Check Out Shanin Blake’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shanin Blake.

Hi Shanin, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
It’s been a journey for sure. My very first memories of singing and writing were when I was very young, around seven and eight. I got a solo in the school play and performed in front of everyone. I was always writing music when I was very young, writing silly songs with my friends on piano. Writing, to me, was always fun, and as I got into my teens, it became therapeutic, and the only way I could get my feelings out was through writing.

I got to a certain age where I started picking up a guitar, and that felt like a tool for me to get these feelings out into something more beautiful than just poetry. Poetry was always a big part of my life, though, in my early teens, and then the second I picked up a guitar, it felt like a world opened up for me.

And I’ve always been obsessed with music. I was really obsessed with 60s psychedelic music when I was around that age. I think I must’ve been 14 when I picked up my first guitar. So I learned a lot of psychedelic songs like Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, and One by Metallica.

As that journey continued, my music taste started shifting into R&B, folk, jazz, all the classics. I became obsessed with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the way their voices sounded was so incredible to me. Then I started learning Jack Johnson songs on guitar to help me get better at guitar, which helped a lot. Then I started learning Fiona Apple songs, which helped with my vocal range. I started learning Erykah Badu songs, which helped with my writing, and also The Beatles and Bob Marley. They were all writing about concepts that felt so similar to the way that I felt on the inside.

I always loved rap as well. Rap was always a big part of my music library. I learned every single word to Chance the Rapper songs, Eminem songs, and Lil Wayne songs.

My list of music influences is extremely broad, dating all the way back to old blues like Lead Belly, all the way to French rap, Afrobeats, rock and roll, Hawaiian, jazz, funk, like th kier goes on. Vulfpeck was a big influence for me at one point. I’m just obsessed with music. And of course, Michael Jackson and the legends, you know, like Elton John, Beyoncé, Shakira etc..

I mean, it’s so hard as a musician to pick your biggest influences because music in general shaped my entire life. From the second I could start hearing music, I was absorbing it. I learned to play everything by ear. I was never trained classically, and I also don’t know how to read music, but I can jump into any jam and know exactly what to do on pretty much any instrument and with my voice, so everything I’ve done was through feeling my way into the music.

So to me, it was always just such an escape and portal of magic where I could lose myself for hours. I would lock myself in my room and be playing a Pink Floyd album and playing along with guitar, or playing Jimi Hendrix or something, you know, when I was a teenager in my room, and I would just lose myself for like 15 hours straight. I would just be playing the same riff over and over. It’s actually insane. Music is so powerful.

It helped me so much because my childhood was not healthy, and I was being raised in an extremely abusive and toxic environment, so music for me was how I regulated my nervous system and was able to survive through a lot of that abuse and chaos. It was always my safe space.

So the fact that I get to do it now as a professional makes me want to tear up as I’m writing this because this was always it for me. This was all I ever had. This was always it. Whether I was going to be professional at it or not, this was my vice and this was my world.

I was so nervous to sing in front of people when I first started writing songs that I would lock myself in a closet and make my mom listen on the other side, or I would make everyone turn around and close their eyes and listen. And that was how I started breaking out of my shell.

Then one thing led to another, and I started just putting myself out there more. I walked into Mojo’s in Ogden, Utah, and probably only millennials know about Mojo’s in Ogden because I believe it’s shut down now, but there was this man named Ron who opened this shop and turned it into an all ages kids venue for performing and coffee.

Literally, we would all go there, and there were just couches everywhere and art everywhere. It was almost like a thrift or collection store or something, but we would just sleep there because there were couches everywhere, so all of us hoodlums would just hang out there. He would let us smoke weed and hang out and just be teenagers and make music, and it was the highlight of my later teens.

From 16 to 18, I think I spent so much time there just making music every weekend. Every time I wasn’t in school, I was at Mojo’s. That was basically my second home, and it really is inspiring. I would love to make something like that for my community one day because that saved my life as a teenager, feeling like I had a place where I belonged.

Because I was always kind of the weird one out, the outcast, the hippie. That was always me. I was always different and very unique at a very young age. I didn’t have a lot of rules in my household, so I was very open to experimenting with psychedelics and marijuana and just feeling a kind of freedom that a lot of kids I went to school with didn’t have.

So it was cool to feel like I had a place with other kids who were kind of on my vibe, and then we were all learning music together and performing together. We would all cheer each other on even if our songs sucked.

