Being an independent artist has never been easy – and always changing the internet scene, reaching the stream, and streaming focus – it’s not easy. However, music makers are excited to put their music in front of audience despite challenges, even if their challenges are more complicated than their counterparts. ATTEND IleneA genre-bending, sound-defying hyperpop alternative artist. He was driving to his visceralop pop on the map in 2019, found him with bandlab fans, and healed his sharp delivery and in-your-coat lyrical antics. DIY ethas on the platform worked well for Monica Ilene Lackey, who wrote to his full bandlab singing competitions at 2022. The critics got him an actor to look at, referring to his troubled tracks “Gloomy dark pleasure.”
With the talent, look, and fear of pursuing his career, charting charts like the world’s explicit stake and rap, facing challenges of challenges in a particular way.
Now, he works with an EP with grammy-nominated producer Epikh Pro (Bryson Tiller, Cardi B, Eminem) and eager to share his most unexpected bars and sound sounds. The first taste for collecting tracks, “Honey Nut” a more hilarious and sonically playable bop. “I want it to hit their heads,” Ilene said the Summertime Track. “It’s very fun and I want people to enjoy singing it, even if they don’t sing the whole song, it’s hard to cry, ‘Mario, cheer, cereal’.
Below, Ilene mentions us about specific issues that a black independent artist, what he expects to change in the industry, and how he plans to sing his songs in the world.
I love your new track “honey nut” – with reference to video games and echoing in the open. How did that song come to you?
The song is hilarious because it’s so bad and from the wall. It’s not serious. I actually got this idea of the song as I poured chemicals in my tubes, literally having plumbing issue. Also, I’m Celibate over two or three years (laughs). Funny and it’s getting better. I love the fact that it is fun and have a call and answer. This is in agreement with your head. That’s what happened to me … it’s like I didn’t write the song, so talking, it just came to my head. I poured things into the canal, and I reminded me of the Game Super Mario Smash Bros, how they jumped the pipes. That is interesting, how quickly the song came to me. I hope the song makes people feel powered and fun, flirty, cute, sexy, badass. It is only that they can do whatever they want, even if their tubes are not cleansed in years.
How is the reaction from listeners?
There are double standards. There is someone with a social media platform that checks it. He said it was not appropriate and needed further innuendo than to handle. Then people are in the comments like, “You really just play a song made raunchier.” She literally plays a rap song with abominable lyrics and the guy doesn’t touch and she loves it. And then the minute is a woman who says about sexual power, he hates it. He continued to handle me and Sabrishnina Carpenter … He said he was good because he was not direct, because of the inniendo.
It is interesting that he is ok if it is a man or a white artist. What are some issues you face as a black artist who places music and heals fans?
Bandlab chose me during Black History Month as one of the black artists on their platform a few years returned. When they were created, people were like … “He was not black.” Grown in my family, things are always broken. There is a whole thing Identity from my parents’s skin tones that are very different and I’m not as perfect as everyone else. My mother, she goes out of the sun, hoping darker skin and just get freckles. So when I rap and tell the word ‘n’, people say I can’t say that word. I’m attacking online. I don’t want to be a victim of this whole … But we’re 2025, and people fail to realize that black people look different people, in many ways. I feel that my identity is painted. Even with the “honey nut” I say ‘n word’ twice and someone wrote a comment, “you look like a white girl and you shouldn’t say that.” I’m so tired of wanting to protect my black. Gikapoy kaayo ako nga mag-abantiya sa matag usa sa tanan nga bahin sa akon sa tanan nga oras, bisan nga labi ka labi ka labi ka “dili maayo nga butang kung ako ang nagakahitabo kung ako ang magtan-aw kung kanus-a ako magtan-aw.
I remember reading about Tina Turner when he was trying to play the radio and feeling that he was in between – not black for black radio and not white for white radio. How do you hope the changes in the future?
Just not being boxed in and for people to know that people are not a monolith and that everyone, each and every one of us, regardless of how we look, we’re all capable of being multifaceted and into multiple different things. I feel you don’t have to never choose a genre and stick it. I feel a lot of artists who get blowback. If you see artists to go to country genres yes pop artist to go to rock … artists are allowed to explore different genres than before. It feels like people are better than exploring different genres.
What is the most eager to share with the next fans?
I have a couple singles to come and I work with an ep. It’s pop, alt pop, hyper pop. I will drop single every month. It’s greater inside my toilet and have clothes across the floor and you’re like a mini skirt, “Oh that’s a cute, a tee, and rollers.
