music industry at that point in my life became real to me. And so then, my friend Jenny has a beautiful voice. We were on the same floor freshman year and she has the type of voice where she would sing in the shower and people would stand outside her door to listen. Such an incredible voice. And at that stage, I didn’t think much of my voice. I just thought I sang enough to write and the writing was for me. So then I was like “Jenny, let me manage you. I’ve got to.” And she was like, “Word, I’m down!” We really thought we were gonna GET. IT. (Laughs). We thought New York was ours. And, at that stage, she didn't really write her own music, so I was like, “I got you. I’ll write.” so I started writing for Jenny.'
“This whole journey has been very important in terms of working through certain forms of validation that I have received in the past.”
And the music thing was becoming more and more real. It wasn't until December of that same year - I was literally failing intro to ChemE. I had put in days and days of work on a final, and KNEW I walked out of it failing. I retreated to my room to cry, but happened to hop on Twitter and see people talking about Chance The Rapper’s performance at the White House. So I decided to check out a video and... When I saw Chance performing... I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. He just looked so full, so in his element and I was like that’s what I should be doing. I should be making music, making people feel things, making myself feel things.
And this whole journey has been very important in terms of working through certain forms of validation that I have received in the past. I loved being referred to as the STEM daughter and the Black girl in engineering, blah blah blah and all that that would do for me. And would always hear from my parents that my engineering mind was going to take me places, but there was no real appreciation for other parts of me (at least where considering a career was concerned). So I thought of all that, and then I looked at Chance and was like, “All of these stem people, my parents — I know they would love to be invited to the White House! Wouldn’t they? Lmao. But it’s not them. It’s Chance. And that’s not to say that my goal is to get to the White House, because it’s not at all. I’m not interested in measuring my success by my proximity to symbols or pillars of white, and colonial power, but that was an important realization for me— that I can “go places'' and it can be on my terms. And really, wherever you’re trying to go, get there being all of yourself as opposed to whatever people have decided for you. So that was a very important moment. So after that performance, I dried my eyes, went down to find one my best friend’s Tyler and was like “We should start a collective.” lmao. And that’s how Thou Shalt Not Ent. was born. What’s funny is that he was also a ChemE major.
So from there we just started tapping a bunch of my friends that were in very similar positions— crying their way through ChemE, or Bio, or whatever and were so talented at something else and never had the opportunity to nurture or celebrate that talent. So we started the collective to give our friends an opportunity to be that side of themselves. TSN doesn’t really exist anymore... But it also did that for me.
BGC: Your singles have already garnered tens of thousands of streams and your first EP ‘Venus’ is on the way... how does it feel to be on the heels of the release of a project so near and dear to your heart?
whoswyLee: So, I have been trying to put Dreamgirl out for two years. At the time, about a year and a half ago, there was this project called “Venus” and I actually have a lot of music that was meant to go towards that project. But I’ve continued to grow and develop as an artist. I have tapped into creative parts of myself that I did not know where there at the time that I was conceptualizing Venus. So I have a whole other project in mind now which is far away still because I don’t have the resources to make her reality yet. But Venus itself or herself now has become more of a reference in some of the music I make. I am so grateful for what that project was going to be because it got me to a particular point and everything beyond has been a springboard from that point.
whoswyLee performing.
BGC: Your sound in the past has been a complex myriad of genres, a combination of soulful vocals and R&B/dream pop beats. On Dreamgirls you surprised us with some bars... what can we expect to hear on your next project?
whoswyLee: First of all, I love the idea of dream bop/pop beats. I am going to be using that lmao. As to the bars of Dreamgirl, I am very curious if it’s a surprise because people don’t think I rap much or because people assumed that a song that sounds like Dreamgirl wouldn’t include a rap. I have rapped on other songs like “Timeless” etc. But I guess that was more of a “rap nigga beat” lmao. I’m not sure where the surprise is, but really I enjoy exploring and playing around. I am a songwriter at my core. Before I am a performing artist, I'm a songwriter so I’m always interested in making the best possible song and so if I write something, and it’s like this verse is demanding me to rap, then that’s what I’ll do. And if it’s demanding me to sing, then that too. I’m a huge believer in sitting back and hearing what the song is telling you to do. As opposed to imposing a sonic or stylistic direction. With this song, it just felt like most of the lyrics there were to be rapped instead of sung. But I also mentioned that there’s also a version of Dreamigirl that was more ballad-like because that production demanded that of me.
