Рэп-исполнительница Шавон в клипе «Smile Now» обращается к корням семьи в Сан-Диего

One of the early images in Shavone‘s music video for her song “Smile Now” features her standing in front of Fam Mart with a lowrider Cadillac parked out front, holding a flute. Anyone who’s lived in or spent time in Southeast San Diego would immediately recognize the significance, while also learning something more about the artist. “I specifically said that in this chapter of my artistry, I want to give the world a window into San Diego and who I am, where I’m actually from. A lot of people who know me in a professional sense and from an industry perspective, they know me as Shavone who works in tech, or Shavone who worked at Instagram, or at Twitter or whatever,” she says. “With my visuals, I really wanted to use this chapter of my artistry to give a real unfiltered look at San Diego and where I’m from, and who my people are and the very fabric of my identity. I wanted to show who I am and how I’ve been cultivated, who’s poured into me and where I’ve been poured into, in San Diego. That was a big part of that journey.” Shavone (whose full name is Shavone Charles) comes from a family rooted in Southeast San Diego for more than 40 years. Her mom ran her own hair salon on El Cajon Boulevard for 30 years, and her dad operated The Chicken Shack next to Greene Cat Liquor for just as long, with Shavone participating in helping out with both businesses. A classically trained musician, she began playing piano and the flute in elementary school, moving on to marching band, jazz band, parade block while attending local schools in La Mesa and taking music lessons at Alan’s Music Center. She earned her bachelor’s from the University of California, Merced, studying literature, writing, and sociology, before going on to head communications positions at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, VSCO, and TikTok. She’s also represented by Ford Modeling, is the author of “Black Internet Effect” published by Penguin Random House, recently organized her inaugural Thank You Southeast community day and block party earlier this month through her Future of Creatives organization, and has been previously featured in outlets including Billboard, Essence, Time, Elle, Ebony, and Paper. Shavone lives in southeastern San Diego with her German Shepherd, Leia, and is head of global communications at Nothing, a tech company. She took some time to talk about how growing up here influenced her as an artist, her work with Future of Creatives, and being a self-described “Star Wars” superfan. Q: What kinds of creativity did you see at home, at school, in your neighborhood, and how has that shaped your own artistry? A: My uncle is a multi-instrumentalist jazz artist, and I got exposed to jazz sax, jazz flute, and just instrumentation at a really early age. I started playing piano before the first grade, and then transitioned to flute almost immediately after I started on piano. Also, my aunt is a singer and sang a lot in church and did local gigs, so music has always been a fundamental part of my upbringing and my family. My dad and mom are more music consumers, but they always were supportive of me playing competitive flute, supportive of paying for my flute lessons, and affording me a lot of opportunities that were really a major privilege for somebody like me in that neighborhood and in that environment. I was in marching band, I was in parade block, I was in jazz band. I went to La Mesa Dale Elementary School and I was in band there; I was in band at La Mesa Middle School. I’ve kind of been on that journey as a musician, first from an instrumentation perspective, pretty much my whole life. I started writing poetry in elementary and middle school, and then started rapping in eighth grade and into high school. That was when I started actually recording songs and rapping, and putting my poetry on top of beats. That’s how I started rapping, but my brothers rapped, as well. My eldest brother played the sax and the flute, and he was in band at Helix, too. So, there are lots of musical folks in my family. My parents were gracious enough to nourish that as an outlet for me early on, as a young person, so I spent a lot of time with the instruments. I played sports, as well, but music has always been my saving grace. What I love about Southeast San Diego… I would just say everybody’s close. My family is there, people I know. Everybody feels close. Southeast is pretty concentrated. It’s not a huge, vast area. Everything is very closely connected, and it’s home. Q: And, your dad runs a restaurant/food business, and your mom is a beautician? A: Yeah, that was a big influence for me. I dropped a record a few years back called “4c.” That’s kind of just an homage to Black beauty ritual as a source and point of healing for Black women in the Black community. The visual is all a tribute to inclusivity across the diaspora of Blackness and Black girl magic. That video, and really just my general message with a lot of my music, is fundamentally rooted in empowering my community, empowering Black women, empowering people of color, Black people specifically. I grew up in my mom’s hair salon. She owned a salon for about 30 years on El Cajon Boulevard, called The Hair Show, and she did different hair shows, too. Early on, as a young person, she had me walking the runway in hair shows, all the big hair wars and big hair conventions with the choreography. Q: Like Bronner Bros.? A: Exactly, like Bronner Bros., and the whole production of hair shows. She was competitive, so we competed and I that’s kind of how I got my start with more performative arts, I would say. Definitely getting into beauty and the Black beauty aesthetic, growing up around incredible Black women and having that side of my creativity with hair and nails, and just self-care being a big theme of my upbringing. Seeing my mom as a boss running her own business; I grew up working in my parents’ businesses, answering phones, sweeping the floors, taking out the trash, and working at the cash register at The Chicken Shack. A lot of my time that I did spend has been working alongside them as they have both been entrepreneurs and running these super long-term businesses in the community. Q: