I think it’s just to connect to people through music, and make them feel good.” Every time I get to the next place, there’s so much more that I want to do. “And I think that’s part of why I call this project Dreamseeker, because I feel like it’s kind of never-ending. “I feel like I reached the dream I was striving for when I first wrote ‘Closer,’ and I have new dreams now,” she answers. The Oakland-bred artist explains if she had, in fact, reached her dreams as she continues her journey in the industry. It’s been 16 years since her Closer project. I’m fans a lot of those artists that have touched on it, from Drake, to YG, to Kendrick, to different folks. “People have been remixing it now for over a decade. “I love that ‘Closer’ has had so many lives,” Goapele says reflecting on her career. Performing the record on stage in Los Angeles’ one stop shop for all things vinyl, nostalgia hit all those that were in attendance. If you’re a Drake fan, you immediately recognize Goapele as the sample on his hit single “Closer To My Dreams,” found on his 2007 Comeback Season mixtape. On Wednesday (June 6), R&B soul singer, songwriter, producer, activist and fashion designer Goapele celebrated the release of her new Dreamseeker EP with a live performance, meet and greet, and album signing. Patience and persistence.Hump Day isn’t so bad when you’re performing at one of the world’s largest independent record stores, Amoeba Music in Hollywood. It’s also important to surround yourself with people you can trust so you’re not walking into rooms that you don’t need to by yourself but that someone and folks always have your back. For me, it’s been important to keep building my craft and expand my vocal range and songwriting is really important to me. My advice is to really set goals short term and long term so that you have something to hold on to when everything else is coming your way. What is your advice to anyone who is looking to reach their dreams? It’s a blessing that it keeps coming back around. I never expected that at all from that song almost like an interlude mantra kind of thing.
I’ve gotten so many stories about how people feel the same way and how this helped motivate them. It’s been wonderful to be able to connect with so many other people like folks that are just in the audience, fans, athletes, musicians, lawyers trying to pass the bar exam or doctors. So whenever I get on the stage, I can still relate to the song. Just being in the music industry, it is a journey and it’s always like this. Each step I take there’s another place I’m trying to get and more that I’m trying to accomplish. It’s that sense of I’m getting closer and I feel myself rising, but I’m not there yet and these are still all the struggles I’m going through, is still as relevant now as it was then. Well, I wrote “Closer” almost 15 years ago.
Why has the song been so influential for so long? “Closer” continues to resonate with people today and touch different generations.
But there was this sense of looking over my shoulder when I first got into this, and I think that’s probably from being a woman, being a Black women and being raised in Oakland and just walking around and wanting to be able to handle myself. So now I feel that I can let my guard down, people know who I am, I can be myself, I can be more versatile, and I can wear what I want. I worked with my family really closely so I was able to get that respect in the industry. I didn’t want to be taken advantage of and burnt out in the industry.
#Goapele closer to my dream skin
When I first was putting out music, I was like, “I don’t want to be overly sexy or do to much with the imaging or show too much skin and I want to make sure my lyrics are balanced.” Sometimes it’s isolating, but just being in the music industry that is just dominated by men, I think it means I have to be comfortable and confident in myself and not really care that people think I’m bossy and opinionated and also try and balance that energy.
How do you find strength as a Black woman in a demanding industry? Actually, Estelle wrote that song and when I heard that song I just got chills and was like, “I can relate to this I want to sing this.” It was unusual for me to get to connect to someone else’s lyrics that much. As strong as I feel on some days, I’m not doing this by myself and I am sensitive. It starts as sand and it takes on different lives, but it is breakable. I think glass has so many different forms, sometimes it comes off as something so breakable and fragile, but it’s amazingly strong.