I think what you can expect from me is to constantly be flowing with the demands of whatever musical collaborations I am involved in. If you hear me in some of my friends' music, I sound completely different because you know it’s whatever is required of me at the time. But also, I am looking forward to letting people get to know me as a vocalist. When I started writing, I didn't think of myself much as a vocalist. In the beginning, I was like, “I write.I don’t really sing... So I must be a rapper!” But I’m not really in that headspace.. I do want to bring vocal wyLee to the forefront more. But yeah more of whatever the music requires., in whatever genre that is.
BGC: Let’s talk about performing. We had the pleasure of having you host and perform at our Blk Girls Create event last spring and you blew us ALL away.
Did performing come as naturally as songwriting? Tell us about one of your favorite performance experiences.
whoswyLee: You know what, I actually really loved the BGC event because it felt very earnest and very heartfelt, and it was beautiful watching other people bring all of themselves to a space in a way... perhaps in a way that they haven’t been able to before (seemingly). That’s how it felt.
A lot of the work I’ve been trying to do as a performer... Well, I have a background in public speaking and leading the church choir and so it comes naturally to me to put on a show, but what I’m trying to get better at doing is connecting with my music is a live setting. To be more present. How does my body want to move right now? I want to be answering that question while on stage and allowing the stage to be a new place of discovery for my music. What things come alive to me that weren’t there before? But also for some songs, like Dreamgirl, it’s as simple as just having a great time! When performing that song
I want to access what it would be like to dance to it alone in my room after a long day. I also want to makes sure that I’m making genuine connections with the audience because there have been performances where it felt like I was on autopilot. I’ll look at videos later and it's like, “Damn. It looks like I was having such a great time! I wish I was there for that.”
The BGC event was a performance where I really felt tapped into myself, where I was on stage. But also I’m a big talker, as this interview will expose lmao, so I just love hosting, performing, MCing-- any opportunity to make noise lmao.
Other performances that go down in history for me? When I opened for bbymutha and Dounia and I loved how that performance made other people feel. It was a very stressful performance for me, personally, but I loved watching videos back and seeing what a moment it was for people. I loved that.
BGC: Are there any fellow artists that you think folks need to check out? Any artists that you dream of collaborating with?
whoswyLee: They are so, so talented and a huge inspiration of mine. I also really want to write for some artists. There are some songs where I’m like, “Damn this person would do it so much better!” I’ve had this dream of Beyoncé singing inside out. Imagine that! Do you know what I mean? lmao. I would love to collab with Charli xcx, Yung Baby Tate, MUVA C, Liv.e, Blood Orange, Moses Sumney, St. Beauty, Chloe x Halle, if they’ll have me lmao.
So many others. So many of my friends I want to collab with! Amiri, Jah, Kidd AM, matt— shoutout my niggas! They’re so talented go peep them on Soundcloud. But yeah there are so many Black girls I want to collab with... Melanie Faye…
BGC: Finally, for those who want to keep up with you–- what can we expect next from you? And where should we go to keep up to date with whoswyLee?
whoswyLee: Due to the circumstances and the pandemic we’re in and the fact that I am going back to South Africa very soon, I am going to be separated from my creative network for a while. And it might take me a while to find my footing. So I think you can expect a lot of demos, engaging you guys online, a podcast hosted on WCKR online called “wyLee’s Sleepover.” I want to establish a sense of online community and be accessible to people. And you can find me on IG, witness me be a hot mess on Twitter, if that’s what you’re into lmao. @whoswylee on all platforms.
Also check out my website that my wonderful talented bug brained publicist made whoswylee.com
Stream whoswyLee’s newest track Dreamgirl on Apple Music and Spotify.
whoswyLee
