The usual story goes: pretty girl can sing, pretty girl gets discovered, pretty girl made it. But not with Luiza. Luiza Nis is a 23-year-old self-taught singer, producer and just a hard-working woman. She comes from Cuiabá, Brazil, with Japanese grandparents. Luiza has shared the beginnings of her career with me in a very open, sincere, raw story: ”I wrote my first song when I was about 11 or 12 years old, but I didn’t know how to sing at that time, so when I was 14, I decided I wanted to be a singer, then I started practicing every day.” Huh, I think to myself, here we have a very capable singer, who had to figure out how to actually sing when she first started? Well dear readers, if you were ever curious how does one actually get into singing, start taking notes: ”I would wait for my mom to go to work, and then I’d sing and record myself with YouTube Karaoke backing tracks for hours! hahah like, that’s all I did for almost 2 years”
I can’t help but notice that Luiza is giving me Lana Del Rey vibes, with a much sweeter voice, and a stronger message. Lana’s songs have that drug-based high feeling to themselves, meanwhile, Luiza’s lyrics are pretty straightforward ”Cause I just wanna be proud of myself/ Don’t wanna care about nothing else/ ‘Cause I been giving too many f*cks/ Bout things that’ll leave me on the shelf” Woah!!! 4 verses, a whole mood. What I love about her is that her brand image is in tune with the emotions she exudes in her music and lyrics. That slightly shy girl vibe, but with a short skirt that leaves the audience gasping at her sex appeal. The same thing I am getting from her voice: I am sweet but I can twist your mind if you let me get too deep in your head. A very hypnotic je-ne-sais-quoi.
Once you watch the music video and hear her voice you’re dumbfounded, like how could you possibly not know how to sing? Or if you were not ready vocally, how did you know when YOU WERE? ”So, I used to record myself singing, then I would send the recordings to strangers on websites like Omegle and asked them “hey, what do you think about that?”. For the first months, the response was quite negative lol!” Oh snap! that takes some serious guts sending your vocals randomly to strangers on Omegle and not know what the heck they’re gonna react like. She took it like a champ though. And kept pushing: ”and then I kept doing that until someone replied “it sounds good”, I started building my confidence from that. But right now I’m past that sort of ‘need for validation’ as an artist… I feel like it’s way harder to impress myself than others…”. Someone give this girl a cookie! Life lessons for days. At this point I am just like… could this possibly get even better? Hint: yes it does. ”So, I’m 100% independent, but I was lucky enough to get to meet some incredible producers and mixing engineers on Facebook.”, resourceful girl you are Luiza! ”And I was lucky enough for them to believe in my music, my first music video only happened because I won an online contest promoted by a manager from São Paulo. So, I basically won the production of the music video and that encouraged me to release an original song.” You see, THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT: you use what you have and where you are to get to where you want to be, step by step. So she’s hot, got an incredibly unique voice, which she improved on her own dime and time, is remarkably resourceful (oh and she works for a start-up company in the mornings producing audio-visual content for them), and right when I think I can not get any more impressed than I already am, she hits me with ”I produced all the beats of my Debut EP (Parnasia) on FL Studio and I wrote all the songs by myself too, so I only had to hire and pay for mixing/mastering engineers.” Now I’m just erupting in applauses in front of my computer screen. I don’t even think Luiza realizes how big of a message her actions represent for ALL INDEPENDENT FEMALE ARTISTS: you can f*ckin do it all. You can pick up singing, you can learn how to produce your own music, you can find people to believe in you, and you can also hustle a day job to support yourself financially.
This girl is perfectly fluent in English, yet she is neither American, nor British, I gotta ask ”How did you get so good at English?”, to which Luiza says ”I studied English when I was very young at school, but mostly I learned to speak and write through music, no lie.” Last time I heard someone telling me ”no lie” was my American co-worker in New York City. The beauty of music is that it transcends time, cultures, and languages. And Luiza Nis embodies all the right elements in one small-framed, delicate, feminine girl. Or woman. I am not sure how to call her. Her actions say woman, her looks say girl. Luiza got time by her side, an extraordinary determination to keep pushing, a genuinely beautiful voice, a strong creative vision, and drive to make all these factors come together. Meanwhile in my head ”proud of myself/ don’t wanna care about nothing else/cause i been giving too many f*cks”…
Follow Luiza’s music on YouTube , like her on Facebook , stay in touch with her personally on her Instagram.
Interview conducted by Mariana Berdianu
Blue Rhymez Entertainment © 2020