FEATURE:
Spotlight
Samara Cyn
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FOR this Spotlight feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Bentley
I am focusing on an artist who is not as well-known in the U.K. as she is in her native U.S. The sensational Samara Cyn is the Tennessee-born, L.A.-based rapper/Neo Soul artist who is being tipped as someone to watch closely this year. Her album, The Drive Home, was released last October and marked her out as a talent who has the potential to endure for years to come. Someone whose music is capturing attention. I am going to move to a couple of interviews from last year. First, this NME feature introduces us to an artist that some of you may not know. An artist that definitely needs to be in your thoughts:
“As I evolved as an artist, I stopped wanting to be just a ‘great rapper’” Samara Cyn tells NME, “I wanted to make really good music.” It’s in part what’s responsible for her melodic delivery and her fluid sound vocally and sonically. In her own words, she’s “a neo-soul hip-hop fusion artist” and while she cites icons Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu as influences, Cyn’s music combines current stars like Doechii’s soul inflection and Tyler, The Creator’s experimentation.
It creates a rich and varied musical landscape to pull from; not surprising since Cyn, born in Tennessee, grew up moving around the US and used these experiences to take note of what she saw. “Writing, for me, has been a constant thing,” she says. “It’s my spark for my music.” She had an early interest in poetry, encouraged by her mother, an English teacher, who introduced her to the youth-focused spoken word poetry festival Brave New Voices, an annual event that tours throughout the US. “It’s these kids that looked like me, and were young and they were doing poetry in a different type of way than Edgar Allan Poe,” she says. To her, spoken word had a similar feel to rap. “After that, it opened my mind up to more slam poetry cadences, talking about societal issues and the things that I was going through and how to express myself.”
It wasn’t until a night out during her second year at university that her interest in poetry transformed into a drive to create music. Her friends were playing beats and rapping over them. “And I was like, ‘Man, I have something in my notes that can go with this,’” she remembers. “I basically rapped one of my poems to the beat.” That was just the beginning. “Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop,” she says. “And I remember we didn’t even sleep that night. We went back up to my apartment and grabbed our backpacks and went straight to class and even in class, I couldn’t not finish the song.”
In 2019 she wrote her first song and, in November of that year, she played her debut live show. In 2020, she performed at speakeasies and open mics and continued gigging in Phoenix, Arizona during her studies at Arizona State University. In November 2021, she opened for fellow ‘Bose x NME: C24’ artist Teddy Swims at his show at her alma mater.
When writing songs, she opts for getting her thoughts down on paper first before a brutal editing process. “It’s like a puzzle. I’m trying to figure out how I can say what I’m trying to say, in the cleverest way possible, in a rhyme scheme and a cadence,” she explains, “and still communicate the message?” Over time, she’s grown into a less-is-more approach to writing. “I think the most beautiful things are very simple, consolidated and precise,” she says. “I’ve definitely tried to refine and figure out how to say what I want to say in fewer words.”
Cyn wrote the vibrant, bouncy track ‘Loop’, her submission for the ‘Bose x NME: C24’ mixtape, in 15 minutes, when a friend of hers joined her in the studio. “We were just talking about being stuck in that same relationship and not being able to get out of it and I feel like I was definitely pulling from situations that I was just coming out of,” she explains.
Cyn and producer Cameron Ellis were struck by a video they’d seen on YouTube that showed Pharrell Williams and Justin Timberlake working on the latter’s 2002 debut solo album ‘Justified’. Cyn and Ellis took influence from the track ‘Señorita’ in particular. “We wanted to make something that was upbeat and sassy… and cool,” she remembers. “So we were like, ‘OK, let’s pull from this, the energy from this and go off of it from there.’”
Cyn likes writing in real time in the studio with her contemporaries. “I really love cook-up sessions, which is basically where everybody makes everything from scratch,” she says. “I like hearing the beat build.” It also makes her process a lot tighter, since it’s often hard to recapture that emotion and headspace. “Normally, I’m writing as the beat is being created,” she explains. “When the beat is done, I try to be done with my lyrics.”
While writing may have been the catalyst, her recording career has expanded from there, including recent single ‘Moving Day’. “There’s so much extra shit that comes with just writing – being an artist and doing the shoots and doing the social media and content creation and the creative direction, and all of these different things,” she explains. But writing is what grounds her and pushes her forward: “This is why I do it”.
