Meet None Like Joshua | Anime Rapper

We had the good fortune of connecting with None Like Joshua and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi None Like, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
Before I became a musician, I noticed throughout my life that I didn’t do well working FOR others. I still don’t. But I can work well WITH others, no problem. Music is, for the most part, a very collaborative field. However, being told what to do and when to do it and how to do it doesn’t always fit for most people. In most working environments, you cannot express yourself to the fullest extent like a musician can on his or her own. Most jobs that require a college degree are very stable and the path is linear. A creative career has many emotional, financial, and mental highs and lows. Not everyone can handle the instability, but I knew that I would find a way.

When it comes to the creative industry, no one knows if they’re going to make it in the business, because there are plenty of undiscovered, talented people, or people who have yet to fully realize the potential of their talent. It’s a trial and error business. You improve and you regress. You get accepted and rejected. One project did really well, while the others may never do well. The timing of success is different for everyone in music, art, media, etc., whereas most other fields guarantee your success straight out of college or vocational school. In college, I had always heard, “Work your day job until your night job pays the bills.”

I made sure to have a day job throughout my “potential” music career in school to pay for my spending habits and to fund my night job of recording songs at my computer. My problem was being able to keep the day job. I strived for better and better pay, of course, but when the season changed, so did my goals and my tolerance for the workplace. I wanted to earn enough money to live but I would get so tired of being told what to do so much and couldn’t set my own schedule for how much or how hard I wanted to work after staying up until 3am writing lyrics and recording. I always had the rookie vigor going into a day job, but after a while, like most people who work dead-end jobs, I lost the motivation to work harder for my boss and wanted to focus more on my night job: the music career.

During college, I interned at music venues, recording studios, concert equipment shops, and music festival companies, because I knew I wanted to do something in music with my career. Working at these places had helped me realize that free expression was not allowed at all for someone like me. It wasn’t that free expression wasn’t allowed. It was that I could not express the same jokes, quips, and witty humor the other employees used; no matter how comfortable I was. They would never be comfortable enough. The office life was not for me.

I just wasn’t sure if my talent would be discovered in time. While interning and getting my college degree, I also worked at various service industries like the movie theater, an ice cream shop, as a camp counselor, until finally I was getting paid the highest wage I had ever received at a music store by the end of my college career. I thought it was a dream come true; all while working on my own music at night and playing random concerts in New Orleans.

Suddenly, I realized I was no longer happy working at a music store. Despite my desire to have music in my career, working at a music store was not making me happy. The people I met and the connections I made through that store; none of it mattered to me because how miserable I was working for and with other musicians who had no motivation for anything else in life but to work in a music store and play a gig in downtown New Orleans. I could not accept that kind of mediocrity.

So after college, I accepted poverty instead of mediocrity and put in the full effort into my music career. I ended up moving from home to home between family members, friends, and my girlfriend’s house for a good 4 years, taking my recording studio, camera, and laptop wherever I went. I spent the rest of my bank account on better equipment like microphones, pre-amps, cameras, and software. The rest of my monthly income was usually spent on travel. I stayed humble during this time and offered any help I could to the people that let me stay with them while I was struggling to find my identity in music.

My music career was incredibly slow. The views and streams were not rolling in. I was not going viral. I was trying my hardest and dabbling into different kinds of music to see what worked, but nothing was really taking off. Throughout all of this though, I was working how I wanted, when I wanted, and what I wanted. Despite my lack of success, I was earning enough income to get by at my own pace with the help of my family and friends. They enabled my career and in return, I would try not to be a burden and help as much as I could.

It was only until I had met my current fiance that my career really started to blossom. When I had met her, she knew I was struggling, but she told me I had an untapped potential. She was not even a musician of any sort. Just a big music fan. She started making subtle, day-to-day suggestions while I was working on my music, and the results started slowly pouring in. For example, she said I should try to do more concerts and I ended up booking a show almost every month in different states. She would suggest different ways for me to record my music, and people seemed to enjoy the subtle changes as the watch time on my videos grew. I started putting in more and more effort to what worked, and less effort into what was tedious but didn’t work, and started repeating what was working with my audience. The results were exponential.

I eventually grew an audience that exceeded my needs. Not only did I gain more of an audience, I gained friends and collaborators in the field that would help even more. The clout, eventually, paid for the house. Am I making millions of dollars? No, not yet. But my career is sustaining itself and I am able to worry less about the future and being able to provide for a family. In these days, that, to me, is above mediocrity.

I pursued an artistic career because my personality could not fit in the regular working environment or with their people, I had a great support system, and I was able to accept living underneath mediocrity.

My personality hardly works with other musicians, since I’m constantly being told how offensive I am, but they are much more tolerant than most people. I accepted the ups and downs of my industry over the linear or plateau line of a regular job. There’s nothing wrong with a regular job. It just could not work for me, but I’m sure I’ll return to a regular job once I’m done with music. I was never one to give up on my goals, and I was patient. I could not give up on my brain when it would give me great ideas even at 3 in the morning. The idea had to be pursued or else I could not sleep, and being awake at 3am does not sit well with a 9 to 5 job.

There are times in my music career that I felt on top of the world, and there were times I felt no one cared about me at all, but my brain did not stop creating for me, no matter what was happening in my life and that is what helped me succeed in an artistic career. What kept me going was staying away from a regular work environment, accepting the roller coaster that came with the business, and maintaining good relationships.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Anywhere you can play games and drink is a plus for me.

Glitch.
Rhythm and Vine.
Funky Buddha.
Rex Baron.

I feel like South Florida has a ton of places where adults and kids can do a team-building exercise leisurely.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
God for not abandoning me. My father for never giving up on me. My mother for caring for me. My sister for teaching me how to read and also a place to stay. My fiance for motivating me. My friends for telling me to get better. My fellow rappers for inspiring me. My future children for making me stronger.

Also oatmeal. It really is good for the brain.

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