LEN talks about new music and social media

Mike, better known to social media and listeners as LEN, is a 20-year-old artist and college student from Dallas. I got to speak with him about new music, social media, the advice he would give to other artists, and how he wants listeners to know about him.

MP: What made you wanna make music?

I’ve always had a passion for it, and I’ve always been intrigued by the music writing process. I use my music to sometimes vent out frustrations or just have fun creating something.

MP: How does being from Dallas influence your music?

Len: In all honesty, not much at all. Only popular rappers to come out of Dallas are Vanilla Ice and Tay K, and I take literally zero influence from them. In fact, I didn’t even start making music till I left for Columbus, Ohio to go to college.

MP: Who are your biggest influences?

Len: My influences to start rapping mainly came from Tyler, the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt, and overall west coast rap in general. However, since this year I’ve been getting into more underground stuff including Griselda, Freddie Gibbs, and more east coast stuff, so that influence is taking my music in a different direction especially with this next drop in a few weeks.

MP: What do you want listeners to learn about you on your next project?

Len: On this next project, I wanna display versatility as well as solid technical ability in a small handful of songs. When I dropped my last album it became something like a meme to make fun of it and call it trash and whatever, so with this, I wanna steer my perception back to the right lane and prove that I’m a serious musician they need to pay attention to.

MP: How does social media influence your career?

Len: Social media has been able to connect me to a much wider audience than I had before. My personal friend circle doesn’t really care about my music much and as a result, don’t help me share it, so having a community around me that are interested in what I’m making has not only helped me grow my audience but have also got me some valuable connections that can greatly help me in the industry moving forward.

MP: What’s some advice you would give to other upcoming artists?

Len: Just keep working. There are gonna be people that don’t like what you’re doing and will try to bring you down. But if you give up, you’re just giving up on yourself. A lot of it comes with time and you just gotta keep going. Also, making a good product is great, but marketing is half the process too. If your goal is to make it big or to get famous or whatever, you have to have a game plan for marketing because otherwise, your music is going nowhere.

You can follow LEN on Twitter @LEN_Raps