Meet Hooseki

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hooseki. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hooseki below.

Hooseki, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I feel like my upbringing played a key role in instilling values and characteristics that allow me to understand that lots of things happen in life that don’t go the way we plan or expect. I grew up on a small homestead in Oregon with gardens, farm animals, and an orchard. My family also traveled a lot, taking road trips around the country and so far I’ve been blessed to experience 48 states. Not only balancing taking care of a farm and all the unpredictability that entails, but also all the things that can happen on the road – flat tires, missing turns, travel logistics not going as planned, you learn that things can not go as planned very quickly.

When I started getting into music and started taking it more seriously in my teens, I realized that if I was going to succeed, I needed to have longevity. Every year I hear stories of how peers or artists that people look up to hit a point where they decide to throw in the towel. Often times it’s because they are told that in order to “make it in the industry” they have to do everything the same way somebody else does, and because they get trapped in their thinking, they lose hope and motivation. Sometimes it’s because they forget their “why” or find monetary success in other areas.

I think that one of the most important things that keep me focused and help me bounce back is my “why”. I also spend a lot of time refining my “why” and continue to define it as specifically as possible. Having a mission statement is important, and we can always go deeper. The deeper we search for Truth and clarity, the deeper our convictions take root. The deeper our convictions, the more resilient we become.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My name is Hooseki, I am a hip-hop artist, music producer, and audio engineer from Phoenix, Arizona.

I’m 1/2 of a production duo known as ARCiTEC. Credits include Murs, Beleaf in Fatherhood, Jon Keith, Wande, Miles Minnick, Mike Teezy, Seanloui, Linga TheBoss, and Josh Caballes.

My new visual project HIGHLIGHT REEL II, a collab project with Qew, is out now on youtube. You can also stream the EP on all streaming platforms.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The first quality I’d say that was the most impactful for me was defining my success early on. I made a decision when I was 14 that this is what I am called to do and treated it seriously and approach every day as a learning opportunity. The second quality would be patience. Patience with yourself, patience with life, patience with your team. Don’t allow comparison to steal your joy. Always seek wise council. Thirdly, I would encourage consistency both with your craft and your rest. You want to build your craft to the point where inspiration flows, but also building a healthy routine with rest. Scheduled rest and discipline with that has been crucial to preventing burnout.

My advice to develop these would be first prayer and spending time in the scriptures. Many of these values I found and expanded on from being consistent and diligent in learning how scripture is relevant and applicable to my life. Also, finding good friends that have the same goals that you can trust to give you encouragement and direction. Learning how to balance the creative and business ways of things and having a plan for how you handle branding, features, social media, booking and events, ect. will make navigating and achieving your goals less overwhelming and help you filter who to have around you.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
Thats a tricky one, because I had to learn skills not only for myself but for my team because we didn’t have any connections to certain resources we needed. For example, I went all in to learn mixing and mastering because I couldn’t find anyone I could trust to accomplish my sound that was within my budget. As I worked on my artistry and production, my peers liked my sound and hired me to mix their music. I’m very passionate about artistry and doing good work for anyone I work for, and have always made it a priority to go above and beyond for anyone I collaborate with.

However, it’s made it something I’ve had to juggle and not allow to take up so much space that I can’t get any of my own deadlines and goals accomplished, especially relying on music as my primary source of income.

Nowadays when I meet artist that ask about becoming multitalented, I encourage them to learn the skills with the intention of being able to effectively communicate their vision to their team. Find out the areas you’re the most skilled and passionate, and delegate to someone who’s proficient in their area. Trust me, it’s worth the investment.

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Image Credits
Xavier Sorrow Sarai Kelly Casey Moreno

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