I remember I was playing Soul Child, which is one of my fan cult favorite songs at shows, and Mary Jane, and I was performing those songs when I was 16 years old on stage at Mojo’s. I had my friends all gathered around. It was maybe 20 people, but everyone would be singing the lyrics.

This was so long ago, but we would all sit around and cheer each other on and sing the lyrics even if we all sounded like absolute shit. We just showed up for each other because we were doing what we loved. We didn’t care how we sounded.

And I think that is the secret to life, do what you love, find people that love what you love, be with those people, be yourself, be free, and you will find your purpose.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Probably the biggest obstacle, that people would consider an obstacle, but to me was actually the reason for my entire existence, would be getting pregnant at 17 and having my daughter at 18. I did not plan to have her, and the guy that I got pregnant with had been in and out of jail multiple times up to that point, and he was actually older than me. He went to prison shortly after she was born, and so I was kind of left on my own. My dad at the time disowned me completely because he wanted me to have an abortion, because he said I was going to ruin my music career, which I didn’t even want at that point in my life. He was always pushing that on me, and I just didn’t care. I just loved making music, and I didn’t have any plans to be serious about it.

That kind of says a lot about our relationship, because it was always bad. He’s a raging alcoholic, extremely physically abusive and emotionally abusive, with deep anger issues and a full blown narcissist with no empathy, so growing up around that was difficult being a 100% feeler person. Getting away from him was actually such a blessing in disguise. My mom let me move into her basement, and she let me have my baby there, and that was what really saved me because I only had my mom and my grandma supporting me with that decision. Everyone else thought I was pretty crazy. Luckily, my daughter’s dad’s family also supported the decision, so there was some help there.

It was the beginning of an insane journey. Being a young, broke single mom and trying to make it on your own is pretty crazy at that age, and it was also a blessing, though, because it really gave me grounding. I think a lot of artists who are successful with music don’t have anything to ground them, and when you start getting successful and the money comes in and the fame comes in and all of this stuff starts coming in, and you don’t have something to tether you down here, it’s a quick fast road to your own funeral. My daughter has always kept me tethered here to the Earth, and I never get too caught up in it.

I’ve had psychics tell me that before, that she is my tether here and she is what taught me how to love outside of myself. She is who taught me what love was. Right before I had her, I was extremely suicidal and was planning on attempting to kill myself. I had also gone through sexual abuse from the man who was my stepfather at the time, the father of my half sister, and he did that to me when I was quite young, around 12. I told my mom eventually, and he went to jail, and then he actually ended up committing suicide.

So these were all deeper things that were happening throughout my life that caused me to really rebel against the system and rebel against everything, because my life wasn’t normal. I was dealing with a lot at home throughout school, and then getting pregnant while I was still in high school, it was just a lot. It really pushed me to have to be independent and figure out my life on my own terms because I didn’t, as much as the internet loves to pretend that I came from money, I did not come from money. I wish I came from money haha because then I wouldn’t have been selling weed out of my house while I was pregnant, making weed brownies and trimming on weed farms and working at pizza places and strip clubs and having OnlyFans. Why in the world would I be doing that stuff?

It’s so funny to me how these people think they know my life and my story and who I am, and they have no idea where I came from and what I’ve been through. But I also don’t care because it’s like I worked so hard to get here, and all the while, while I was doing all of that crazy work trying to survive, living in a van, living on communes and farms, I think I found myself, who I really was. I figured out who I was, and I also realized you don’t need money in this world to be happy because I was so happy when I had absolutely zero dollars to my name in a van eating canned food, living on a farm trimming weed with my daughter. Those were the highlights of our life, and my daughter still remembers how fun that was because there were other single moms with kids, and it’s definitely a part of my mission to give back to that community and represent where I came from because those are my core life memories, and there was so much freedom in that.

So as much as that can look like a struggle or obstacles, it was actually the thing that led me to become exactly who I am and pushed me to realize the important things in life. Once I was really truly happy, that’s when I started finding success with music publicly and making a lot of money, and that’s when my life blossomed. It blossomed because I was already happy.

I think there was a time when I started stripping where I wasn’t happy. I was pretty depressed, and I was making good money stripping, but I was miserable, and I just remember thinking money does not buy happiness. Money is a byproduct of what I’m doing right now that I don’t enjoy. Mind you, I did love stripping, I love dancing, but it’s a pretty intense place to work and there’s a lot that comes with it, and to me it wasn’t my passion. It wasn’t what I was passionate about. I’m passionate about music, and so I was always making music on the side.

