 Let's talk one-on-one, one-on-one. Yo, we gon' talk, we gon' have fun. We be on fire, we be lily. It's a unique hustle, big shit. Big shit, big shit, big shit. It's a unique hustle, nigga, big shit. Big shit, big shit, big shit. Name another podcast like this. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, stop the press, man. It's your boy, you see, yo, man. And I'm here with the lovely, amazing, official Miss Jamaica, what's going on? Nothing, you know my dad will all go on. Man, you got the best hand, man. I tell you what, man, it don't never cease to amaze me the things just happening around me, man. We got a young lady in here today. She don't need no introduction. She sings like a bird. Nina Mapes, she's in the building. Man, and I'm so happy to have you on the show, man. I've been waiting on this interview. You young. I thought, hey, hey, man, you got a voice like you grown. Yeah, I worked on it for a while. I've always been told that I'm a loudmouth my entire life. So it makes sense. Man, let's get it, let's get it to go. Before we get into this singing, we'd like to know where you're from. We'd like to know everything about you that you don't want nobody to know about you. Whoa, we're about to give you the business. Everything, so go ahead. Okay, well, I'm Lena. Hey, Lena, how you doing? I'm doing pretty good. I'm the E-C-E-O. So I'm originally from New York, but we moved down here when I was really young. So you don't remember? Not much. I go back there all the time, though, because all of my family's there. We're the only people that are here in Texas. Do you like New York better than Texas? I like pieces of New York better than Texas. What part of New York do you like the best? I personally love the Bronx, because that's where all my family is. Okay, if I drop you off in Texas today, I mean, in New York today, you saying you won't get homesick to come back to Texas. Only if my family's not with me, because honestly, I'm more of one of those beliefs that you get homesick of people rather than the place. Not really like an attachment person to specific places. It's so different. I cannot stay up there and them little small places and rooms. It's too cold. But it's fun. No, I love the cold. That's one of my worst things about Texas. I love Texas, but I cannot stand the heat. My hair used to be down to like the tops of my thighs and it weighs like, I gotta say, it adds an extra like 15 pounds. Wow. And so I'm good with the cold. Wow, man. So you come up, you're in school. What the heck, man? I mean, you're growing up, you're doing your thing. When did you first know that I can sing? I think I've always known I could make music a little bit. I've always been a very musical person. I really love the arts. I actually started out in acting, which is kind of funny, doing a little bit of the musical theater that all kids go through. At what age? I think I started around when I was nine or so. I was in this production of The Little Mermaid and I was playing an insane chef. But it was kind of my first introduction in music and I kept on doing with the acting, thinking in my like nine, 11 year old brain, ooh, I'm gonna be like the next Hannah Montana. Right. But no, no, no, no. But I really started out with the acting, but when I was around 11 or so, it was late August, school was about to start and I was in this acting camp and I thought the best idea would be to make a music video. Didn't ask mom. Didn't ask the person who was leading the entire acting thing. Wow. But I said at the end of it, I said, hey, we're making a music video. Let's do this. And she was like, do you have any songs recorded? No. Okay. Do you have any song you wanna sing? I was like, no, I've never really practiced anything. And she was like, how do you expect to do this? I said, let's just bring somebody and record it. And so that day in the bathroom, I met my vocal teacher, which is just like the joke that we love. I love saying to everybody, yeah, I met her in a bathroom. She's one of the most important people in my life. But that was Brielle Pogue, AKA Jones Monroe. Okay. And that was about six and a half years ago. Wow. Yeah, so. And you just started singing. You sang for her. She's never heard you sing before that time. Never heard me sing before that time. And we're in a bathroom. I decided to do the climb of all songs by Miley Cyrus. And I said to her, I was like, oh, Hike, what do you think? And she was like, you want the honest opinion? I said, yeah. She said, you can sing, but you can't sing at all. Would you like to learn how to? Oh wow. She saw the potential in you. She did. I wouldn't have gotten really into music if it wouldn't have been for her. Wow. She came on here and she killed it. I know. She went down through that. And I made her sing like three times. Mm-hmm. She has. She loves to sing. She's amazing. So when you went home and told your mom about this, how did that go? So she picked me up from the camp and she was like, okay, so how to go today? Like recording with the person because this was like a two day time span. And I was like, oh, it was really great. She said she wanted to like teach me how to do like vocal lessons and stuff. And she was like, okay, like do you want to do this? Like instead of the acting? I was like, sure, let's do it. And so all of a sudden it all switched and we met her, yeah, and we met her the next day at her house and she was like, okay, we're gonna work through the song just to get it better for the acting camp that you were doing. And then it's six and a half years later. And I've been taking vocal lessons with her since then and songwriting classes and production. And I started learning the piano