Spike Chester is All You Need in Your Music Rotation
Dallas born-and-raised rapper Spike Chester started on the traditional route of pursuing an undergraduate degree at Stephen F. Austin State University. However, he quickly realized that one of the most constant presences in his life—music—was the true path to his pursuit of happiness.
Image courtesy of Spike Chester.
Spike’s first introduction to music was in the church, something that many Black artists can relate to. Although he is a rap artist, he wasn’t exposed to the genre until he became a teenager. “Once I got older [and] started hanging around my big cousins, they would play Outkast and Goodie Mob… that whole wave of music.”
As he began to discover more artists on his own, in the era he refers to as the “blog era” (around early 2010s), it further solidified to him that rap was a career he could pursue.
Music was the only thing that made me feel empowered. I felt like music gave me a voice—that shit damn near like therapy.
He began releasing music on DSPs in 2018 after withdrawing from university the prior year, although he had been writing for years at that point in time. Spike’s music is an authentic depiction of his perspectives on life based on his experiences. “I don’t try to force inspiration because when I used to do that, the music didn’t feel as genuine, as pure. If I’m not inspired, I’m not gonna go to the studio. I’m gonna go live life.”
As a Dallas native, all of the people he was acclimated to were racial minorities, which exposed him to the hardships that Black and brown communities face daily. This is a driving factor in his career as he aims to inspire people who can relate to his upbringing and experiences.
I want to help those people because that’s a direct reflection of me.
Even as a rising artist, his music has already impacted the lives of his listeners. “One of my closest homies came up to me [and said] ‘I was going through a dark time and I played this song, and it helped me through; that’s happened a few times. That’s letting me know that I’m on the right path [to] change the world.”
His insightfulness and ability to be introspective on his own thoughts and emotions shine throughout his music, which he uses as a healthy coping mechanism and a way to heal.
“[I feel like] people my age, we go through a lot of traumatic shit that we never heal from. If no one’s talking about, it feels like we’re fighting these battles alone. If I can be that microphone [to let people know] we’re all in this shit together, that’s what I want people to take away from this shit.”
While his music is versatile in subject matter, Spike proclaims healing is in more forms than one and others can relate to the wave of emotions that people go through in life. “Some days I want to heal by going to the club, some days I want to heal by sitting in my room all day. Everything is just a healing process, there’s just different ways that we can do it.”
Currently, Spike is working on his fourth album and released the first two singles to the album in February 2022. “I’ve been working on this since December 2020… and the way it sounded then, it sounds completely different, on a whole ‘nother level than what it was at the time.”
His favorite song of his has yet to be released yet, but will be released along with his upcoming album that should be released sometime in the near future. Spike’s next moves will be aligned with reaching up to higher ground; he’s taking life day-by-day to figure himself and the next steps in his career out — ”Upward and onward.”
You all can find more about Spike Chester here:
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