Today we’d like to introduce you to Ace Savage.
Ace, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been making music for as long as I could remember, my mother said she used to play Micheal Jackson when I was in her stomach and I would start kicking. My father was a musician also and frequently showed me the rap lyrics he would write, which I found awesome, but nothing really interested me at the time as much as the pop music my aunt would show me. Those were the first emotions I remember registering as a child. While other kids watched cartoons, I was being scolded for watching music videos that were not age-appropriate, everything about being an entertainer was infatuating to me. I loved every genre of music from the time I was born, but I began building my own taste around the third grade when my mom bought me a disc-man, and I would trade CD’s with some of the older boys after school. At the time, I had no idea that I was setting the foundation to later become a musician, I just did it for fun.
In 2008 after my father passed, I moved from Zimbabwe to McKinney, Texas here, I would meet new people and make friends who obsessed over music just as much as I did. As we grew older, my friends started to notice I could freestyle better than most people my age so they would make sure I did it much as possible, but even then, I just did it all for the fun of it and I was more focused on sports. Until one late night with my friends when someone heard me freestyle and got me in touch with the first producer/engineer I would ever work with, Trevor Williamson. I started skipping school to go to the studio, sometimes I would even find myself making the almost hour walk from Valley Ranch in Irving to our studio in Coppell just to go record, but even then, I just did it because it was all fun. Finally, in 2014, I dropped my first song and it would peak at 20,000 plays before I deleted it from soundcloud. I knew we were on to something and that would be the beginning of some of the most fulfilling moments of my life, I became obsessed with cultivating a sound that would describe what teenagers from affluent suburbs went through in a time where I felt most local musicians where not doing it correctly.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t think anything worth accomplishing in life is going to take you down a smooth road, there’s a lot of issues with making music in the the internet era. My career started in high school and my music spread like wildfire in the suburbs but I could never seem to connect with the city like I wanted to, the songs became more house party anthems and I wanted them to represent the city as a whole. There was a time where I felt I was on a roll and the world was at my fingertips and because of that, I failed to connect certain dots, that being said, I don’t look at those moments as failures. Making music is fun and rewarding but there is very high-highs and even worse lows. Couple the lack of composure I had at the beginning of this and no real team with me still growing up and learning who I wanted to be and you get a very volatile life for someone to live at a young age. There’s things I never could explain or talk to anyone about, like opening up for major artists in a club at 17 on a Thursday and waking up for school and taking exams you never studied for, graduating high school and not knowing how to turn your dreams into something that can pay you or sometimes even dealing with the temptations and mental health issues artists face while they try to distract themselves from a goal that can sometimes feel unattainable.
I’m very grateful for the bumps in the road, they tested my resiliency and I proved to myself that my mistakes are just lessons I can use as fuel to get better not only for myself but the people that believe in me. With that said I always try to take the road less traveled and make music I enjoy because I understand that it is sometimes hard but I would not enjoy it if spent my life inside my comfort zone, I know there’s still a lot I need to learn about songwriting, music business and how I want to present my brand but I make sure to take it day by day and keep people around that not only love me but keep me grounded and focused on my goals. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that when things go wrong, you adjust but you stick to your plan and you stick to what you believe in because even though as artist’s we want to present things in a perfect way, we’re still human at the end of the day.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a rapper/songwriter. I was born 1997, so during some of the greatest decades in pop music in my personal opinion. I was always obsessed with the writing styles of people like Max Martin, Neyo, and Benny Blanco. The way they structured intros and Choruses in their work made it important for me to always have a memorable chorus. I started noticing as I grew older that the anthems they created where timeless in a very unique way and that’s why my music is very chorus centered, I love when the verse is a bonus that takes the chorus even more in-depth. Kids in the area I grew up in were always obsessed with house parties and coming from a family that enjoyed music and fun I found it very easy to talk about what I experienced growing up and still experience now.
After attending five high school’s I found it easy for me and my friends to throw parties and use them as a means of promotion for our music, it was our story to make and also our story to tell. I’m most proud of being able to create a soundtrack, I think represents a bunch of kids that tried to recreate parties they saw in movies. I’ve had a lot of fun and the type of sound me and the various producers I work with is fun because it isn’t one-dimensional, which leaves a lot of room to genre bend and connect with people from different walks of life. A couple of years ago we were excited to get 20,000 plays now, there’s two collaborations that have surpassed a million, a solo song that’s well on its way to two million plays and a couple half a million tracks here and there. I’ve had the opportunity to perform at music festivals and several colleges with artists like Svddendeath, Borgore, Smokepurpp, Sheck Wes, Nba Youngboy and several other notable artists. I think what sets me and my team apart is not following trends or trying to create them but looking at the industry and music as whole and trying to provide what we think is missing.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I like the pride we carry, it’s very genuine compared to other places I’ve been especially in the industry I work in. I enjoyed living in other cities and experiencing what they had built, but I feel like people push each other here to be unique and original and every corner has something to different to experience. As someone who came from overseas and used to feel like an outsider, it feels amazing to find my place and start to garner the respect of people who can help spread my music even more. that being said, I don’t like the gatekeeper attitude some of us keep, I feel like there’s something to learn from everyone and I’m excited to see how Dallas can change the industry if it came together even more.
Contact Info:
- Email: acesavagerecords@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ilyacesavage/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilyAceSavage
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ilyacesavage
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AceSavage
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ilyacesavage
Image Credits
ohdaygho, taubrxy