from my piano teacher, Ben Fisher, like five and a half years ago. And music has just continued on and I found who I was. How long did it take for you to refine your vocals from what it was that first day till? I'm still doing it. I mean, you know, he said, I am young. I'm 17 years old. And so I am still going through changes. I'm still having my voice crack most days that I'm trying. But honestly, we had this little joke in the family. So she said to me, the main reason why you can't sing right now is cause you're completely singing in the back of your throat. I've heard stuff about him. Yeah. And so pretty much like instead of saying hi, I'd be like, hi. And like I'm a six year old smoker like who's been smoking the last. So many years of their life. And so we worked through that. It took two years or so. Okay. And ever since then it was, we called it alto girl voice because all I did was belt on the top of my lungs very badly. But it's taken all of these years to really find the sound that I like with my voice to find the thing that I enjoy out of it. But yeah, that's how we got here. So can you give me a little bit of it right now? Yeah. So I actually have my EP coming out next week on the 23rd. And so I'll show you a little bit of the first song. Okay. This one's called fantasy. Fantasy guys, make sure you guys listen in. You're about to get something that you don't even know. I wrote this song with close Ubia and Bravo in LA a few years back. It was probably one of the first songs I wrote. But let's give it a try. Every little thing that you do is keeping me up. Make me go crazy. I'm wasting all my time over you. Changing all my thoughts to the places that you take me. Oh, stay with me in this fantasy. Because every little thing you do. Hey, that was nice. I could listen to you like all the time. Very soothing, man. Yeah, you got it going on, man. I like that. Yeah, man. I love what you do with your voice. I just love everything about what you just did. I just love it. You know, that sounds nice, soothing, man. Yeah, I can listen to that, yeah, yeah. But when you hear it on the track, it does not sound soothing. I like to call it my smexy song out of all of them. Really? Yeah, I can't actually be sexy. I'm 17 years old. But I call this smexy song out of all with the beat of it. It's very groovy, I guess is the best way to say it. Where do you get your vocals from? I say I get it from my mama, but really we just get it from the entire family. My dad likes to think it came from him. But it's kind of, I don't know really where it came from. Like I said before, I've just kind of always been very loud and projecting even when I was a kid. And so I think the tone of it came with time and the loudness came from my family being Italian by marriage in New Yorkers. Any of you other siblings say? They all went through like, you know, like kind of the choir phase of their life. But nothing like you. But they've never really taken it like a business yet. Oh, okay. I see you sing with a band, original covers. Yeah, I do. How was that? I actually love performing live. It's my favorite way to perform. I really do enjoy recording, but performing lives just gives like the aspect of like, you know, you get to feel things from the crowd really. And so I perform with a few like different members of the band, we switch it out. But mainly I perform with a man named Antoine Brailsford. Antoine, yeah, I love that dude. He's a guitarist. He's amazing. I perform with this guy named Joshua Scott, J Scott. Hunter Nappier, he's a drummer. You know, we kind of switch it out with like everybody. I have this girl named Mo who drums for me sometimes. But performing live is one of my favorite things to do. You'll see me a lot of performances like of the songs. What's your favorite song that you like to perform? Give me one that that that you love to sing. And and and it just when you know, if you had to sing for. Beyonce, Beyonce or or or Jimmy Avine. OK, what would you sing and how would you sing? Well, first of all, I you know what? I respect every other music, but I love writing my own music. So I'm definitely doing one of my originals. If I'm doing that, something that's going to like display your vocals. Honestly, out of all of my songs, I have this song. There's like two that I'm really in between. I'm having a hard time determining. I have this new song that's coming out in the album called I Don't Know. It displays my vocals massively. That's the song you'll hear me belt the most when I'm performing. It's the basis of the song was pretty much. It was a time in my life where I didn't really know what I was doing. I had lost a lot of people that were really close to me. And I didn't know how to handle those emotions very well. I mean, I'm a teenager who knows how to handle emotions. You don't even get that when you're an older adult. And so I feel like that would be the song that I would probably perform. But I'm always writing new stuff. I wrote a song the other day called Bad Decision, which is kind of like, I guess, like a Kehlani like nights like this kind of vibe. But, you know, it's always something new. And so I'd probably if I was like on the spot, my brain would go to the song I had last wrote. Give it to me. Oh, the last song I wrote. OK. Oh, my brain. I know it with the track, but my brain. OK, wait. You can be my bad decision. Yeah, my bad, my bad, my bad, my bad, my bad, my bad, decision, decision. And there's like we are just like working on the chorus and stuff. I wrote that the other day. So it was something new. My brain. Yeah, I know. But man, her voice is your voice is amazing. But when you think about when I think about 17 year