Before coming to the final interview, I want to quote from this Uproxx chat from last June. I do hope that Samara Cyn is invited to play in the U.K. this year. Someone who deserves to be better known here. An incredible artist who is going to have a long and successful future. A Rap artist who can shake up the scene:
“Samara Cyn is doing everything right nowadays, but truthfully, you could say she always has. Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and bouncing around several cities before settling in Pheonix, Arizona in 2017, rapper Samara Cyn is a new lyricist to reckon with today. She constructs 16s and 32s with impressive ease and breezes through them with the Polish of a veteran. There are more than slick rhymes in Cyn’s arsenal, though. Like artists such as JID and Doja Cat, Cyn lays her raps with the backing of soulful beats and soothing singing voice to make her a complete artist worth getting excited about.
Her latest single “Magnolia Rain” makes for three singles in the past year, showing a promising future in rap lies ahead for Cyn. “Magnolia Rain” presents Cyn with the cool, calm, and collected demeanor that takes precedent on most of her tracks. She steers through the record with an introspective take on life, emphasizing her choice to focus on what she can control and take everything else as it comes. “Finding out that letting go give you more control,” she sings on the song’s chorus. “Keep a calm mind, keep a calm soul.” It’s a soothing reminder to find your peace in a world that can be so chaotic.
Together with the new single, we had a moment o catch up with Samara Cyn and find out more about her in this week’s Uproxx Music 20 column. Scroll down to hear some of Cyn’s music and to learn more about her influences, inspirations, and aspirations.
What is your earliest memory of music?
This is hard. I can’t really pinpoint the earliest moment. Maybe getting ready for school to MTV Top 40s. But what’s coming to mind is rapping Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” on karaoke with my dad at my 13th birthday party. Prime childhood memory.
Who inspired you to take music seriously?
My friend Michael Knight was the first person that really had me thinking I could do this for real. I was in college; I was just having my fun with music. It was something to do. But Michael really sat me down, believed in me, and got me set up. I remember sitting in my closet with my basic ass recording set up and him tapping into my computer from NC to teach me how to record on Logic. On some Spy Kids sh*t. He did all of my earliest production, he would mix my records, master them. All off the strength. Believed in it so much, it made me start too.
Do you know how to play an instrument? If so, which one? If not, which instrument do you want to learn how to play?
I can play a few songs on the guitar. Haven’t been able to stay disciplined enough to really learn it yet though. I think it’d be pretty badass to perform one day with an electric guitar though. So that’s the one.
Who is on your R&B/rap/afrobeats Mt. Rushmore?
Kendrick Lamar, Tyler The Creator, Erykah Badu, and Lauryn Hill.
You get 24 hours to yourself to do anything you want, with unlimited resources: What are you doing? And spare no details!
Maldives, massage, good food, clear water. Peace.
Which celebrity do you admire or respect for their personality and why?
Doja Cat. That woman don’t give a f*ck. She gon’ do her regardless and she does her very well, completely unapologetic. I love a “F*CK YOU” attitude for real. I feel like Tyler has that same energy. And Lil Nas X, I love him too.
What is the best song you’ve ever heard in your life and what do you love about it?
“I Don’t Know” by Nick Hakim. That song will put you in a trance! His harmonies are beautiful, his voice is soothing as f*ck, guitar loops are my favorite, and it just calms me every time I listen to it. Really pulls me back into my body when I need that. Go look it up.
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform, and what’s a city you’re excited to perform in for the first time?
I don’t have too many cities under my belt yet, but Raleigh, North Carolina has my favorite performance to date. The crowd was energetic and everybody I talked to was so sweet and down to Earth. I’m excited for London.
What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?
Don’t wait to tap into your life force. Be yourself, be grateful, be kind, and think a little bit more on that tattoo”.
