We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Boonie Mayfield. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Boonie below.
Boonie, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
Well, the foundation of my confidence and self-esteem was set once I let go of the idea of “competition” as an artist. I stopped comparing myself to others and my motto became, “I’m better than everybody at being ME”. I know I’ll never be as good at someone else’s niche or calling. So, I’ve stayed laser focused on becoming the best version of myself in my own lane. There’s only one me. So, as long as I’m being myself and doing me whole-heartedly, I feel the confidence in knowing that nobody else can. It’s great to not feel insecure among fellow creatives by fully owning who I am and all the things that make me unique.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
There’s a lot to my story, so here we go. My journey started off as a rapper/dancer/actor, but I became known for my music production after learning to make my own beats in the early 2000s. By 2007, I became self-employed selling my beats online. That same year, I started posting videos of my beat-making process on YouTube just for fun. Besides myself, there was only a few other “bedroom producers” making this type of content. My first videos looked rather low in quality, but the professional quality of my beats and my natural personality as a performer started attracting an audience. A few months later, I went viral — a term we weren’t even using at that time. One of my videos got featured on the front page of YouTube for an entire month, establishing me as one of the pioneers of the beat-making video formats that are prevalent today.
For the following 5 years I helped inspire a generation of music producers by showcasing my growth with beat videos, tutorials, vlogs and comedy sketches. My fanbase was able to witness my transition from making sample-based beats to learning to play instruments and composing all original material. They witnessed my career highs and lows from winning beat competitions to having my first studio burglarized and losing nearly everything. By 2012, I gave long-form videos a try by producing my own docuseries with my now-wife called, ‘Boon Documented’. It was one of the first self-made reality shows of its kind on YouTube. The experience elevated my video editing chops and gave me the opportunity to focus more on the storytelling side of my music creation and journey as a DIY artist.
Something about producing my own shows felt like the culmination of everything that I dreamed of doing. But one of the missing pieces of the puzzle was the rapper/dancer/actor that I started as. That piece was still dormant as I was so hyper-focused on music production; until it all changed when I turned 30 years old the following year. In 2013, I released my first self-produced album and chose to step down from making/selling beats, as well as the underground hip-hop style I was known for. It was a huge risk for me to drop my main source of income and alienate my previous audience, but making beats for everybody else became very unfulfilling to me. I had to follow my heart. Since then, I’ve been on a long journey of leaving behind the entity that I was in the past, and becoming who I am today.
Throughout the past 10 years, I cultivated my own sound and built a discography that became increasingly difficult to categorize by genres. After finishing my latest album, ‘Black Floyd: Dark Side of the Boon’, I realized that I created my own personal version of pop music by fusing all the genres and influences that I’ve been inspired by. Studying the likes of Andre 3000, James Brown, Prince, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and other genre-bending legends definitely rubbed off on me over time. And similar to Quincy Jones’s history with jazz, hip-hop is my foundation — but I couldn’t just stay in that box forever. I mastered my craft in order to create without limits and break the rules like those greats did.
I turned 40 this year and I’m excited because I’m no longer compartmentalizing my talents as an artist. I prefer to let my work speak for itself, so please be sure to check out my discography on all streaming platforms. I have a new docuseries on YouTube called, ‘Boonwalker’ — a spin-off of the ‘Boon Documented’ series. And the project I’m most excited about is, ‘Boon TV’ — a musical sketch comedy show co-starring and created by me and my wife (Giane Morris Vaughn). We produced a 20-minute pilot episode entirely by ourselves in quarantine during the pandemic. The next episode is currently in production and projected to release during the holidays. It’s like Key & Peele meets MTV Classic with all original music and characters. So, beware of our crazy senses of humor. Visit my YouTube channel to join the fun where you can also find my most recent music videos, short films, podcast episodes and other projects.
https://youtu.be/u0oYmYvQ46o?si=ashayT_5HFTi_pxY%20(Boonwalker%20-%20Trailer)
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I’d say resilience; thinking outside the box; and being self-sufficient. These qualities played a major part in acquiring all my knowledge and skills and staying ahead of the curve. From the very beginning, I noticed how frustrated I was whenever I depended and waited on other people to execute my creative ideas, hence why I taught myself to produce my own music. Luckily, I learned basic video editing skills from a school news class I took in high school. But I had no idea that I would be applying that knowledge 7 years later on a platform I couldn’t even imagine at the time.
Thinking outside the box has always reminded me to use all the tools, knowledge and skills that I have right now, rather than waiting to have everything that I “think” I need. I often focus on what I can do that doesn’t require anybody else’s yes or approval but mine. So, I’m all about doing whatever you can with whatever you have. I’m currently working as a career advisor at a college for music and film, and one of the things I always say to students/grads along with sharing my story is: “Become a jack of all trades and a master of ONE.”
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
Reaching a new audience has definitely been a constant struggle for me — especially without a major marketing budget. Back when I went viral in 2007, the exposure I got from being featured on YouTube wasn’t limited and controlled by algorithms. My video was exposed to EVERYBODY who went on YouTube’s homepage, giving the opportunity to “catch the fish” of those who were interested in what I was doing at the time. We all have way less of a choice in discovering new and exciting content these days.
And for OG YouTube accounts, you can have hundreds-of-thousands of subscribers and still only be able to reach 10% of them with no growth of new viewership nowadays. And since I’ve evolved so much as an artist, my content is primarily reaching the wrong audience. The algorithms tend to keep my brand stuck in the past of what I used to do. I even tried re-branding 10 years ago and it actually made things more difficult. But I’ve come to accept what I can’t control. All I can do is continue to create and put myself out there like I’ve always done. I’ve just been trusting God with the rest; having faith that the right audiences will catch on again someday, somehow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://booniemayfield.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/booniemayfield
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/booniemayfield
Image Credits
