For this week’s Deep Dive Series, we are interviewing @Beatspeare!

@Beatspeare is a Clapper OG who’s been with us since the beginning. His channel is dedicated to showcasing his music and helping followers get to know his personality. His most recent release, Necklace, is popular with Clapper Creators, and he’s getting ready to launch his next album this year! In this interview, we talked about his Clapper journey, his inspirations, what Black History Month means to him, and more.

Keep reading this Deep Dive Series to find out more about this creator’s fantastic story. Make sure to tune in every Thursday at 5pm CT on our @ClapperCreator account to listen to the bonus questions that will only be available on our live radio show: Clapper Talks.

February is Black History Month, so we’ll be talking to Black Creators all month long to hear and share their stories. Montrell is the first in this special series, and there’s truly no better start. Deep Dive into this amazing creator’s story!

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What does a day in your life look like?

I try my best to take buckets and dump water into each section of my career. I produce my own music, I write my own lyrics, and a lot of the times I even record my own music at home. And I produce all my own content, I edit it, and I post all of it myself. Then I also work 40 hours a week at T-Mobile. Balancing all of that is…realistically not possible. I’ve just come to this understanding that there’s no way to do it perfect. You’ve got to be doing it all the time, so you’ll catch me in a lot of different phases of my career. At one point I’ll be pushing content a lot, but then I’ll just disappear and be working on music.

But I love making content. That’s kind of my escape from my escape. Music is my escape, but sometimes it gets overwhelming have to be so serious and promoting and marketing all the time. I feel like when I come to Clapper, I can be funny, joke around, and I don’t have to be serious. So I really enjoy when I’m in that space of creating content. I’m not really thinking about how I could go viral or any of that stupid stuff. I’m just making a video because I think it’s funny.

When you write music, do you think of a specific message? Is it direct lessons you learn from your life? What do you say in your music?

When I go to make a song, I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen. Every time I go in there, I go in with this expectation that I’m just going to do something rather than going in with a plan. It’s a learning experience more than anything. As far as what I talk about in my music, I try to find ways to be more transparent. When I first started I was kind of like everyone else. I would talk about money and cars and girls, just stuff like that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but not everyone’s waking up and doing that. That’s not really realistic. So I started to look at myself in the mirror and go “How can I talk about similar stuff that I actually do, but in a cool way?”

What features have helped you the most while promoting your music?

On Clapper, definitely the feature where anybody can apply to have their music on the app. When it first started, it was just a list of songs. Then there was a trending section, then your favorites, and it’s just gotten progressively better. And one thing I’ve noticed is that one of my songs has been trending on the app since I think the list came out! So that feature on Clapper has been a big one for me.

As far as other apps…I hate to say it, but there really hasn’t been one. Other platforms have the whole sound thing, but they’re so mixed up with comedy skits and sounds from other videos. Your song going viral is next to impossible. It’s just so overly saturated that I don’t feel like you have that same opportunity.

Being a musician is a long road, no matter what successes you have. What keeps you motived to make music? What are some of your inspirations?

The number 1 thing that inspires me is probably my mom. I know that’s kind of cliché, but my mom was what pushed me. When I dropped out of college and told her I’d do music, she thought I was absolutely nuts. And I don’t blame her – I had a full scholarship to play football!

So at first we butted heads on it a lot. As time went on I started meeting connections and started going on tour. And one day she said to me: “You need to stop worrying about us. If this is what you really want to do, then you need to go chase it and stop worrying about Youngstown, Ohio. There’s nothing here for you but negativity, and that’s why I pushed you to go play football in Columbus.” That really opened my eyes and I never looked back.

As you know, you’re part of our Black History Month Interview Series. What does Black History Month mean to you?

It means everything. Obviously, I’m a Black man in the US and it’s a very touchy subject. I’m not afraid to tackle it. We go through waves sometimes where we keep touching back on this; some people see it the way it is, and some people don’t. I’d say it means culture, it means unity. It means we have something to show, some type of pillar to show that we’re still trying to show appreciation for the things the Black culture went through.

I’m only 31, so at the end of the day I have no personal connection to the stuff that went on in the past. The stuff that goes on currently, I feel like that’s where I stick my flag in the dirt. I’m always actively seeking ways to portray myself in the right way and be a role model in the industry I’m in.

