Today we’d like to introduce you to Mickey Woods Jr.
Hi Mickey, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I fell in love with music at an early age. My favorite toys as a kid were always the ones that played some type of music. As a baby, I remember getting a small drum for one of my birthdays; which I’m sure my parents immediately regretted. I would stumble around the house beating on that small, plastic drum until my hand was tired of holding the attachable drumstick that came with it. In hindsight, I realize that this is when I started to become infatuated with rhythm.
As a kid, I remember going to the local high school’s football games and being mesmerized by the marching band’s halftime show. If you’re familiar with Southeast Texas high school football culture, you know that halftime of the football games are not the time to rush down to the restrooms or concession stands. In fact, the halftime show is often just as entertaining (if not more) as the actual football game. Although a lot of the time, I was mostly focused on the drum section, I do realize that these halftime performances introduced me to all the layers that can exist within music.
In 2nd grade I ended up switching elementary schools and the new school I attended offered a music class in which I could learn to play and read music. Needless to say, I was in heaven. We started out learning to play fluorophores and eventually graduated to playing legit instruments. I wanted to be a part of the percussion section but so did all of the other kids. Due to limited equipment, I was forced to settle for the trumpet section, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. Our band director, Mr. Alexander was phenomenal. We would spend the second half of our school days learning to play whatever songs were on the top of the charts and on the radio at the time. Picture walking into a band hall full of 4th graders playing Beyonce & Sean Paul’s “Crazy In Love”. Crazy to think that these times were my first introduction to Hip Hop.
My parents were never really fond of Hip Hop/Rap music and always steered me away from listening to secular music. I and my dad would ride around in his deep-red Dodge Ram blasting a wide range of gospel and jazz music. At the time, I found it a bit weird that Jazz music didn’t have any words or lyrics but as an adult, it’s become my favorite genre of music. I always attribute that to my pops putting me on at an early age.
As I grew older, and technology began to advance I found myself seeking out Hip Hop more and more. The first artist I fell in love with was Lupe Fiasco and my sister even bought me a copy of his album “The Cool” for my 15th Birthday. Still one of my favorite albums to this day.
In traditional Texas culture, I and my friends would literally stay up all night freestyling over beats we found on YouTube. The more we did this, the more I became interested in saying things that actually meant something to me. The playful freestyling would soon turn into carefully writing and crafting songs with consistent themes and structure. I was having so much fun doing this that I started recording my songs using the default microphone on my mom’s laptop at the time, and then burning them onto a CD that I would only allow my closest friends to listen to. Soon, the word got around in high school that I had all these unreleased songs and people started to request to listen to them.
I didn’t record my first song in an actual studio until my freshman year of college, 2012.
There’s soo many other stories that I could write explaining how I got where I am today with music, but I already feel like this response is way too lengthy, lol.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
During this journey, I’ve had one consistent struggle and it’s always been tied to finances. Without having any financial support from a label or legit investor, I’ve had to fund everything myself 100%. I like to look at this as a positive thing because it’s taught me ownership, accountability, and it’s given me a great sense of pride in regards to the things that I am able to create and execute. Of course, it would be nice to receive some type of financial help but I am a firm believer that things happen when they’re supposed to. There have been thousands of times where I didn’t have enough money to execute the things that I needed to as an artist and creator but these times have forced me to be innovative and resourceful. My biggest goal right now is to be able to support myself strictly from the funds I make as an artist. Currently, I wake up every day and go to a job where I make someone else’s dreams come true and I want to free myself from that. It eats away at me. I feel like a rare diamond—of the highest quality and clarity, that’s stuck at the bottom layer of a trash pile at a landfill. I’m just waiting for someone to come and peel away all of the empty fast-food containers and debris from atop of me. I’m absolutely being proactive in unearthing my genius but a little help would be nice too.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an artist, I’m a rapper…a singer when I feel like an instrumental calls me to be. I feel like the fact that I make words rhyme may take away from listeners seeing me as a soul artist. But that’s what I believe that I am. I make music that forces my listeners to LISTEN and not just passively be entertained. while smoking a joint and listening to one of my unreleased songs entitled, ‘bee not buzzin’, I had an epiphany. I always find the “what type of music do you make” question to be difficult to answer but now I know exactly what type of music it is that I make: blue collar music. I am super versatile when it comes to songwriting but the songs that come most natural to me are ones that I write to inspire the ‘diamond in the rough’ that he/she will be seen and appreciated one day. It’s the type of music you listen to on the way to work to encourage yourself that life won’t be like this forever.
My last album, 40 Days & 40 Nights is a prime example of this.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
My mom always said not to give advice about things that I am not educated in. If you ask me, I suck at networking. The people that I work with have always just seem to gravitate to me. What has worked well for me is to be my 100% authentic self in every room that I walk in and to just simply treat people the right way.
Contact Info:
- Email: MickeyWoodsMusic@gmail.com
- Website: BeSomethnApparel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickeywoodsjr/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mickey.woods.16
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/mickeywoodsjr?lang=en
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCpSwKtBsw-2OYGiK-IcU_gQ
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/UPW9QDcYzfhVDfoD6
- Other: https://mickeywoodsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/40-days-40-nights
Image Credits
Jarele Taylor (@black_jeezuz)
JZ (@IOFJZ)
