Boston-bred talent talks about his upbringing and following his passion.
Naeve on freestyling:
For me the process of creating music starts with freestyling, growing up my older brother was a rapper first, he would freestyle and when he's done it's my turn to go or He would whoop my ass, so that's how I started that habit, but it allowed me to be free, open, and true to the emotions I'm feeling and hearing inside my head as oppose to trying to write something on a piece a paper to bring it to life.But for me the reason why I do this has always been the same, there's nothing like the feeling you get, when you and the engineer are listening to the sound you two created, and you connect to this vibration naturally, and say wow.. we created that?! I could do it over and over again.
Naeve's latest EP on all streaming platforms .
Boston-bred artist was born in Boston but as a baby, when his parents split he moved with his mom to Portugal and CV, and his Dad stayed in Boston. He stayed in Portugal until he was 4, during that time is the only time he stayed with his mom who was a singer.
Boston Culture: How did you get your inspiration? How did you grow up? Who are the artists or people that influenced you?
Naeve: I would watch her practice, write songs, we would sing together. Then I had to go to Cape Verde in the Praia island, where I stayed with my Dads mom until I was 9. CV is a 3rd world country where it's normal to walk and play outside bare feet, share food with friends or family on the same plate, pass the same cup to a friend to drink from even. But in those times where I was poorest, was the happiest time of my life I remember, we were poor but we had each other, family, n friends. We would build real toys using cans and Pepsi bottle caps and create toy cars, toy guns, everything. Then finally I came back to Boston and stayed ever since, but the music was already Imprinted To me through my mom, it was already my hobby, and in a sense it was the only thing that connecting me to my mom ever since I had left her. I would always sing, rap, and listen to music, there were always headphones in my ears. Being here after traveling so much made it hard to get a long with people, I was a foreigner who barely spoke English so it was easy to be a target growing up. But through time I learned to isolate myself in music, writing poems, drawing, and video games. I taught myself how to live myself and as I grew older being a person who loved music so much it wasn't long before I realized this is what I want to do, I been doing it already for so long, but to realize I can make it happen, I was in high school starting to finally work on my own material to record. My vision is to be myself, the unique character I've always been who doesn't fit into the norms. Being myself allowed me to be different through personality and it reflects in the music, bc that is a reflection of who I am, weird, spontaneous, and unique. I am a refreshing sound to anyone who presses play, I'm am uniquely, myself. However when listening to music I grew up looking up to artists like Kid Cudi, Kanye, lil Wayne, Jay Z, Ray Charles Erykah Baddhu, and I looked up to Kid Cudi the most growing up bc he was simply different, he allowed me to want to be myself, to also be different, but I never wanted to be like someone. But I would say I definitely wanted to have the same kind of impact with my own sound as someone like lil Wayne.
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