Bri Steves, Recording Artist, Atlantic Records

My name is Bri Steves. I am recording artist, so I'm currently signed to Atlantic Records. Last year, I came out during Kendrick Lamar's Made In America set. That was actually really great. This year, I performed at the Staples Center for the first time for BET, so I was on the stage with Mary J Blige, H.E.R., Summer Walker, Queen Naija. I've traveled to a bunch of cities for tours, Houston, Nashville, sold out rooms, you name it. I've performed at the TLA. I've opened up for Freeway, Dave East. I like to clear the room and I like to just sing and warm up my vocal chords. Maybe drink some tea, drink a whole bunch of water before. But besides that, I'm comfortable at this point being just around people. I don't let the nerves get to me too crazy anymore. So, you're gonna have a sound check, so that's gonna be maybe three hours or so before the actual show goes on. Then later, you have to get changed, so you have your own dressing room. Maybe have an hour or two. There's always food maybe in a common area, so everybody's there mingling before. You go back to your dressing room. You get ready. Usually people are coming back and forth to tell you how much time you have left. "Okay, count down, you have 30 minutes left" or "you have 15 minutes left." There's probably gonna be some interviews done. I know BET came in, interviewing me before, right before I hit the stage. And when they're like, "okay, five minutes," so it's kind of this whole rush thing and everybody's walking you to the stage and it's this big entourage-looking thing and then you go on! There's some producers and writers that love to work in the nighttime. They like to book their sessions from 10 o'clock and they like to work all the way until six o'clock in the morning. I'm not one of those people. I am one of the people that like to start work at maybe one p.m. I get to order some lunch and be out of the studio before 10 so I can go to sleep. But sometimes it clashes, but sometimes it's not about me and if I'm gonna be in with somebody I really admire, I'm gonna start at 10 o'clock. (chuckles) So I mean, really, it actually depends on which producer or which writers you're working with. Sometimes I've been in with Hitmaka, Berg, he's a really great producer but he likes to have a really great party and the atmosphere going on. So you'll go in with him and Ty Dolla $ign will be there and Wiz Khalifa and Nelly is here and oh there goes 2 Chainz over there, you know what I mean? It's kind of like a really great environment, a party kind of scene. And then people like Pharrell, he likes to have a bunch of writers, a bunch of creative people are working in this room and it's like a whole machine-thing going on. So every session is kind of different. There are some where you just work with a producer or an engineer just one-on-one and it's just nobody but me and the engineer and the producer in the room and we're just vibing back and forth. It's really, honestly, different every time.