The Monthly Drop: October
This month’s drop is a little bit longer. We have new EP for you to listen to, a snippet from our interview with Streamer and Gamer, Ysabella Grace, and three featured finds from THE EDIT.
Fini EP - Nyasha Munashe
Deconstructing faith is a journey most of us have been on. First comes the discomfort, the disagreement, then the re-configuration, re-learning and finding a new way forward.
What does it mean to exist in the tension between real faith and the cultural perception of it. To care about your craft, to make things that metabolise this lived experience.
What would it look like to tear this faith down to its bare bones and ask yourself, “who and what is this really about?”
“I reached a crossroads
where I had to reconfigure everything
I believed in or give up on Jesus altogether.
I chose the former,
reading the
insights of Black theologians to understand the Christian
experience as it pertains to a racialised world and how I
am situated within it as a Black man.”
Fini is the debut EP by Zimbabwean-born rapper, Nyasha Munashe. The 5-track EP launches on November 5th. Find it on Spotify or Apple Music.
Calling not Duty. In Conversation with Ysabella Grace
Last month, I had the pleasure of talking to Ysabella Grace, a streamer, content creator and born and raised East Londoner about her journey so far. We spoke about the journey of navigating the streaming and entertainment industry as a woman and as someone who believes in God.
K: I think it’s beautiful to hear that it just started off with you playing games with your friends
YG: I think one of the biggest misconceptions that I hear is that people think that all these big AAA games are what makes you a gamer, when actually if you played Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel growing up, you’ve been gaming. If you played sims growing up you’ve been gaming.
One of my biggest regrets is not starting streaming during COVID. I met a couple of people through Call of Duty and one of my friends said to me “you should start gaming” and she showed me the ropes. I didn’t have a lot of expensive gear, I just connected everything to my Macbook and built a community from there. When I trusted myself to commit to this, that’s when I upgraded my gear.
K: Okay take me back to those early streams, what kind of stuff were you talking about?
YG: I love when I have to speak about my early journey. I would have to tell my friends, “Hey can you join my stream?” At the time I wasn’t making TikToks, I had just started and it wasn’t super oversaturated. I would have 2 viewers, one being my friend and the other being me on another device. After a year, I still wasn’t getting many viewers and that’s when it started to affect me more.
After that I started to average around 20 viewers thanks to Twitch Raids. I started to learn that streaming was really about showcasing your personality so I just had to be myself, but crank it up a notch. The difference between a great streamer and a streamer is really about taking the time to plan your streams and entertain your chat.
K: Do you feel like the community you are building are a reflection of who you are?
YG: I think so. A huge part of who I am is Jesus. It’s not a script. When you have a relationship with Him it naturally flows through your demeanor, your speech and what not. My community know that I’m a Christian and that I love God, so when I mention faith and flow from an entertaining space to a serious space to preaching it ends up naturally carving the community. The people who don’t want to hear it stop coming and the people who do keep coming. I would like to say that I have the same values as my community.
K: Have you ever felt a tension between your faith/values and the culture of the space that you’re in?
YG: The main conversation that I’ve been having with God and my inner circle recently is trying to figure out who I am in this industry. I made a post the other day saying that my blueprint isn’t everybody else’s blueprint. I can’t deny that we all want to be viral, but my goal is to really bring God into this space. The blueprint for virality that a lot of people follow is like a girl and a guy e-date situation, shipping people together or having to do rage bait. I can do that if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. It’s not true to who I am and it’s not true to who God called me to be. Ultimately, it would be me saying that I don’t trust God to position me. So in this moment there’s definitely a resistance between two cultures. I’m not selling my soul to get to that.
You can find @ysabellagrace_ on Instagram and TikTok
The Edit: Autumn 2
The evenings are getting shorter and the motives have moved inside, but the intention to style remains the same. Here are a few faith-led picks for the month ahead.
Kingdom Collective Hoodie. I can’t get this colour out of my head at the moment. I just feel like it’s going to feature throughout this winter. The weather might be grey but pops of colour will keep the dopamine up through the cold days.
Neaux Doubt Denim Shorts. I believe that the long shorts can make it though winter. Long coats and mid calf socks will get us through.
D7 Long Sleeve Top. This piece is from ‘Daily Seventh’ or ‘D7’, Seventh’s new sub-brand. D7 is a wearable daily collection at a lower price point, maintaining the same quality, design and silhouette as is always expected.
Stay warm friends, see you next time. ✌🏾