I already wear the skin, so I have the responsibility to carry myself the right way in this world. As a Black man, we tend to get a bad rep without people even knowing us. At the end of the day, when I get to stand on a stage like Clapper and talk about something like this, it shows that we’re making progress because I wouldn’t be here talking if that was the case.

One of the best things about Black History Month is learning about the incredible contributions Black people made and continue to make in our history. We were wondering if there are any Black figures in history or in your own life that you find particularly inspiring.

Wiz Khalifa was a big one for me. When I was coming up – again, I’m 31, I’m old – being able to view an artist’s life behind the scenes wasn’t a thing. And Wiz was one of the first ones to start doing vlogs of his behind the scenes life on YouTube. It was called Day to Day and I loved it.

He was one of the reasons I wanted to get in the industry because of how transparent he was and humble with his fans. That was the pillar for me, like you can be that big and still be a normal person. To me it was mind-blowing, because you could never see these kinds of things. All you saw was them on BET or MTV, you didn’t get to see anything else. So he was a big one for me.

When did you join Clapper? How did your journey as a creator begin?

I think I joined Clapper 2 and a half years ago. The biggest thing I noticed on Clapper that really made me drive a wedge into it and start putting my effort into it was the platform was new, so there wasn’t a lot of people doing a lot of content. I saw it as an opportunity to be a breath of fresh air and share content I had stacked up.

Immediately, it started doing really well, with people reaching out to me, joining my group – I was overwhelmed. I didn’t get that type of attention or love on any other platform. So I started digging deeper, figuring out who ran the app, and reached out to them. I realized how responsible they were and how caring they were. That really drew me in, and that’s the same thing that keeps me here. That is something you can’t get on any other platform

You do a fantastic job of promoting your music. Was this always the vision for your socials, or something that happened as you started posting?

It just kind of happened; I never really pictured myself being an entertainer. Even when I got into music, I never thought about being on stage or being interviewed. These are just things I’m learning overtime. I joined TikTok in 2019, and my first video I ever posted on TikTok did, like, 20 million in my first couple months, and I had 100k followers in 7 days.

So here I had this huge account out of nowhere, no idea what I was doing, and I said to myself: “I can either shove music down their throat before it dies out and hope I catch some people, or I can try to figure out what could grow this and drive this account to keep going.”

I decided to start making comedy skits and goofy videos, and fortunately that worked out for me. Then I met some people on TikTok that told me about Clapper. And I’m always actively looking for the next thing, so I downloaded it and my videos started doing really well. So I swiveled my attention to Clapper.

How do you connect to your community and followers? How do you break that barrier and be a creator and human?

That’s where my content comes into play. I know a lot of my content is kind of goofy, but I get to show people another side of me that has nothing to do with music. It’s my unique way of showing them who I am and I looked at that as an advantage.

This is going to sound really cocky and maybe it is, but 90% of artists can’t do what I do. They either make music or they make content. Most artists can’t do both successfully, but I’ve somehow found a way to do that.

What can we expect from your music or content in 2023?

So 2023, I’m working on my second studio album titled Cyberpunk. It’s named after the video game and comic, and it’s also an anime. I have that planned to drop within the next month, month and a half or so, and have tons of music videos that are getting ready to drop as well.

I hope to get back to my content and start making comedy videos again because I really miss it. And other than that, I’m going to Europe and might have an opportunity to perform over there, so fingers crossed. Everything else is pretty much to be determined. I usually can’t see further out than a week or two.

What advice would you give new users that want to be successful on Clapper?

Be yourself. Don’t try to copy other content or regurgitate other people’s content from other places. Just be yourself, have fun. The major thing with Clapper specifically is to stay active behind the scenes. When you’re not posting or on Live, get in people’s Groups, get in some of the chats and meet people, go on Radios. A lot of the times, that’s where you’re going to meet the people I consider the Big Wigs and really known in the community. If you get familiar with them, you can get yourself into some cool situations.

We were wondering what Clapper can do to better support our music community or our Black community. What can we do to make this a better place?

Personally, nothing. You guys are super open to everyone. You try to make sure that the app is actively trying to do events to involve everyone, not just the most popular creators. I see you guys doing the New User Radio and I even pop in there sometimes to see what you guys are talking about. I got nothing, you guys are doing great!

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We hope you enjoyed getting to know @Beatspeare. For our latest deep dive on @MontrellSeahawk read here.