Becoming grounded in who she is as a performer and a person was no easy task. “It’s part of getting older. I’ve been through a lot of trauma and fucked up shit that made me understand who I was, and that bled into my music. Now I’m a lot more assured of myself, a lot more confident.” That recent self-assuredness is why she named her sophomore album Late Bloomer.
Part of the reason Brandie Blaze’s stage presence feels larger than life is her hooks. Years of journaling helped Artez hone her craft, because now, hooks flow right out of her. “I always write hooks first. When I know, I know right off the rip. It’s immediate. If I don’t hear anything, that’s not it.” Late Bloomer is chalk full of them. Lead single “Model” boasts, “I’m a model/ Can’t be my make, though.” But the beauty of this album is not only Artez’s confidence, but her vulnerability.
“Brandi: Brandie” shows the insecurity of being an artist with, “Am I the baddest?/ No one can understand I’m the saddest/ They love Blaze because she is savage/ Fly bitch, nothing like average/ Off stage is Brandie with the baggage.” Artez said, “People come into my life and they’re not interested in me as a person outside of me as the artist…I have my own issues, my own mental health struggles. That’s what people don’t get to see.”
After she jots down the hook that will inevitably draw in listeners, her verses come in spurts. “They can come real fast, pouring out. Sometimes I have to sit on it. When I feel it, I feel it. It’s real loose.” She says the biggest difference between her debut album, Spinster and this one is figuring out the flows. “When I’m writing, I think about the beat. I like my flow to play off of that, play off signature flows, and experiment with new flows. I like it fast paced.”
Late Bloomer encapsulates the avalanche of personal drama and trauma Artez has experienced in the last three years since Spinster. “My first album is very much about the cycles of living life as a single person. You meet someone and it goes great, then it goes awfully wrong and you go through that angry phase.” She protected herself by making those first songs with surface-level emotions. The new album cuts deeper. Artez wanted to explain, “If I’m cold and distant, this is how I got this way.”
The song “Fraud” is an emotional masterpiece that hits you halfway through the album. She sings, “Calling out for God feeling like a fraud/Ain’t nobody tell me life was gonna be this fuckin’ hard.” Artez is a survivor of sexual assault, and the song grapples with that trauma. She said, “Black women get these messages. You have to be strong, you have to take care of your family, you have all this shit on your back. But that’s how you break. That shit is hard. At the end of the day, I’m still human. I can’t be what you want me to be all the time.”
With all these societal expectations, Artez feels honor-bound to describe the difficulties she and her friends face. “I make sure everything I write is me. I want to be genuine and authentic. There’s this balance of feeling too open and not open enough. I’m naturally a very private person, so I’m still working on that.”
Photo by Dreana LeMaitre
Writing songs has long been a form of therapy for her. Her first raps in high school started as scribbled notes on scraps of paper she passed to her friends. While she went to college, got her first job, and took a detour as a “bad girl,” writing remained a big part of her life, even though she stopped sharing her writing with others. “I was keeping feelings suppressed. I always internalized everything.” Writing was a way of getting those feelings out privately. “I felt that space in my life filled up for the first time.”
Artez continued to fill that space by getting serious about rapping six years ago. She said, “I felt like something was missing from my life. I was just coming home after work and that’s it.” At the time, she would rap for her friends and then-boyfriend as a fun creative outlet. Even though everyone told her she had talent, she didn’t consider rapping as something she would pursue until her friend dragged her to the studio and they rapped together. “I fell in love with it. Something clicked in me. I thought, ‘This is something that I should be doing.’”
Now, Brandie Blaze’s low voice is a signature sound to be celebrated, but she didn’t always perform this way. “In my first recording, I sound completely different. My earlier stuff has this insecurity of not knowing what to do with my voice yet. My biggest hang-up was the tone of my voice. I was a big Lil’ Kim and Nicki Minaj fan, so a more feminine voice was something I wanted. Getting comfortable with it took a lot of work.”
But she didn’t have to get comfortable alone. Artez was a fan of Dutch Rebelle, Red Shaydez, and Oompa before she became their peer. Now, Artez said, “We have this vibe, this bond, this friendship as people outside of being artists. But we also respect each other’s artistry.”
Late Bloomer features Red Shaydez and Oompa on the album closer, “Count It.” Instead of joining each other in the studio, Artez recorded the demo alone and sent it to them so they could write their bars on their own time. The results were magic. “The first time heard it together, I lost my shit,” Artez said. “Oompa kills it, then Red comes in and kills it even more. We women, we out here spitting.” Artez isn’t bottling up her feelings by herself anymore. In the end, she has her friends in her corner.
Tickets available here for the Late Bloomer release party tonight, December 6th, at The Rockwell with special guests SeeFour, TeeLuxe & Optic Bloom. 8pm doors, 9pm show.