Meet Stephanie Jones | Rapper & Digital Creator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Jones and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, do you have a budget?
Being a rapper can get pretty expensive, especially if you don’t produce and engineer yourself. I have worked a 9 to 5 job my entire music career to support it; I’m currently a private investigator. You absolutely have to budget and be smart. You have instrumentals, song engineering, visuals, and promotion at minimum to consider. And instrumentals alone can cost from hundreds to thousands if you want to own the rights completely. I personally write out a monthly budget with my paychecks, subtract my bills, and then determine how much I can put back to spend on music. If I have a project coming out then I will save up and cut back on buying clothes, makeup, etc. to make sure it happens. It’s worth the material sacrifices for me to be able to execute my art. But the best thing you can do to be financially savvy is learn to do a couple things yourself; like graphic design or engineering. The more parts you can do without any help, the easier it gets.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I think my proudest moment in music was reaching my first one hundred plays. It may seem like a small amount in comparison to the mainstream artists we see now. But I’ll always remember that first goal met and the people supporting me at that time. That initial goal met really made me believe more in myself and I know have over 150,000 streams. I think the hardest challenges with music is accepting that not everyone is going to love what you do. But once you find your own community; all the people who don’t relate to you don’t matter as much. I don’t believe in changing up your genre or style to be more relatable; I think everyone should just be themselves and learn to have blind faith that if you feel what you’re saying in music, someone else will too. It’s just a matter of reaching the right people.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My friends usually share two common interests; horror movies and video games. I think the ideal friend date would be grabbing a coffee and going shopping at this little strip mall in Bedford that has both those things. There’s two stores called Horror Freak and Retro Madness next to each other that sell horror and video game memorabilia. Then we’d probably head over to Round1 in Grapevine Mills Mall to play some arcade games and win a plushie to take home.

If we had an entire weekend, the next day I would head over to Frisco and go to Nerdvana, a restaurant that lets you play a gaming console at your table while eating, and then go visit the National Video Game museum.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I want to shout out Lil Durt; my partner, DJ, producer, and friend. I met him through trying to connect with other rappers in my area. He’s always been encouraging when it comes to my music. The most important thing he’s taught me is that I should always feel like I belong and deserving of the opportunities that came to me. I used to have a lot of anxiety around performing, but through him I’ve learned to fake the confidence until it was real. I advise everyone to let themselves feel compliments and positive feedback over any negative you might get. Hold onto that and you’ll be so much better off.

Instagram: https://instagram.com/bbyhex

Twitter: https://Twitter.com/hextapeofficial

Youtube: https://YouTube.com/yourfinalgirl