How did you get to this point? What inspired /influenced you to walk the journey known as music?

Well I have always had a love for music. I started out playing musical instruments for my elementary and middle school orchestra and jazz bands.

Looking on the impact an artist can make on the world inspired me to continue my journey toward becoming an influential artist. Hip-hop has always been apart of my life and I found myself writing in spirals (notebooks) from front to back on a daily basis.

I think that was the point I made up my mind to become a recording artist!

How young were you when you started playing violin, trumpet, and bass cello? Which instrument did you learn first

I think was around 10 years old. I first started out in the orchestra. I started playing the bass cello actually.

I remember when one of our classmates got sick and couldn’t play the christmas thing we were doing so I asked if I could play the violin so I didn’t have to carry around that big cello LOL!!

It took me about a month but I picked up the viloin around that time. I started playing trumpet in middle school because the school didn;t have an orchestra. The only music elective was jazz concert band so thats when I picked up the trumpet! I haven’t played in a while but I would love to pick it back up and see if I can learn again!

Let readers know about your musical influences. Break it down by decade, if you will, if your influences span several eras of music.

I am very influenced by old school hip-hop, jazz, neo-soul, poetry etc. I can say that one of my biggest influences has to be J-DILLA, DIGABLE PLANETS, and THE FUGEES. Just eclectic hip-hop mixed with neo-soul for sure.

Well, on a day to day I will listen to a lot of jazz like Sonny Rollins, Cab Calloway, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Yardbird Parker, and more just to wrap my ears around the music that has paved the way for us today.

Later in the day you will catch me listening to groups like Slum Village, Dwele, Ledisi, Common, J-dilla…just a lot of music that came out around the time frame of 1995-2003.

How did you come up with the name Tey Yaniis and what is the significance behind choosing this identity as an artist?

Well my son’s name is Taylor and the name Yanis means God’s gift.

Having my son made such an impact on my life and my music so the name Tey Yaniis is paying homeage to my offspring. I put two i’s in the name Yaniis to symbolise a father and son relationship. Thats how the name Tey Yaniis came about.

At what point did you decide ‘Coffee Brown’ needed to evolve from a simple love letter to a tune heard by the world?

I felt so strong about the lyrics to the record. It was a point in time were I didn’t know which direction I was headed in when it came down to the music.

When I recorded “Coffee Brown” I felt it! It was wasn’t like I was going into the studio to make a hit record. It was just a feeling
I’ve never felt before.

IT WAS REAL!

So i vowed from then on that all my music would come from my heart and not a thought process.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_wGsSWecdA

I read you were inspired by Nas and Lauryn Hill’s “If I Ruled The World” which led you to write 20 different versions of the song… Are any of these available publicly?

O GOSH NO!!!! LOL!!! That was actually a CD we had as a single and I loved that song. It was one of the few records that I had at the time, but it really influenced me to write my feelings if i had my way in general and with 20 different versions of it I wanted a lot of things hahahahaha!!!

Are you still living in Dallas? If yes, can you briefly tell us about the indie music scene?

No unfortunately I’m not. I love my hometown though! Shoutout to D-TOWN!!!

I am actually living in Sacramento, Ca at the moment!

How has the Internet helped you (or not) as an independent musician? What challenges do you face?

The Internet has helped a lot in pushing my music to the crowds that relish the vintage neo-soul/hip-hop sound.

One thing that I face that is hard sometimes is finding more sites who support positive and uplifting music, but at the end of the day I do not look at it as an obstacle. I just take what I do and try to push it as much as possible.

At this time I want to thank Middle Tennessee Music for helping further push my music to online music scene!

You can connect with Tey Yaniis on Twitter or Facebook.