old, I know teenagers go through a lot, but I'm like, what all do you you haven't been through a lot to have things to write about? OK, I'm going to be totally straight, straight, honest. There are things that I've been through that were very hard for me emotionally. I've lost a lot of people. I lost my uncle to suicide about two years ago. It's one of one of the original songs that I wrote about. But other than that, I haven't really gone through any of the typical teenage things. I've spent my entire life in music working on that, putting my craft into that. I've never held hands with anybody. Never had my first kiss. Never had anything with a boy or a girl. And so it's just kind of been everything was based off this prior knowledge that I had. I am the biggest bookworm you'll find. If you look on the phone, 750 books probably downloaded right now, and I've probably read all of them. And I'm just rereading. That's where you get a lot of the inspiration and everything for your OK. And then I have four older siblings. And so I take a lot from them. Yes, I live by carelessly through them. So I wrote a song called Naive when I was really young and it was about my sister and she had gone through this really bad breakup with this guy and he just kept like being able to convince her that like it was OK, but she like said to me when she came home and after she had broken up with him, I can't believe I was ever this naive to believe he was that good person that I thought he was. And I was like, oh, some idea off to the side, like writing the song. They don't mind it anymore. They've gotten used to it by now. Yeah, but he put my business out there. Stop putting my stuff in these songs. She loves it, though, because I had like a performance a week later and I sang the song and she was cracking out. Because I posted it on my Instagram and I'm pretty sure he saw. Wow, how we we. So you're about to do some traveling. Tell us a little bit about that. OK, so I, as I said before, I'm releasing the EP called Introspection next week on the 23rd. And so the traveling that I'm doing is mainly for the EP to show it out, you know, let people hear it. And most of my market for my kind of music and a little bit of indie soul pop is really based in England is where I've seen all of my followers. And so we're heading over the pond, as they say, for about two and a half weeks, which I'm really excited. Excited. Your mom going with you? My mom is going with me. My mom goes everywhere with me. She is my biggest supporter. She is everything for me. I wouldn't be able to do anything without her, but I'm really excited. We have about four or five performances lined up. I'm doing some writing with some people, which I'm excited about because always trying to stuff me. And then we're just like doing some PR while we're there, too. If you had to, because, you know, everybody lives in London, England. So all this a lot of celebrities, if you had to meet one person. That, you know, that lives over there. Who would that and maybe possibly work with? Who would that person be? OK, right now, because I am still like, you know, I love lyrics. It's one of my favorite things. But I've finally been able to start like understanding production more and understanding like the like amazingness that people can put behind it. And I feel like right now I'd really love to work with Labyrinth. I know that he's there a lot of the time. I don't know if he's exactly based there. I would either do him or if if she hadn't passed away, I would have chosen Amy Winehouse, because she was like my inspiration my entire life. Her vocals. Oh, my God. She she passed away much too soon. But she was she inspired everything I do. She was she was like the singer that like, you know, I grew up on. Could you give me a little bit of that song, that EP, say that in introspection, introspection. Could you sing a little bit of that for me? Yeah. So the first song in the EP was the fantasy song, which I sang before. Let me think. The second song in the EP is Obsessed. I can show you guys that song. So which one have visuals going to be dropping to it? Fantasy is the one that's having the music video. That's the one you saw. That's the ones I sang before. And so fantasy, I've been working on it for three and a half years or so. That was one of the first songs I ever wrote. And then Obsessed was probably one of like the second, the third or so. And I wrote that song completely by myself. But, you know, I'm always having other people like look over my work, change in things with me. And so my vocal teacher helped me a lot with the melodies. But this song, I love. Let's do it. Yeah. OK. I'm broken down. Your sugar told me I'm addicted. Now flashes through my mind. Oh, it consumes me. No escaping now. Help me out. My mind is running circles around things. You say it to me. Left your name in my mouth. Cause you're saying all the right things time after time. And I got you on my mind. And when you hold me all through the night. You got me feeling so fine. Cause I'm obsessed with you. I got you stuck on my mind. I'm obsessed with you. You got me feeling so fine. Hey, man. Man, you should be like somewhere like up there, like right now. That's beautiful, man. I mean, I just love the way how you do. I don't know all the words for it, but like you're powerful. Then you like you tease with your voice. And then you do. I'm like, I just love it. Thank you. And I can see Amy Winehouse, how she can be her inspiration. I promise you, even before you said that, I just knew it. It's like the little twerks in the voice. Exactly. You know, she had this thing about her where she was able to change her voice into like these