The Journey of a Multi-Hyphenated Misfit

a multi-disciplinary retrospective

Give yourself flowers, even if you have to pick them yourself.

I really appreciate all of the love I’ve gotten on this platform in the past few months. This newsletter has provided space for me to write about some of my significant wins and also be honest about how I’m grieving my deferred dreams and examining what drives my desire for excellence. Though writing has helped me work through the complexities of navigating an artistic career, I still long to be seen as the multi-faceted artist I am and truly thrive while doing so. I am primarily self-taught in all of my mediums, and I have never had a mentor. I have endured my fair share of rejection, pigeonholing, and disregard by people who don’t see the value in what I do. And so, today, I am giving myself flowers.

Depending on when you first met me or were introduced to my work, you may only be familiar with one aspect of my artistry. If you have gotten to know me via Substack, you likely only know about this newsletter. If you’ve met me in New York City, you may know me as a filmmaker, creative producer, DJ, or former editor-in-chief of a multimedia brand called UNPOPCULTR. If we met when I lived in Chicago, you would definitely be familiar with the work I did as a singer-songwriter. If you know me from my hometown, Minneapolis, you have witnessed my unconventional, winding, and exhaustive journey to get to where I am now. Regardless of how you know me and when you were first introduced, I am immensely grateful that you have offered your time to my work. I keep seeing people post “share your old work” on social media, and while I typically avoid doing that because I often cringe at my old work, I thought it would be very healing for me to share my journey as an artist and I hope that it inspires you to take stock of how far you have come too.

Origins (1996-2006)

I have been writing since I was 8 years old. I’ve always enjoyed telling stories, and writing was one of the few safe spaces where I could express myself. At 13 years old, I started writing songs. I wanted to be a singer, and I loved Mariah Carey (and singing her songs on my karaoke machine, which got moved to the basement by my mother when I attempted those whistle notes, LOL). I got my first taste of performing in 8th grade when I performed a solo of “Seasons of Love” from Rent. In high school, I was in choir and part of an after-school club called Shades of Brown, which was for mostly Black students but also held space for other POC students in the school district. Every spring, Shades of Brown hosted a talent show called Night at The Apollo, where I sang songs, acted in skits, and walked in fashion shows with my classmates. This talent show wasn’t as much about talent (because the majority of us were very unpolished) as much as it was about creating a safe space for us to express our creativity and feel seen, which was so important for BIPOC students living in a predominately white city.

Me singing “I Miss You” by Aaliyah with my home girl Kym. I took Aaliyah’s death REALLY hard, this was us paying tribute to her.

16-year-old me performing as Tina Turner. They made us lip-sync because we were honoring legends that year (lmao). Don’t ask me who was in the wardrobe and decided to give me the 80s Tina Turner wig with the 60s Tina Turner dress.

Acting in a skit with my friends to raise awareness about domestic violence, something more than a few girls at my school had experienced. I’m in the white capris lol.

Singer-Songwriter (2011-2016)

In 2012, I moved from my hometown Minneapolis to Chicago. In a new city with more creative resources, I cultivated a community of musicians and collaborators to work on my very first EP, 5AM. I called the project 5AM to represent dawn and beginnings. One of my first collaborations was with a friend, Chris James, aka Hella Strings (who is a cool guy who plays strings and sings backup for Mereba now), on an acoustic track called “Back To You,” whose opening lining “Maybe I’m slightly addicted to the exquisite pain, of screaming your name” that was inspired by an episode of Sex and The City (that one where Carrie realized her addiction to Big was a sickness). My voice was so untrained, and I had a very rudimentary understanding of vocal production, but I love the lyricism and how stripped-down it is. Chris and I also collaborated on a song called “Drifted,” which ended up being one of my most popular songs (that I don’t love to revisit, tbh). I made my debut performance as “The Elle” (my stage name) on 3/27/2014 (Mariah Carey’s birthday!) and went on to perform at more gigs in Chicago for the next two years.

My favorite track on this EP is “Time and Spaces”, which sonically reminds me a bit of “Why Don’t We Fall In Love” by Amerie, with that twinkling summertime sound. However, the live version is my favorite because I didn’t like how my voice was mixed on the record, and I loved performing with this band.

After 5AM, I took some time to take music theory and piano lessons at Harold Washing College and vocal lessons with Michele Thomas at Soulstream Studios. I remember taking two buses and a train to get from my place in Hyde Park to Michele’s studio in Albany Park — if you live in Chicago, you know that was a trek! I was committed. I also experimented with writing to beats by producers I admired like J.Dilla, and others I had discovered on SoundCloud or YouTube.

The most fire piece of work that came out of this era was my sung cover of “Machine Gun Funk” by The Notorious B.I.G. I was working in a call center at the time, saving up to move to New York. For some reason, I couldn’t get the lyrics out of my mind, and over time, I noticed I was singing them to myself. I had the bright idea to sing it over a jazzy beat, went home, typed “jazzy type beat” on YouTube, and sang it over one of the first instrumentals I found. The song garnered over 75,000 streams on SoundCloud and still periodically gets engagement nearly 10 years later.