Whether it is a ten-track album or E.P. - I think she has called it an E.P. -, The Drive Home was an important release from last year. If you have not heard it then take some time to listen to it. CLASH had an in-depth conversation with Samara Cyn in December. This is someone I am very excited about:
“For a 10-track EP, ‘The Drive Home’ is dangerously accessible – mostly because the 26-year-old is as confident as a Jill Scott record. ‘Sinner’ name drops Harbor Freight and “serves face” over Ronson pop ideals because “lil bitch, we mobbin’”. ‘Chrome’ meditates on space whips, sliding on a D’Mile loop that blends ‘telefone’ and ‘CARE FOR ME’. ‘Rolling Stone’ clips insecurities with a rose-colored nod to ‘Innanetape’ and Cyn’s Poetic Soul days while ‘100sqft’ finds her threading heartache like a ‘House Of Balloons’ demo — airing out past wrongs, a desire for affection, and feeling adrift amidst the distortion: “Wasn’t like this ‘fore I’d known you / Maybe I ain’t fall in love, I just tripped and fell up on you”. Even when she’s retracing her deepest anxieties about love, Cyn is audibling cadences, creating liminal spaces for flows, and floating through an appreciation of ‘50s and ‘60s jazz structures to selectively blur limitations and use rap as a form of escapism.
With co-signs from Nas, Doja Cat, Rapsody, and Alicia Keys, we caught up with Samara Cyn to go into detail about ‘The Drive Home’, her obsessions with Erykah Badu and Tyler, The Creator, her upcoming ‘Kountry Kousins’ tour with Smino, and why it’s important to be true to yourself.
In a recent tweet, Doechii addressed the growing importance of hip-hop — noting it has always been deep, complex, and soulful, and that communities ‘use hip-hop to evolve’. How has the genre influenced your own personal evolution in the last two years?
I feel like for a lot of people who get into hip-hop, it’s because they were raised listening to the genre. Hip-hop comes with a culture behind it and just like Doechii said, it’s soulful, it’s real, it’s raw. Hip-hop teaches you how to dress – it teaches you code and morals and stuff like that, and going into my past two years of releasing music, I really wanted to pull from the fact that it’s raw and authentic. All of my messages are about being authentic and they are more of a reminder for myself, you know what I’m saying? It’s definitely pulled from all of the unique styles that are under the umbrella of hip-hop – like how can you forge a way that’s unique but is still raw and still has code and makes you dress nice, but is authentic to you.
I don’t know… it’s just a natural part of cadence and the way that I create. I don’t think I have ever been like, “I’m going to be super hip-hop this year”. It’s a third parent for me; it was literally a part of how I was raised and what I was inspired by growing up.
Was music your first passion project?
Yeah, actually. Honestly, I used to be really sad before I had music. Because I didn’t start making music until I was a sophomore in college and I really struggled with feeling purposeless for a lot of my early college years and especially high school. Like I didn’t have a knack for anything. I had hobbies but they weren’t things I was really passionate about. I just did a lot of separate things. I played a lot of different sports. I really struggled with feeling like “why am I here” – I work and I go to school, and it’s like are these the only things I’m supposed to be doing? When I started making music, it was the first time that I really felt free doing something. Like I could never be bored.
I never felt purposeless after that and even though I didn’t initially recognize that music ‘was my purpose’, it was like “Oh, I have something to do now”. It felt productive and I was feeling better getting my feelings out after making music so I had never felt that before – not with painting or roller skating. I tried so many different hobbies [laughs]. Even going to bible study… I tried religion. It was definitely music that was the first thing to make me go “Oh snap, I really enjoy doing this and I can fill all of my time doing this and I won’t get tired of it”.
Were you ever worried that you wouldn’t be able to find your voice?
Absolutely. Do you know what highlighted that for me? It was music. When I first started creating music, it really, really helped me navigate that feeling and pinpoint that feeling of “This is why this feels bad”. Because even now when I’m in the studio – if I don’t feel good that day or if I don’t feel comfortable that day, even if the record comes out amazing, I won’t like the record. And it’s the same thing when you’re trying to navigate these spaces, like I don’t feel good while in this and so I don’t feel good about the situation. Even looking back on college and high school and while I did have some great times, I don’t have fond memories because I felt shitty the whole way through it.