aspects. You know, like in technical terms, like people say, it's like making your voice like smaller, but she was able to make it sound this way where she sounded like four different people all at the exact same time, but made it harmoniously amazing. And so I definitely took a lot from her. But I'm glad you like the song because that's one of my favorites. Beautiful. Thank you. And you're very talented, man. I can't wait to see where God takes you. You know what I mean? The most important thing is to keep God first in your life. If you do that, I think you'll lead and guide you to the success that you desire. You know, a lot of times, man, people can't get it figured out. But at 17, you got a voice of an angel. Thank you. Exactly. So so you're in high school right now. Senior last year. Last year. Hey, what are you going to be doing after this? After high school, it's weird to think about because it's right around the corner. It's right around the corner. But covid has made me lose like two and a half years of my life. Right. So I started high school in when the pandemic started. I was in school for four months and then we all were online for two years. And then I went back last year. And so it all seems kind of crazy. I feel like I should have two more years. But right now I'm really just kind of like focusing on the music. I want to be able to get, you know, like the distribution deal, like to be able to write songs for other people, write songs for myself. I I write like at least five, six songs a week. OK. And but not all of them are in my style. They're always like, you know, I go from like hip hop to kind of like indie to kind of R&B. I have the ballad songs like that are Adele. And so I really want to be able to work on focusing my music for, you know, like this next like year, like two years. And then, I don't know, college is an interesting thing to think about. I really want to get a degree one day in entertainment law, just because I've always been perfect. Yeah, because then I can protect myself. Exactly. I can protect my friends. I can make sure that, you know, we get what we deserve. Exactly. We put into it. And just to have the knowledge about that. Yes. But have you ever thought about going into country too? Like country music? Yeah. I've thought about it mainly because my dad is the he's a country fan. My mom hates it because my mom does not like country music. Like at all. She she raised me on like 80s, 90s, everything like everything that you'll really find in that time period. And then you'll always go back to like fifties for some music and then back to the early 2000s. But my dad will only listen to country music, like no shame to country music. Country music is beautiful. I love country too. Some of the best lyrics you'll find will be country music. I just I don't really have the voice for it is the thing. OK, it's like you need to have like that feeling. That's what I was wondering because I love your voice. But I'm like, I wonder what it would sound like in country. She did try to sing country to be different. I tried it when I was younger, but it's just it's like so hard because, you know, you kind of have to have that love for country music, like that kind of grit in your soul that, you know, like, oh, like I need people to hear like this music. Like right now the pain, the happiness. Yes, a lot of times some some country is usually sad. A lot of it is talking about the things that have been through. Like the girl left or the boy left or I'm home alone with a whiskey bottle. My grand father passed away. My this that happened. Yeah. Yeah. But OK, so let's go back to school because I know I said this last year in school, but you just this is like your new last year in school because you just transferred to Alan. Yeah, OK, so I moved to Alan at the beginning of my junior year. So my family, we moved like very tiny a bit like of houses. I was in that house for like 13 years, then we moved and I was in like a new area. And the school district was technically changed. Originally, I went to Lovejoy High School, like the Lovejoy School District. I was in that for all my 10 years of schooling that I was there. And then all of a sudden I was like, I was like, I have the chance to change. And I hadn't been in school for two years. And so I was like, nobody will know that I just joined. So you didn't have. But people when they leave school, especially that last year, they'll be like, this is my pivotal year of my my high school year. This is what I'm going to remember. All my friends on this or that kind of like never felt that way. I mean, Lovejoy was very small. It was very much a community like a people that. But I knew every single person my entire life. And yes, there is some comfortability in that. But there's also like the feeling like in these people's eyes, I will never change. So I became Lena. I started doing music when I was sixth grade or so. And in the people's eyes that I was in school with, it was nothing. They didn't accept you for who you were. It wasn't that I didn't think they accepted me. I think that in their mind, it was something I was playing with until I started getting serious. They didn't have faith in you. They weren't trying to push you. They weren't trying to assist you. I feel like they were trying to assist me in some way, but like they couldn't give me kind of like the help I needed. OK. And so I decided in myself, I was like, OK, you know what? We're going to move to a different school. Lovejoy was great. It is one of the best schools you'll find in the state. It's amazing in academics. And so I moved into Allen and I was like, OK, this is my time to focus on music. I'm going to take