“it might go over your head, but if you listen to it, you might catch it later.” - Mike Bravo
MUSIC|WAVYMOMENT
Mike Brave is an RnB inspired artist from Norfolk, Virginia. Bravo’s latest release “No Rings” is a cohesive project which walks you through a story, a very relatable one at that, packed with emotion, real life experiences and of course, vibes. Taking inspiration from some of the greats in the RnB space, he does an amazing job of executing a project with not only emotional and engaging melodies, he forms a story by adding in voicemails, conversations with his friends and even messages from a girl he’s involved with; composing a true piece of art.
Wavy Warrior tapped in with Bravo, and they had some interesting conversations about
being an artist, the project and his writing process:
Wavy Warrior: What got you into music?
“When I was a kid I grew up listening to a lot of RnB, my pops put me on Tank, Joe, Charlie Wilson, all of ‘em, so I listened to that and really fell in love with it, but it wasn’t till years later where I found my own inspirations like Michael Jackson, Drake and Party. I listened to Drake here and there but when I heard ‘Nothing was the Same’ I think that really clicked for me. I was like ‘Damn this is some other shit bro!” This is the first time I heard someone express themselves and it was easy to see, you know? I really fell in love with that, then I heard P1, and that was a different type of vibe.
So in my freshman year of college, back in like 2017, my friends and I used to record in a room and stuff, and just mess around on Youtube beats. Long story short I linked up with one of my guys now apart of our label, OTR Entetainment, Evil, and so from that night we started working together for like a year or two, and that kinda got my foot in the door.”
Wavy Warrior: I definitely see the inspirations, Drake, Party, who else might have inspired that sound that you got? Cause I know you got a decent amount of lyricism in your music, and you make an effort to deliver that in your music. A lot of people listen to Drake and Party and not a lot of them take it to a level you take it to, you know what I’m sayin?
“I do take my lyricism very seriously because my approach to music is that I want it to be easy to listen to but I also want to have substance behind it. So the way I might phrase something, it might be a certain way, it might go over your head, but if you listen to it, you might catch it later.”
Wavy Warrior: What has your creative process been like recently, I know Covid probably changed some things, so what has it been like?
“God bless everyone affected by covid and my condolences to families that suffered from covid, for me though it kinda helped me slow down time, and helped me look at everything, and master everything. I have my team I work with, OTR, we have a whole bunch of artist as well, and my partner Indi5hunnit, he’s my producer/engineer so we work like this, but I take a lot of time to feel inspired, especially by the guys around me, SoSorry, you probably heard him on the album, he’s like my favourite artist, he’s really talented and crazy and I take a lot of inspiration from him. My process been evaluating what I’ve been doing well and where I could do better and incorporating sounds I want to hear and what people want to hear which is kind of the the more up tempo songs like ‘Lil Hoe’, ‘Missed Calls’ and ‘Real’.”
Tap into the full, raw conversation below!
