‘Be weird! That’s my advice to the world.’ – Cydnee with a C.
Individuality and artistry go hand in hand. Cydnee with a C knows this all too well. In fact, she relishes the very quirks that others once attempted to stamp out of her; advocating for uniqueness and living life as her raw and authentic self.
Cydnee is an LA-based, k-pop-obsessed singer, a hardcore drum & bass fan-girl, a songwriter. She is also a studio engineer who mixes and masters all of her own tracks. A flex? Yes. Did she know about it? Hell no. These things aren’t a big deal to Cydnee. They are merely a standard part of the process for the Atlanta-born artist.
Introducing: POV, Cydnee’s latest project, is a six track EP that is both fully representative of Cydnee as an artist and a scrumptious display of what happens when you intertwine k-pop with drum & bass.
With the release of POV and her incoming performance at Electric Forest festival on the horizon, Cydnee Zoomed in from sunny LA to tell us more.
Cydnee! You’re heavily influenced by k-pop and drum & bass. How have these sounds shaped the Cydnee with a C project?
I love drum & bass so much, and I love k-pop so much. That’s all I know. That’s all I listen to. K-pop and drum & bass go hand in hand to me. I love both. I introduced my producer to k-pop and he introduced me to drum & bass music. We made ‘Cry Alone’, that was our first drum & bass track together, and I was like ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to make a bunch of these!’ So Confessions of a Fangirl was kinda like that, not wanting to be alone, just exploring drum & bass roots. I went in a different direction with POV, it was that soft spot between the two. It feels good, sorta how k-pop feels good. POV is basically a POV of a fangirl who loves music. You turn all the stuff that feels sad and painful into something that feels sonically good. I love drum & bass so much because it reminds me of k-pop.
What are the similarities between the two that you love?
It’s the pushes and pulls of both. I’m a sonics girl. Sonics is my love language, honestly. With drum & bass, I love the bass. I’m from Atlanta, you gotta have some bass. But with k-pop I love how they talk about concepts and they come around full circle. I’m really big on that when I’m writing concepts and what that means. The takeaway when you walk away, that’s k-pop. So combining those two with my type of music, you know, with the R&B, my black side from Atlanta, drum & bass taps into that side of me too, I dunno why it just does. And then the k-pop side and the concepts, that just basically makes the music and the projects come around full-circle.
It’s not just the k-pop genre that you love, what is it that you love about Korean culture?
They are very thorough and efficient. When they tackle a concept, they put it in everything and it comes around full circle. Then at the end of that experience, song, video, stage, whatever it is, it’s like you walk away like ‘Yeah man. That was it.’ You get it, you feel it. With my songs ‘Forgiveness’ and ‘Spend It’, I took influence from studying k-pop and their efficiency, and their culture and music. They really drill it in. That’s what makes a hit record for them. I learn so much from listening to k-pop music and learning about the culture. I learn and then I apply those learnings into my music. It means more for me too. So when people are like ‘That ‘Forgiveness’ man, I felt that.’ I’m like ‘Word, man, I wanted that for you, and for me!’
You’re all about vibes and the culture rather than about social media or numbers. What are your thoughts around social media?
Us artists, we’ve made it so hard for ourselves. We picked the wrong time to be serious, you know? When you’re creating music you’re not supposed to be thinking about anything else other than that. No social media. I like to freestyle my stuff too. I like it when you’re freestyling you feel like you’re speaking in tongues, it’s coming from some other source. And in order to do that, you have to let everything go. You can’t be thinking about nothing. You gotta have good vibes in the room. So yeah, I do like vibes, it’s easier for me to flow. I just want to connect. Get into that anything-is-possible space. Singing and freestyling is basically saying what’s on your mind in a very dramatic way. It’s therapeutic. It’s been easier to disconnect lately. Just freestyle. That’s my disconnecting space where it’s not hard for me.
Something we’re definitely missing as adults is that art and importance of play…
Remember when you were a kid and you can manifest anything? You’d be like ‘Yeah, I’m going to the mall!’ And then you’d go to the mall, then you’d go here, then you’d go there. In creative worlds, I feel like people get free with that. It’s so rewarding because you’re able to play. Just trust yourself in that moment and process. Those are the things that resonate with people and audiences. That’s what I’ve learnt. We have to take our minds off stuff. Just let your mind go to any place you can. That’s why music is important. People can just go wherever. Going on walks is the equivalent of that, physically. Going on a long walk, you let your mind wander, you talk to god like you’re on the phone. Those moments are so therapeutic. They’re important.
You engineer, mix and master all your music. You posted on Instagram about there being a fear in talking about this – can you tell us more about why?
It is something that I always felt a certain way about. Trippie Redd will call me an underground queen. Some say ‘The most talented person is always the most overlooked.’ You know? When people know I do all these things, I feel a bit more nervous like, oh now they’re going to critique it a bit more or listen a little harder, because I mixed it all. If they find one flaw then they’ll put it on me. That, sometimes, intimidates me. My team actually thought I had some guy here mixing all my stuff, until they came to my studio and they were like ‘Oh, so you do it?’ Yeah I do it! I didn’t know that I had to let it be known. I didn’t know it was a flex until recently. Recording and mixing your own stuff. For me, it’s regular. I learnt from my old engineer. He was overworked and Trippie took him away from the studio so I had to do it myself.
For POV we were going to have someone else come in and master the project but it didn’t turn out as good as my mixes, so it actually ended up being a lot of work for me to mix and master my own project. Something that I did for my last project, Confessions of a Fangirl, too. It was great, but it was a lot! It all fell on me. I’m grateful though, because people are noticing all the work I was putting into stuff. Mixing and engineering, a lot of times in the past, I would get men who are like ‘What you gonna do?’ In the studio or they’d be uncomfortable with paying me a certain amount of money an hour. That would bother me too, those reactions. All in all, that’s why there is a little fear around that.
Sharing that will have a positive impact on other women, who may now consider doing everything themselves. That’s super positive.
I didn’t see that at first, but when I saw other women grasping on, it inspired me to talk about it more. I didn’t know what I was worth at times. People would feel more comfortable paying a guy, who’s not as good as me, rather than paying me. Or I would take the $30 an hour over the $50 the guys were being paid, but I should’ve said I wanted more. It sucked, until people actually got into a session with me and were like ‘Oh!’. Sometimes it’s so indirect, and sometimes it’s direct. It happens a lot, in lots of different ways. It’s important to know when to speak up! I would love to inspire girls to speak up more about stuff like this.
In a fast paced and saturated music industry – what do you think is the most important thing to remember is?
I’m so grateful to my team and managers because they make me feel so cool, when at first, I felt so uncool. I was surrounded by all these Soundcloud rappers and no one understood my excitement. They thought I was weird for a lot of the music I was into. People in the past didn’t want me to do k-pop reactions. They were like ‘You’re black. You’re from Atlanta. You shouldn’t be doing that.’ And I would listen to them. Then I realised, the weirder you are, the more original you are. I say that to some of my clients when I’m engineering sessions. I want to make people feel comfortable and confident. Be your weirdest self, even if it’s stupid. That’s always my advice. That’s what makes you, you. Sounds clique, but it’s true. I know that because the k-pop that people were trying to turn me against, ended up being part of my whole entire steeze! When you see Beyoncé on stage going for it, it’s weird! We like it because she’s in it. She’s experiencing something. People are weird when they’re really feeling it, and that’s beautiful, and it’s healing. That’s what it’s all about.