some of the more easier classes. I'm going to get all of my prerequisites and I'm going to get all the electives that I have really wanted to take. So at Allen, they have one like the best culinary programs in the state. So I was like, OK, I'm going to take a cooking class. Wow. And I'm going to take astronomy and I'm going to take forensic science. So you're just going to go crazy with that one. So I was like, let's go crazy. Like if I'm just going to do the prerequisites, I'm going to take the prerequisites, I'm going to take the things that I want to find fun. They didn't offer that at Loved Toy. They offered some things. They had a forensic science class. They didn't have astronomy. You would have to go to the college for that. OK. They didn't have the cooking classes. They didn't really have any kind of home act there. And you don't know shade to love joy. The school is great. Right. I just I wanted to have the time to be able to take classes that I really enjoyed because with music, I never knew if I was actually going to go to college. I didn't know if I was going to put my work into that or if I was going to put my work into something that I'm so passionate about and that I want to do for the rest of my life. And so I think that's kind of why I moved. But it's it's been interesting. Alan is my class at Loved Toy was about two hundred and fifty four people. My class at Alan is sixteen hundred and forty. Wow. And so it's it's interesting. It's like eight times it. But I like it because I'm good. I meet a new person every day. I've never met any of these people. And what do they say about your vocals? Have they heard your vocals? Have you sang for your school yet? I've never like sang in kind of like the school area. But a lot of people like know that I do music. I mean, I have friends there now and I told them I was like, hey, guys, guess what? And they were like, what? And I said, I'm going to England on tour for like the new EP. And we were both screaming and jumping up like in the middle of the parking lot, thinking like, oh, this is so awesome. And they've heard me play music before. But it's almost, you know, it's almost like they take it more like as a job, which is what I wanted, because this is like my job. This is the thing that I'm passionate about and I want to do for the rest of my life. Make sure you film everything. Because we're going to be staying tuned to your Instagram. And do you have your own YouTube channel yet? I do have my own YouTube channel. So we're going to be looking at YouTube channel. OK, so my YouTube channel, everything of my music is under my name. Lena Mates, L-I-N-A-M-A-P-E-S. And then everything else you'll find under my kind of username, which is I am just Lena official. Cool. Wow. Man, thank you for coming on the show. Top three artists of all time, dead or alive. Any genre. Number one. OK. Wait, do they have to be like in the order I love them? In the order I love them? Yes, number one. Or you can start from three up. OK, wait. OK, number three. Nina Simone. OK, number two. Amy Winehouse. And number one. Dermot Kennedy. Hey. What song does Dermot Kennedy sing? OK, so he really started out like 10, like 11 years ago. And he's slowly gained in popularity. He's an Irish singer. I kind of like fell in love with him when I was 13, like with his music. I'm a really big lyric person and his lyrics. Sing one of his songs. OK, wait. And I couldn't tell you enough that I'm sorry. And oh, you couldn't tell me enough that you loved me. She's bringing the moon and stars to me. Damn, permanent reverie. And even though this life, this love is brief. I've got some people who carry me. Hey, but his lyrics, like it makes me want to cry. You do your thing, man. So what do you think about your voices? When you sing, you sing so angelic. But when you speak, I can hear like almost a bass in your voice. Yeah. That's what I'm like. That's so strange that you sing differently from how you talk. Well, I have like a lower range, definitely. A lot of my lower range you'll find in like some of my like more deeper songs. So like I have like a few ballads and stuff. And it'll start like a really at the deep of my voice. And then it'll slowly gain. But almost all of my songs you'll find of kind of like my mid range right now. But I'm trying to work through that, you know, make some difference. And I got to ask you, like if it was a girl out there that was. Twelve and she wanted to sing. And but she really don't know what to do. What would you what would you say to her? I would say really just to not kind of give up hope. Even if like you look online, even if you don't like know how to do it, I would say find somebody who is even like four years older than you and is doing the thing that you want and ask them for help. Watch them because the thing if music is it's always changing. There's not one specific way to get into music. I mean, I learned from my vocal teacher, but I was never classically trained. I know how to read a little bit of sheet music because I play the piano. But other than that, I was never an acquire. I was never in anything at school. All of music was really just kind of like learning from one person who had a bunch of contacts who taught me music. But learning music is listening to music. Right. And so if you know somebody who's doing what you want to do, you try to learn from them. Like you ask them all of the questions that you have. You don't care if you annoy them at that point. Wow. Beautiful. Awesome. We love you. Thank you for having me. Man. Hey, man. You know how I go? Yes, sir. It's been another great segment. Thanks for having me. A boss talk one on one with a boss's talk. And we are.