For me it was like I just had to really continue always making music, and then eventually the music started outweighing how much money I was making stripping and doing OnlyFans. Then my music blew up on the internet off of a TikTok video and an Instagram video, which had happened in the past, but this time it was even bigger. All of a sudden I was like oh my gosh, it’s Covid and I don’t have to work at the strip club because they all shut down, so I only had OnlyFans as my source of income at that time and streams off of music, and at the time they were pretty similar. I think I was making like 2 to 3 thousand off OnlyFans a month and like 2 to 3 thousand off music streams a month.

Then all of a sudden my video went viral, and boom, all of a sudden I’m making 20K a month off music streams, but my OnlyFans blew up as a byproduct, which is something I never even thought of then I was making 20K a month ooff OF on top of that , and I was like that’s crazy to me that my music is funding my OnlyFans haha, funny how that all works out.

Then I had a team reach out to me wanting to run my OnlyFans, and they started running it and they tripled the income. So it just went from 20K a month to, I think my highest month was like 350K a month. So it’s been an insane journey, and I’m just so grateful for every step along the way, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Well, I got pretty known for my music. That’s what I initially got famous for. I had TikTok and Instagram videos going viral for songs like Nature Song, “Took a lil bit of acid, lil bit of shrooms,” and Energy Vampires, “I’m well aware that I attract what I allow in,” and Bad Bitch Energy. Those were my top three songs that were going viral at the time, and my social media kind of infiltrated the algorithm, and i manifested being on everybody’s FYP page.

I do believe that part of my mission here on earth was to help hack the matrix for people and to kind of stir the pot and wake everyone up to the things that are now happening, because if you listen to my music, I talk about very out of the norm concepts and spiritual concepts, and I’m not afraid to say things that other people don’t say.

I’m very open with how I write, and I’m very passionate about the words I say because it is representing the life that I’ve lived, and to me it’s been such a beautiful life. I have found so much healing through the modalities that I talk about, whether it’s plant medicine, meditation, affirmations, sound healing, all of these things that I sing about in my music, mental health, speaking nicely to yourself, empowering yourself, self love. These are all extremely important in finding balance in your life as a person because everybody’s life is hard.

Everyone goes through hardships, no matter how big, no matter how small. Life is not always easy, and the thing is, I learned it can be easier though, coming from a very chaotic environment and then consciously creating an environment for my life that is now peaceful, harmonious, tranquil, filled with love, filled with light. I created that for myself, and it was not easy, but the things that I sing about, those are the ways that I did that.

I do feel really deeply that it is my job here to share the things I’ve learned with others to help them also achieve the same things and dig themselves out of those trenches and those holes.

And so I’m so grateful for what I’m known for. I wouldn’t want to be known for anything else haha, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself. Young me is smiling and clapping and just so happy that I kept timeline shifting and picking the higher timeline because the timeline I used to be in was so dark, and now it’s so light.

Now I’m helping so many people, and I’m helping myself, and I am helping my family, and I’m helping the world shift consciousness and wake up and see that we are far more powerful than we’ve been conditioned to believe.

That is my purpose here, and that is what I’m known for in my reality and my experience. What I experience in real life at my shows are life changing moments. People are crying and having spiritual moments and connecting with other families there, and it’s just our world is healing.

To be able to be a part of that change is an honor. I think it sets me apart because I’m not sitting here trying to write mainstream pop lyric hits to go viral on charts. I’m legit writing about micro dosing plant medicine and saying affirmations and that’s going viral so that’s showing where our society is at and that we really do care about these messages not just what’s being fed to us through mainstream radio.

What matters most to you?
What matters to me most is making a positive impact on the music industry, on our planet, and for our collective. That’s why I came here. It was not to be quiet and silent. It was to shake things up, show people that there is always a way to find happiness and peace, and to be a beacon of light.

I want to represent what I went through and hopefully help others who may be going through the same struggles and who need some piece of hope or light at the end of the tunnel to hold onto so that they do not go down that dark road, because suicide is not the answer, hurting yourself is not the answer, and life can be so beautiful.

You just have to take baby steps toward it, and I hope that my music, or what I represent, can be a baby step for some people to help them get from that side over to this side. We can achieve heaven on earth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://link.me/shaninblake999?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio
• Instagram: https://Www.instagram.com/shaninblake