Shortly after this, I started working on writing and executive producing my first (and only) LP, Soul Art Music. This project was a mixture of R&B and hip-hop soul. I explored themes of womanhood, unrequited love, self-love, and overcoming trauma through the lyrics. I had a lot of fun working on this album. I was creating from a very pure place. One of my favorite songs, “Sesh” was freestyled and recorded in one take in my studio apartment after smoking some trees with my friend and collaborator Keith Harris. The rest of the album was recorded at Complex Studios in Chicago with my engineer DC, who was one of the few non-creepy men in the music scene that I could trust. This era was part of the inspiration behind my short film “One of The Guys” (more on that later)

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One stand-out track from Soul Art Music is “Your Love,” a futuristic electronic R&B track produced by a South African producer named Keith Virgo, whom I met on SoundCloud. The track features a clip of Eartha Kitt talking about falling in love at the beginning of her documentary All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story. This song was me imagining (and manifesting) the kind of partner I wanted.

Another standout was the track “Halo,” in which I co-directed a music video (it's the only music video I actually finished; there are definitely a couple that will never see the light of day). This track is about a romance that you know isn’t meant to last forever but reminds you of what it’s like to be treated well.

After Soul Art Music, I moved to New York, and my entire world opened up. I tried for about a year to get back into music, but I had deep writer’s block, and the music community in New York was more difficult to navigate than Chicago’s. I grew disillusioned with feeling the need to look or sound a certain way as a woman to be taken seriously as a musician. I also found myself wanting to express more than what I could say through song and ultimately abandoned my musical ambitions. One of the last tracks I released, “Wishing On a Star,” was inspired by people who tried to tell me not to move to New York and that I wouldn’t make it. I still listen to this sometimes when the naysayers get to me.

“My Light” is another song I revisit from time to time when I need to remember to love myself. It’s through music that I realized that the best thing your art can do for you is help you heal. Other people enjoying it is just a nice bonus.

Graphic Designer (2014-Present?)

One of the skills I picked up along my musical journey was learning how to design graphics. It started out of necessity to create graphics for cover art or shows that I was performing in. I went back to good ‘ol Harold Washington College and spent a semester learning PhotoShop and Illustrator. I would have class from 9 am to 12 pm and work at the call center from 3 pm to 11 pm. I was burnt out but determined to get to New York. One of my professors at the time told me that I had talent as a designer, but I didn’t take myself seriously enough. I don’t really consider myself a designer in the traditional sense, but I know that if I cared enough to go down that route, I could probably do well at it. For now, I’m staying in the lane of storytelling, but here are a few of my favorite designs from over the years:

UNPOPCULTR (2017-2022)

UNPOPCULTR (Unpopular Culture) was a media brand and community I created with the intention of highlighting the work of artists from BIPOC backgrounds. I started the site because I noticed a lot of the music blogs at the time catered to white artists and those who didn’t usually favored people they knew or who already had some kind of pull in the industry. What started as blogging and sharing work on our Instagram page evolved into hosting events around New York City. Our first event was a Missy Elliott tribute party at Our Wicked Lady in Bushwick. Missy Elliott tweeted about the party (!!!!), and someone showed up wearing her costume from “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” video.

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We went on to do other work, shooting editorial content of artists, starting a podcast called Day One Fans, sharing resources for racial justice initiatives, hosting an event series for artists to showcase their work, and setting intentions for the year called The Fellowship, and so on. I loved doing this work, but I got to a point where I was pouring from an empty cup. Trying to build a community on your own felt futile, and while I would love to bring this space back one day, it’s going to take a lot more money and resources than I have to truly thrive, but I’m proud of what we accomplished.

DJ (2017-2019)

While I had long abandoned making music, I still loved it and found a way to remain connected to it by teaching myself how to DJ. My entry to DJ' ing was pretty straightforward; I was tired of attending parties and hearing wack DJs, so I decided to learn how to DJ and began throwing my own parties. I loved the feeling of being able to move the crowd, but what ultimately ended my days of DJ’ng was intense social anxiety and the inability to be outside past midnight. However, before I abandoned this pursuit, I made a couple of mixtapes. One of the most notable was “Rise,” which I started working on after election night in 2016. The mixtape starts with a song I wrote called “Rise” and includes quotes from revolutionaries and music from Black artists calling us to keep pushing forward and fighting for what we deserve. It is still incredibly relevant.

Filmmaker (2022-Present)

This brings us all the way to where we are today, a budding filmmaker thirsty to make her next short film. The music, designing, and community-building work I did until this point culminated in entering the filmmaking space and feeling rooted in my artistry in a way I never had before. In 2015, I started writing screenplays as a hobby. In 2020, I met my friend Jalena Keane-Lee, a talented filmmaker, while recording an episode of the “Day One Fans” podcast, and the two of us decided to start a woman-of-color-writer’s group right before the lockdown. It was in this setting that I started taking myself seriously as a screenwriter and thought maybe I had some talent in that area. I originally wrote One of The Guys with the sole intention of having something new to workshop in our writer’s group. I did not set out to actually turn One of The Guys into anything, but after some encouragement from my peers and a lot of support from my partner, who is a seasoned filmmaker, I went for it. You can read more about that journey here.

I don’t know what the future holds for my artistic career or if I will ever be someone who can make art for a living, but I know that I must keep going. I know I was given these gifts for a reason, and it is my duty to continue sharing them in whatever feels most authentic to me. If you’ve made it to the end of this newsletter, thank you so much for being on this journey with me. I hope it can inspire you to bet on yourself, too.

Catch me on these digital streets.

Watch My Short Film “One Of The Guys” 🎥

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With love,

LaChelle