Music really highlighted that. When I first started off, I was making very ‘rah-rah music’ which is what I thought it was supposed to be based on what my friends were consuming and what I was doing – which was college shit. I was partying and hanging out and drinking, and all that type of stuff, and it didn’t feel like good music. It took me a while to find my true voice and my delivery and even how I approach songs. Because at the same time I’m navigating college and how I feel as a person so for me, it was a lot of “this doesn’t feel good”, “that doesn’t sound like me” and “that outfit… that doesn’t look like me, that’s not my vibe”.
There were times, especially being confronted with music, where identity is such an important thing. I think it’s changing as a lot of people are genre-bending and have stories like ours where they’ve moved around a lot and it’s not just “I’m Atlanta all the way” or “I’m New York all the way” and this is my whole personality, and it’s because I’m from this place and do all these things and sound like this. It’s changing a lot more, but trying to be a serious music artist was the first time where I had to ask myself “Okay dude, what is your style? What’s your identity?”. You didn’t know anything about me from listening to my earlier music and there were definitely times where I was like “I don’t know who I am”. You’re talking to people and you’re trying to convey what your music is and what your style is about, and you can’t do that when you don’t fucking know [laughs].
When did you first fall in love with the neo-soul genre and the concept of writing songs that explore love, relationships, and social consciousness?
It was the first time I heard ‘Mama’s Gun’, which is Erykah Badu’s album. That was the first time I fell in love with neo-soul, and then after that, I became like obsessed with Erykah Badu [laughs]. I loved her but specifically the ‘Mama’s Gun’ album really resonated with me for some reason. It was about authenticity and love and shit like that. With indie pop and other genres, that naturally came out of me in the studio and that just ties back to my childhood as I was raised in different places and there’s just a lot of influence that happens there. Like I listen to all types of music.
Even thinking back, with my dad I listened to a certain type of music and with my mom, I listened to a different type of music. My dad was more old school hip-hop, R&B, and those types of vibes and my mom was into Coldplay, The Fray, and The Script. She had more of an alternative, soft rock-type of situation going on – and I love that music too, like Florence And The Machine, all that type of stuff – so I think naturally, again, it was what I was listening to growing up so when I’m creating music, it’s just the natural different sides that come out of me. I like experimental shit. I like artists that push the boundaries of creativity and aren’t stuck in one style or dimension.
As far as introspection and that type of thing, I don’t know if it’s because I fell in love with it. I think I was trying to heal. Those songs are me talking myself through my own emotions and that’s why I talk about that stuff – it’s more of a reminder to myself instead of me trying to tell everybody else “this is what you should do”. It’s more so this is a reminder to me about the conversation that I’m having with myself this week about pride; this is the conversation I have been having with myself and my friends about fucking ego or how I fucked a situation up because my ego was getting in the way of seeing both sides. Like I feel insecure about this so this week I’m going to talk about insecurity because this is how I’m feeling right now. So I feel like with the introspective stuff, the music is going to reflect what’s going on in my life. It’s the best way for me to do it because it’s the easiest way that I can feel the music and convey it, and it often helps me therapeutically to get out the emotion and the logic behind why it is that I’m feeling the way that I am.
I also feel like genres are kind of pit against each other sometimes, especially in hip-hop. It’s like “conscious music” versus modern rap shit and oftentimes it’s people just saying “I don’t listen to ignorant music” or “I don’t listen to conscious music” and people be trying to think too hard as it’s just music. The reality of it is we have different moods for different vibes and all of hip-hop needs each other in order to convey the messages it needs to convey – like in order for it to be hip-hop, there’s all of that. People forget there was a time when Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill and Goodie Mob, Common, Talib Kweli, Kanye West – where they were at the top of the top of the rappers. And then there was also a time when fucking Juvenile and Too $hort and Three 6 Mafia were at the top of the top of what was going on. It’s just different vibes. Yes, I listen to Glorilla on the way to the club and yeah, I listen to Kendrick Lamar and ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ when I’m in the vibe to listen and receive that music, not when I’m ‘rah rah’ or turnt up right now [laughs].
When I want to feel confident, yes, I’m putting Glorilla on but when I’m feeling introspective, it’s going to be J. Cole, Kendrick, J.I.D. – give me the stuff that’s chill, that I want to think to. We are different all the time. We have so many different roles as people and I question people who listen to one thing all the time, their whole life, whatever mood they are in. Like imagine being sad and throwing on… nah, let me stop [laughs]. But imagine being sad and throwing on Sexyy Red, like let me cry to this real quick. Like no, that’s not what I’m trying to do right now [laughs].
