From 8-year-old Soca sensation to Brooklyn’s newest female rapper, Young Devyn, also known as Baby Goat, is shaking up New York City’s drill music scene at just 19 years old. With heavy flows and unique punch bars, Young Devyn is the breath of fresh air the city never knew it needed. After attending °1824’s press conference for her upcoming EP, Baby Goat, the Trinidadian up and coming rapper opened up about her journey as an artist and where she sees herself in the near future.
Q: This month is actually Caribbean Heritage month, so big ups to all my Caribbean’s. So, I have to ask, you being Trinidadian, how has that impacted you as an artist?
A: Being Trinidadian is one of the biggest influences of my artistry because it’s kind of one of the things that set me apart… When you look at the Caribbean, Jamaica it’s the more mainstream island, or it’s the most repped island … I feel like Soca music isn’t as mainstream as Reggae. Soca music as a whole in Trinidad, it wasn’t as mainstream. When I posted the cover art yesterday with the Trinidadian flag wrapped around me but then Brooklyn behind me… Trinidad loved it. They were like ‘one thing I love more than Devyn’s music is the fact that she reps Trinidad.’ I always make sure that I champion Trinidad in everything that I do. It has also helped me creatively in the sense that my flow, my twang, the way that I say certain words on certain songs. Even how Act Bad came about, if you listen to the end of Act Bad, I start going into my little twang, when I’m like, ‘Little brown skin vibe, with a few tattoos’ and so it influenced me to say ‘act bad, act bad,’ because in Trinidad we say …. bad and in New York, they say things about bad as well, so I kind of mixed the two. And so of course, my Trini roots always have a huge effect on, you know, my music and everything.
Q: As a young artist, you’ve been in the industry for a while, how do you maintain your mental health? Because that can definitely be a challenge for sure.
A: Honestly speaking, I’ve actually started going to therapy because it’s like being a kid in the industry from like 7 years old to 19, that’s a long, long time. So many things can happen and so many things that you experience. Trying to balance being a child and still having to do a business, an adult profession. My mother never pushed me to ever do anything too grown, that’s one of the reasons people loved when I sang Soca because I was able to maintain a child aura in such an adult stage. That does definitely have an impact on you because just the way you grow up, you’re maneuvering; it’s like growing up under the spotlight, you know, it’s like everybody is seeing your every single move and things of that sort, and just being so busy. Like you got to still find those times where you can just lock in and listen to yourself, listen to your body when it’s tired, listen to your brain when it’s tired. Now that I’m older I’m starting to understand the importance of it because before I used to feel like, ok, I just got to keep going, keep going, keep going and you know, I always make sure to work hard, but definitely there’s time I need to set out to focus on my mental health because if that’s not good, then everything else will fall out of place.
Q: We are halfway through the year, what are some of your remaining goals for 2021 as an artist or even personally for yourself?
A: Well definitely just to like get my name more out there … I just did not expect my year to go like this, at least my January to June to be like this, like my life has completely changed and this is only just the beginning and that’s the crazy part to me … I just take everything day by day, of course I have like certain set goals, of course I want like my EP to do great; I want people to hear it and just love it and embrace it, like songs like entangled and all these different songs that I worked really hard on, that’s like a big goal of mine. I’m just taking it take day by day, like I never really try to speak on anything too much and I never try to make plans, cause you know people always say, you’re never supposed to make plans before God, you’re supposed to let God just unfold your story.
Q: Would you ever consider writing for anybody else being that you’re such an amazing songwriter?
A: Yeah, of course. Even sometimes, I write songs that literally don’t relate to me in any way, shape or form because I just think that the concept would be fire, you know, and I definitely want to give it to people. I’ve actually written for a couple of people. I definitely want to get more into that, like deep dive into like working with some bigger artists and just, you know, working on projects and things of the sort. I think it also sharpens my pen, because sometimes you’ve got to think outside of the box to understand what people like, so yeah, I think that’ll be something that’s really fire.
Q: Why is it so important for you to not use any profanity in your music?
A: Well, for many different reasons. One, it’s because I started writing music from very early on, from the age of eight till now, nobody has written my songs for me. So, imagine being eight years old, you’re not going to put curse words in your music at eight, so it’s kind of trained my mind to continuously do that … Then number two it just comes from this real expansive amount of vocabulary that I have. Like my grandmother, you know coming from an old, Caribbean household, my grandmother used to give me a lot of books to read, and I used to finish the books really fast because I was really good in reading and writing and in school, so it got to the point where she had no more books to give me, so she told me to start reading the dictionary and every day I would read through the dictionary really, really young, not even knowing how to pronounce the words, but just by seeing it and seeing different definitions and things like that, over the time my brain has been able to like… it’s like muscle memory you know, so I just feel like sometimes curse words are like space fillers, and so I feel like with me knowing a lot of words I can take things that can hit just as hard as a curse word because I just know how to maneuver and finagle it a little bit.
Q: Where do you see yourself within the next five years as an artist?