When did you first start learning to play the flute and what you drew you to music, in general, and that instrument specifically? A: I started learning flute like around the first grade. I started off on a recorder, and once you get your embouchure, once your mouth kind of matures, then you can focus enough to hold the flute, try the blow-in-the-bottle technique and mastering that. I started on a recorder and then graduated to an actual flute. A lot of my time getting a lot more serious about it involved taking music lessons at Alan’s Music (Center) in La Mesa. Alan’s truly saved my life as a young person who needed outlets and needed somewhere to just express myself. Alan’s was such a magical getaway for me as a young person playing a piano and taking lessons, and kind of finding myself, finding my identity as a musician, and having that creative freedom to break out of my normal environment to really focus and lock in on learning how to read and write music. Q: What kinds of music did you listen to most growing up? Who were some of the inspirations for the music you create today? A: Growing up, my mom is the biggest hip hop head. Like, you would think my mom was from Harlem or Yonkers, New York. She raised me on you know the real Roxanne Shante, Eric B. & Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest, Slick Rick the Ruler, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah-really iconic, legendary emcees. My introduction to really loving hip hop and the lyricism of hip hop, the message behind hip hop, is definitely grounded in her and what she introduced me to. And then, obviously, Mary J. Blige, Run DMC, all of the big ’80s and ’90s staples, too. As far as conscious hip hop, she definitely introduced me to some powerful emcees, as a youth, that absolutely have inspired my message and who I am as an artist, and as a person, today. I also listened to what my older brothers were listening to, so a lot of Dipset, a lot of J.R. Writer, Juelz Santana, Hell Rell, Fabolous, Jadakiss, Cassidy-just real spitters. Then, on the West Coast side, my dad is more of a G-funk, funkadelic, and Caribbean music guy. My family on my dad’s side is all from Trinidad, so my dad’s music taste is more grounded in Caribbean reggae sounds, but also West Coast, very funkadelic, George Clinton; all the typical West Coast music you could think of. So, N.W.A., Ice Cube, WC, Snoop Dogg, the Eastsidaz. That whole scene, from a West Coast perspective, is definitely gospel for me, as well. A lot of Warren G, a lot of Nate Dogg, DJ Quik, all the legends, for sure. My dad’s a big E-40 guy; he and E-40 are actually very cool. Too $hort, a lot of California music, all of the legendary Cali rap. And, Tupac, duh. Also, jazz is a big influence for me. Jazz and classical, for sure, being that those are sort of my roots as a musician and artist. I listen to a lot of electronic music, as well, and a lot of techno and industrial-rooted sounds, too. As far as what’s inspiring me, or who has inspired me the most, I would say Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Tupac, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Lil Wayne, Fabolous, Cassidy, Dipset. Who else? I know I’m probably forgetting some big ones-Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson, and just the world building that they’ve done around their music is just so iconic. Aaliyah is so iconic to me. Just seeing the worlds that have been built around their identity has definitely inspired me on a visual level, for sure. Q: I saw your video for “Smile Now” in my Instagram feed and immediately smiled at the visuals first, then the lyrics. First, tell people what the song is about and what inspired it? A: “Smile Now” is so close to my heart, and thank you for the compliments on it. It’s hard to say this, but I think “Smile Now” is my favorite song to date that I’ve ever done or written because it it’s from such a real place for me. It’s just about how we are owed joy. When I think about Black joy, I think about everything that we go through in our day-to-day lives. Even in my life, when I think about the things I’ve been through, the the tribulations I’ve been through, the deep valleys and peaks of life in my adulthood, going from being a younger woman in college to now a full-fledged adult—the s— we go through is just crazy as Black women, especially being a Black woman in tech and corporate America, and being from San Diego and going through what we go through. Also, there are some personal revelations that I’ve gone through recently in my life. I had a crazy health scare a couple years ago that really stopped me in my tracks. I had to take a seat for several months to just get better and heal, and “Smile Now” is birthed from this moment of having been through so much, and now it’s time to just be grateful for the journey and smile because we deserve happiness. It’s just declaring joy and declaring happiness in spite of all the darkness, in spite of all the trials and tribulations. It’s commanding presence and purpose over your life. That’s what “Smile Now” is about. From a lyrics perspective, it’s also about imagining brighter futures, specifically Blacker, brighter futures. Some of the lyrics are, “If I could rewind and choose a new reality, I would ask Basquiat to paint the blackest galaxies,” and then I go into, “I would ask Assata to rewrite the ghetto fallacies. I look at my father, I can see the black gravity. A site, Blavity. Trauma blossom past its full capacity.” It’s just like, against all odds, we’re here. We defied all the limitations and all the sorrow and all of the institutional trauma that we have to overcome every day—we’re still here, we’re still standing. A lot of it, too, is just going into imagining utopias for us. We’re worthy of better, brighter days. It’s also about the youth. There’s a line in the hook where I say, “God blessin’ all the ghetto childs,” and it’s just, again, when you see us, or when you hear about a ghetto kid, you think of all these negative things, but the sun shines on us, too. Q: Talk about the visuals because seeing Fam Mart and Imperial Avenue street sign, your platinum braids, your nails, and your golds, the lowriders-these were all huge points of connection for me, having grown up