Ayella Robert aka NuveyShawn recounted a rocky journey while trying to pursue his passion as a Hip Hop artist that prompted him to set up a few blogs to promote his music and for fellow artists.
The writer, record producer, poet and teacher when contacted in an interview with The Groove Cafe host Crystal Newman said that after several years of writing music, he finally learnt how to produce his own musical beats, but he had to hustle to get them recognized.
“On my birthday on February 28th 2015, I decided to release my first mixtape with 16 songs. I reached out to blogs and they told me, well we've seen your work and we shall post it’ I waited hungrily because in 2011, I had submitted a CD to HOT 100 and no one paid attention to it, no feedback or anything. So I was like this is not going to happen to me the second time,” he said.
“I waited till around March 13th without feedback but I wanted everything to happen so fast. At that time there was a platform called The Tribe Ug, and they were the only ones fairly covering Ug Hip Hop. I remembered that I had been blogging about unrelated things. Since I had a web designing background, that's how I started up nuveyshawn.com and NuveyLive,” he added.
From a young age, NuveyShawn was inspired by Hip Hop music gods like Drake and instantly jumped on the train when the genre blew up in the country around 2007 and 2008 playing on popular radio stations in Uganda and on the HOT 100.
As a teenager, NuveyShawn started mimicking and miming the songs in high school as well as doing freestyle battles and writing before he finally hit the studio in 2011.
After taking an off from music for a few years to focus on school, he once again went back to studio in 2014, recording his first song Rhoda (Reality Has Opened Doors Already) which played first on Radio City.
“In 2015 I decided to work on a mixtape known as The Sunset Encounter after I had encountered the light and was doing everything with a lot of thought without thinking of the issues that were coming ahead of me because I felt that it was so long. The space between 2007 and 2014 was quite a long gap for a person who was doing writing and doing performances here and there, I thought that it was so long because Bow wow blew up like at nine and I wanted to equally blow up at around 12,” he said.
He recognized that, this was in exception of the fact that his parents weren't as financially well off to support him. His thoughts didn't stop but he put together a number of projects, trying out different beats and getting in touch with a number of different producers via Twitter. This enabled him to acquire his skills in producing to the creation of NuveyShawn and NuveyLive websites.
Currently, NuveyShawn runs an online radio that runs Hip Hop music shows and a podcast known as NuveyLive formerly known as Hip Hop Uganda and now he also hosts events and promotes upcoming musical artists.
The Groove Cafe with Crystal Newman airs every Weekday from 4-5pm on RX Radio.
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