A: Within the next five years, definitely one of like the biggest artists in the game, like I’m not going to lie, like I definitely see myself just being one of those stand out artists. I think my music is going to speak for itself and I’m coming in a little bit different to the game cause I’m not on any gimmicks, I don’t have any big persona, like I think the thing I’m selling to people is myself, like I’m just being real, this is my real story, it’s authentic, it’s no overly anything. I’m just telling my story and I think people are going to love it and relate to it because I feel like finally, we have a girl that’s like one of us you know, we feel like we could walk down the street and see her … I just always see myself getting bigger, bigger, and bigger but still humbly moving, my friends and family around me. Probably a lot of investments too because I’ve always made sure that you know, the generational wealth is in place, but um yeah all of that together in the boiling pot.
Q: Your music is actually very bar heavy, how do you come up with your lyrics and what goes into your process of writing?
A: Well, I like to come up with my lyrics based off the things I’m experiencing but a lot of the things I do now, I pay attention a lot when I’m having a conversation with somebody, I pay attention to the things they react to the most because those are the types of things you could say on a song that are going to stand out. Like, I said something on a song, ‘you only got rich off a pandemic’ and that was like the biggest thing off Instagram, and everybody was like ‘omg that’s so true;’ like people say it all the time, that’s a regular conversation, but to hear it in a song makes it pop 10x more. Those are also kind of one of the things that I do to you know, subside from cursing, just saying slick things that I know are going to catch people’s attention. So yeah, I just base myself from inspiration of things that are around me; and then studying like Hip-hop, I didn’t really fall in love with Hip-hop like the regular teenager because I was doing Soca so much that I was a casual Hip-hop listener growing up; and then when I got into Hip-hop, I discovered like bars and metaphors because of Nicki Minaj and then I went to Meek, Jay-Z, DMX, Jadakiss, then I went to Lauryn Hill. So, it’s like that was kind of like the area of Hip-hop that I fell in love with, the bars, the metaphors, the punchline, paying attention to your flow and having breath control, focusing on your diction. You know the times people really looked like at rapping as a sport. And so, like me being a teenager, I know what teenagers like to hear but I also love the work of MC’s and I’m just able to like balance the two and kind of bridge that gap again.
Q: You’ve stated that you and your music represent that regular, everyday girl. What keeps you grounded with all of the success that’s coming your way?
A: Just my family, my friends, everybody who’s around me, my everyday life. Like every blessing and every win that I get it actually makes me more humble because I reflect on where I used to be, you know. Like sometimes people say it’s not good to dwell on the past, but sometimes the past kinds of keeps you humble. Like I look at these types of things, like I had my little EP dinner yesterday and I was so like taken a back just by the fact that my name was on napkins; like those types of things humble me because it’s just like wow, I used to remember when I used to dream of these types of things. I used to rush home from school just so I could turn off the lights in my room and pretend I’m on stage at rolling loud, and now I’m in rolling loud; like these types of things are always just memories in my brain and it just keeps me humble because it just shows that I worked really hard and it was a journey, nothing was given to me, it wasn’t overnight, and so, those are the types of things that always push me to do more but at the same time understand the blessings that are around me.
Q: I’m super excited to hear your EP, Baby Goat. What can we expect from the project?
A: The project is a real versatile project. I think one of the beautiful things about it is you don’t ever have to leave the project for anything … I think we’re in a day in age where I like to call it microwave music, where it’s like it’s food that you can get it fast, but you digest it faster, and you need more of it, which is why artists always have to drop so frequently; and then there’s artist who give you those music albums that just feel like a full course meal, like it just feels like something you have to take a longer time to digest. I think that’s kind of what the Baby Goat EP represents because it’s like we’re in an age where if you want turn up music you go to this artist, if you want love songs you go to that artist, if you want more like emo songs, interceptive songs you go to this artist; but on my project if you want a love song, you go to track 1, if you want a hype song you go to track 4, if you want a motivational song you go to track 6, like you don’t ever have to leave the project; and I think that goes to show you that I’m multidimensional and there’s so many more sides. Like even with women, just being a female and dropping this project I think it’s really significant because you know, in the music business, especially Hip-hop, we’re expected to be either, just overly sexualized or super tough; like it’s never a balance, or it’s never a woman in the game that could just be herself all the time and I think that’s what the project represents, just being unapologetically you.
Q: Like you said, your success did not come over night, so if you could go back and talk to even younger Devyn, at the start of your musical journey and give yourself some advice, what would it be?
A: That nothing happens before its time, like every year I would be like, ‘by next year I want to do this, that, and the third,’ and that was me being like 12 saying I wanted to be at rolling loud by 13 but um, you know, I would really just remind myself that nothing happens before its time; like everything happens when it’s supposed to, you just got to keep on working, that’s why I said, you know, never plan anything before God, but always just pay attention and follow through with what he has for you cause there’s so many doors that’s been closed but even bigger doors have opened at the timing that it was supposed to; and so I would always just tell myself, stay consistent, stay humble, stay true to what you know and what you came in this game far and you I’ll definitely continue to make it far.