What inspired the title ‘The Drive Home’? And what influenced you to release a new EP and project that symbolizes the journey to self acceptance?
So I can’t even take credit for the name ‘The Drive Home’. My friend Nov, who is a producer and a really good friend of mine, deserves the credit as he’s like a big brother to me and he had been doing music for way longer than I had when I first got the concept to even make an EP. My music reflects what’s going on in my life and at the time the topic was “identity” and learning to accept myself and the place where I was at in life, and trying to find peace within myself and who I was in every situation and in every room, and Nov was like, “Why don’t you call it The Drive Home?”.
And I remember being in those sessions, we would talk for like an hour before we even started the session, which shows how great of a producer he is because he really tries to understand where you’re at in the moment and create music based off of that feeling. They were basically therapy sessions before we even touched the computer. I remember crying in the studio while I was talking about some of the stuff I was going through and how I was feeling, and ‘The Drive Home’ ended up being a reminder that “home” means peace and self-acceptance and feeling comfortable, and ‘the drive’ is just the journey to get there. At the time, I was still in the thick of that journey and ‘The Drive Home’ made me realize that I’m always going to be on that journey.
We always think there’s the ‘other side’ or that I’ll be able to move forward once I’m healed, and I don’t really think that’s a realistic destination as you’re always kind of on this journey to becoming a better person and being more accepting of yourself and not giving a fuck. It takes a while to get there and that’s really where the concept came from. It was Nov’s idea and as time and years went on, the meaning of it changed, and it ended up being what it was. I think it’s perfect that it took three years to mold the idea of it but I’m really proud of it and happy with how it ended up.
One of the more interesting qualities about your energy and artistry is your attention to detail when it comes to writing. When did you first become interested in how cadences and literary devices are used in hip hop and other genres of music?
Oooh… I feel like that’s way earlier than when I started making music. A really well-written song has always piqued my interest in music and being raised on old school hip-hop, it’s very playful and with cadences and rhyme schemes, you kind of realize that everybody has their own style with how they do that. Biggie and Tupac were both great but their music sounded so differently, like with what they talked about and how they expressed the feelings they were trying to get off.
My mom is also an English teacher so I got into poetry before I got into music. I remember my mom would teach a lesson in her class every year that was about Brave New Voices, which is basically a reality show about inner city kids that would do these workshops and spend a whole semester or a whole year or whatever working on a slam poetry piece. They would perform them in these tournaments and these end-of-the-year shows, and I remember being so blown away by the poetry, the messages behind them, and the cadence because poetry comes with cadence. I think poetry as a whole and just getting into poetry first taught me rhythm better than when I first started music and songs because punchlines have to fall a certain way. Like if you’re performing in front of a crowd and you have a punchline or a bar and you don’t give it the space to be a bar or you don’t set it up the right way, people aren’t going to get it. Like your cadence matters.
It’s like a puzzle – how do you get out what you’re trying to say but make it sound cool as shit by using literary devices and trying to figure out how many different clever ways can I say the same thing and have it fit the rhyme scheme that I’m going with. There’s a lot of people that do that so well. Like I was really interested in breaking down Lupe Fiasco’s rhyme schemes when I was in high school and college as he’s one of my favourite artists. If we’re talking about more modern names, there’s also J.I.D – people recognize J.I.D but they don’t give him enough credit for how he’s able to fit certain things in and still make it swaggy with a cadence that’s very percussion-y. He’s really dope and he talks about shit too, which is always a plus. Like when you can have a really dope delivery, a really dope rhyme scheme, and you can also be cool and not too far left like what is this person talking about, and on top of that be saying something that can resonate with people and isn’t just about nothing – that’s talented to me. A really well-written song or a well-conveyed song will pique my interest over melodies and production nine out of ten times”.
If you are new to the brilliance of Samara Cyn then make sure you check her out. I hope to see her live one day, as I can imagine she is a wonderful and powerful performer that gives one hell of a show! This year is going to be a busy one for her. If she is known to some and not all at the moment, then that will…
CHANGE soon enough.
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