here. What went into your process for creating the imagery of the video, the individual elements that would be included, and what they would say about San Diego? A: It’s funny because, for the past few months, I’ve been doing these freestyle packs that are essentially just to showcase my creativity, my artistry, and my take on well-known records from artists that I admire and who inspire me. For all of my visuals, I’m pretty much doing all of the creative direction. A lot of my ideation around my visuals is all self-funded, so we get scrappy, girl. For this video, my mom did my hair, which was really special to me because she’s been doing my hair since I was a young child in the hair salon. Her work was represented just as much as mine was in the video. I really wanted to just embody who we are, and I wanted to show San Diego at a high-quality level-driving through Southeast, even riding around potholes, abandoned streets and buildings, and just showing our city in a positive light. Showing us smiling, showing me smiling, and full of joy. All of the jewelry I had on was mine. All of the cars? We partnered with the Black SD Lowriders Association. They were so supportive and gracious enough to team up with us on the video. Those are real cars, no rented cars, no facade. A lot of what you see from me as an artist is all about authenticity and showing up as I am, and trying to set a precedent that you can show up as who you are, and you can still win. Q: Tell us about Future of Creatives. A: Future of Creatives is a multidisciplinary creative collective. I started it as an online community years ago from my viewpoint of working in tech and being at the intersection of tech, music, fashion, and entertainment, and also seeing so many gaps in representation for us in tech and in equitable resources that a lot of young people lacked. In my career, I worked a lot on social impact-related initiatives and really wanted to make sure I was listening as I climbed up the ladder and got opportunities across the industry. So, I see these gaps and started curating communities—workshops, volunteer projects, panel discussions. A lot of the work that I did with Future of Creatives early on, and continually, has been centered around more peer-to-peer conversations and about how do we collectively come together to have honest conversations that will further us in our careers, and also uplift those who have less opportunities? And, to also dispel gatekeeping in our industries and create more access for people who look like us. Future of Creatives was kind of birthed out of that idea. I partnered with the Soho House, which I’ve partnered with for several years now on programming that engages people who are professional creatives, emerging professionals, and also emerging creatives who maybe haven’t found their big break yet, or maybe they’re not creating at a professional level yet, but we can help establish a better network for them, or do workshops and establish more resourcing for them to be successful across creative industries. A big part of Future of Creatives is figuring out, as underrepresented creatives, how do we have a more equitable seat at these tables, and how do we get the capital to build our own tables? That’s a really big line of sight for me from a lens of technology, where you look around and you really don’t see many Black people, or people of color in general, from a leadership standpoint. You see us all over the platforms, you see us consuming the products and buying everything, you see us coming up with everything. I wrote this book called “Black Internet Effect,” and I released it with Penguin, that talks a lot about some of these theories and learnings I’ve had from the front lines of being in tech and breaking into tech during a time where it wasn’t cool to be a Black person in tech. It wasn’t cool to be to be a Black woman in tech. It’s a little cooler now, but back when I started, I was the only one, the first person in all my roles, and it was not it was not easy or ideal. Future of Creatives was birthed out of that, out of my lived experiences and understanding the gaps. That, regardless of where I am in my career, there’s accountability for everybody, from a communal perspective, for us to lift each other up and figure out how do we beat down these doors and keep them open for the generations that are coming behind us? At this point, we’re doing special projects, brand partnerships, we’re working on continued programming across TV and film, fashion, entertainment, music, and tech. Those are sort of our core programming pillars right now. Q: Where do you like to go locally to get your hair done, get your nails done? Grab something to eat? A: Get my hair done? My mom, honestly. God bless her soul, I can still talk her into doing my hair. I will say, I do get my hair braided on University (Avenue) at Sonia’s Braid Shop. I go there often to get my hair braided. I don’t have a nail person here, unfortunately. I’m still on the hunt for a good nail spot. For food, I’m obviously going to say The Chicken Shop, but I like to go to Malibu Farms, too. Just hang out down there and catch some vibes. Those are sort of my top spots right now. Q: If you were to go to Fam Mart this weekend, what are you buying? What are you walking out with? A: If I were going to Fam Mart this weekend, I would get an airbrush shirt, for sure. Classic vibes. Try to find a name belt, and I’ll probably get some gold, if they’re still selling jewelry. Q: What is the best advice you’ve ever received? A: The best advice I’ve ever received would be from my dad, which is “The worst they could say is no.” That’s the absolute worst you could get. Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you? A: I mean, this might be shocking, maybe not, but I’m a huge “Star Wars” fan. Like, huge “Star Wars” fan. I’m a super fan. That, and “Harry Potter,” but actually “Star Wars” trumps “Harry Potter” for me. Q: How many times have you seen “Star Wars”? A: Oh my God, hundreds. Hundreds of times. I have all types of collectibles, Baby Yoda, all that. Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend. A: I’d say going to the beach, Mission Beach, with my family. Going to the beach, getting on a boat and going out on the water.