BeMyFiasco is creatively spectacular. The Dallas-based singer/songwriter is a breath of fresh air in a genre where so many acts sound alike. Her writing and arrangements are innovative and brilliant.
First and foremost, please explain the name.
So, my government name is Bianca Rodriguez, that’s what my mother named me. I was a huge Lupe Fiasco fan, growing up, and his album Lasers, at the time, wasn’t doing too well. And I was @loveandlasers on Twitter. I kinda want to make something different to separate myself as a fan. I’m at Atlanta Convention Center with my mom at the time, writing down different combinations and I stumbled across “be my fiasco.” I’m like, “Okay, that sounds cool.” I make it my twitter name. I was in college at the time, so they would call me by my Twitter name in public, which is still a wild time, and it just kind of stuck. And I ended up just changing everything, website, social media, everything. I was like, I’m gonna just do whatever. And here we are. I haven’t met him, yet, but would love to one day.
Where I Left You is an extremely dope album. I like the fact that is well-rounded and it doesn’t stick with only one genre. Was that something that you had planned or did you just want to stick with R&B?
Well, I’m R&B at my core, so that’s just kind of a natural thing. I’m originally from Dallas, so when I flew out to Raleigh to record, before I actually moved here, for a couple of weeks, and Phonte already kind of had the track listing already set out and it just so happens that I like everything that was already laid out. He knows me pretty well, and we just wrote and made whatever we liked, to be quite honest, we didn’t have an agenda with it, so we just had fun.
I see. It shows. I hear it. The album is doing exceptionally well. I love it. What’s your favorite jam out of the whole album?
No one has asked me that question! Yet you are the first! I’m not gonna think hard because I love them all. My favorite, today, I’ll say it’s probably “2-car Garage.” More than likely.
Why that one?
Because it’s hilarious to me. I mean, now I can say that. But it’s a real story that happened, so at the time, it wasn’t funny, but it’s just was so fun to make because he had this idea of the hook part and then I already had this story, so we just merged them and it was so funny to record such a ridiculous story. Any time I listened to it, I’m immediately transplanted back to that time and it’s just fine. I never get to do really fun records as an r&b singer. It’s always like love and relationships and life and introspective things. And that was just like, “Hey, I drove my car out here and like I got into some mess and here we are.”
Speaking of true stories, um, there’s another song that I like, that’s on the album called “Bad Dream.” You mentioned that the song has to do with toxic relationships and for something that you blamed yourself for a long time for now. My question is, what is the part that you blamed yourself for?
My 20s were toxic. I feel like if I could do it all over again, I probably wouldn’t date again.
Whose 20s haven’t been toxic?
Right! I thought it was just the time for toxicity. That was just the time for you to just mess up everything. So yeah, I’m still undoing the things. But I think it was more so just forgiving myself for not knowing what to do, what right choices to make throughout the different relationships because that one wasn’t specific like “I can pinpoint to this person”. That was a combination of everything. So yeah, just kind of like giving myself grace after the fact and just being like, “hey, we didn’t know” or we did know and we were just being dumb. Now, we’re here. We made it out and we’re in one piece, thankfully.
What would you like for your listeners to take from Where I Left You?
That you are not the summation of the choices that you made. I mean you are, but you aren’t. I’m not defined by those things that happened and they made me who I am. They’ve allowed me room to grow and figure things out, but kinda just letting a lot of that go. So for this album, it was a lot of introspective things where I’m trying to figure out how I feel about love, relationships, and not just romantic, just, you know, any of them, where I fit in into this new space, because my last project I was 25. Now I’m 30, 31, and the entire world and all this life have happened. And you know, I didn’t anticipate ever making it out. When I started this, it was like, “I want to do an EP.” He (Phonte) was like, “Well, you want to use more songs?” And I said “Yeah, okay,” and here we are. And now I’m living in a whole other state making more music. If anything, I want people to take from the album is just to make what you like, do what you like, no matter if it sells or if it doesn’t, you love it, and it’s great. And if it works for you then go for it.
Is there anybody that you would love to work with? You only get three.
I got a whole list for that one. You’re making me think today. All right. I’m only getting three though? Okay, I gotta narrow it. I’m gonna do my best. Musiq Soulchild is one. Jazmine Sullivan has two. I’m not gonna say Beyonce, because it’s just a given. Everybody wants to work with Beyonce. She’s made me believe that like an asterisk over there. I would D’Angelo is the third choice.
Are any new projects coming out in the future?
That’s the goal, but we’re still pushing this one for the most part, so still trying to get some more visuals out trying to book some shows, hopefully in the middle of all of this, we can get out there. So I can sing to some people. I’m excited about that. Be it right now. I mean, we’re always working on feature work. You know, we never know. but as far as an album, maybe.
You’re a kindergarten teacher. Have you ever sang to your students or did your students ever hear you sing?
So I’m a former kindergarten teacher now. I left the classroom and everything in right after the album in November, to come out here to do it kind of full time. I never in my six years of teaching, I’d never sung to my kids, not in that way, just because the very first or second year that I was teaching, I told my team at my school and they all knew I could sing. So you know, sign me up for talent shows or whatever, but if I had to be out for a show or I’m super tired from being up late or whatever, it got blamed on like, “Oh, you’re not dedicated to this,” like having a second job at the first job. It was like that. So I kept that world very separate. And now and then, some kid would find me “Oh, I saw you on YouTube!” and I’m like, “No, you didn’t,” so I kept those worlds very separate forever, essentially.
Patience is a gift that we have yet to learn ourselves.
I mean, we live in a microwavable society, right now, anyway. “Quick. Fast. I need it right now. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to wait for my computer to load or something” That’s how bad it is.
Is there any piece of advice that you would like to give to any aspiring singer or an aspiring artist?
I would say to always be a student. So always be learning in your craft and whether that’s like investing in vocal lessons or YouTube or learning proper warm-up, so you know, how to market yourself, but then on the flip side, it’s, it kind of goes back to our previous conversation, like, be very gentle with yourself. Everybody else is very cynical of you and your art. They are gonna judge you, they’re gonna say, whatever. But you don’t have to do that work. Like your only job is to put out the art. Like, when you’re recording or when you’re writing, don’t be so critical. I’m very, very careful if I talk to myself, so I would say always be a student, always be learning in and give yourself some room. Like we’re in a pandemic, also. So like, please be careful.
How did you get on board with Phonte?
I think either I found or stumbled upon…somebody sent me Foreign Exchange in 2010. Maybe and then I had a project in 2014. I sent him a tweet about one of my songs that were out at the time called “Monday Morning Blues.” And I think we’d already follow each other. I already went to a couple of like, FE shows. So, we had kind of met loosely in person, and maybe two weeks later, he hit me it was like, “Yo, this is fire. I love this. Send this to me,” and I’m like, “okay,” so I emailed him, he’s like, “Yo, hit me any time,” and we kind of just like established like, just like a musical friendship. One day, he hits me, he’s like, “Hey, can you just lay down some vocals for this thing real quick?” And he has this thing to where he doesn’t tell me what it is a lot. I’m like “Whatever, cool.” Then I found out nine months later, it was for the Miles Davis/Robert Glasper project. I’m like, freaking out. It was my first real feature.
Shamika Sanders-Sykes
