Meet Lena Stojiljkovic | Music Influencer & Music Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lena Stojiljkovic and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lena, putting aside the decision to work for yourself, what other decisions were critical to your success?
Everyone struggles with character defects. For some, they may come in the form of a mental illness, and for others, they may manifest through substance abuse. For me, my character defects come from both, and when they have a relationship with one another, I am not successful. Mental stability and sobriety have provided me with healthy relationships, positive thinking and an unwavered focus that I cannot acheive when I’m stuck smoking weed and disregarding my mental health. I made a decision to cut weed from my life and only success has come my way. It’s somewhat ironic with what I do — being in the music industry in the way I am, I somewhat promote life with drugs with the rap covers I do on my Instragram because I am supporting lyricism that highlights struggles with substance abuse. No one wishes for addiction, it’s a powerful disease that consumes too many people in the music industry. Though some may make it through the struggle, I am not one who is capable of succeeding when I’m abusing substances. I’ve almost hit rock bottom too many times because of my weed habits — psychiatric hospitalizations, enourmous debt from fraud, risking my academic standing in college — and I must be reminded of the joys I’ve experienced ever since I stopped smoking weed. Weed isn’t for everybody, and because of my mental health condition, I cannot exist in success when I’m using. I am not my true self when I’m high, especially if I’m mentally unstable, and my true self is capable of great success. If I care about maximizing my success to the best of my ability, I must do what I can to avoid smoking weed because my mental health comes first. Too many times has weed been the blame for my failures. The cons of smoking weed outweigh the pros in my case, and I hope others in the music industry can respect that. No high is worth permanent insanity.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I am a guest in hip-hop culture. I did not grow up listening to rap music, and it wasn’t until college that I started listening to rap. Having gone to many indie-music concerts and festivals for several years, when I first got into rap, I didn’t really know how to participate. I knew lyrics to songs by LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire, so when I saw those bands in concert I was able to enjoy those shows by singing along. However, I was not able to pick up lyrics on pretty much all of the rap music I listened to. As a music enthusiast, I always want to immerse myself into every song I listen to, and I basically dreamed of one day being able to quote rap music and dance to it like I was comfortable with doing indie music. It looked like so much fun, and I wanted to be emotionally consumed in rap music like the people around me were. I occasionally hung out at bars with people requesting songs by Roddy Ricch, Gunna, Lil Baby, and others, and I was always encapsulated by their enjoyment of those songs. I wanted to be a part of it, but it was hard. It wasn’t until COVID hit that I started exclusively listening to rap music, and I started to pick up on the lyrics. It still wasn’t anything impressive, only picking up on parts of the hooks here and there. During that time, I had become acquaintances with Tsu Surf from joining his Instagram live a few times, and when he dropped his MSYKM Deluxe album in 2021, I found it necessary to try and learn the entirety of his Quarantine Tales 2 Freestyle so I could present it to him as like a celebration gift for the album drop. It took me a long week to learn and memorize the full song, practicing it for hours without end every day. I really wanted to support him in this way, and since I had always wanted to recite rap lyrics, this was a good chance to test my potential with that skill. I posted the cover on my Instagram page and he had seen it and reposted it on his page. Not only was I able to do something I had always wanted to do, but to receive praise for it, it really set me on the path to continue covering other rap songs, getting better and better with each cover. I am now fulfilling that desire of reciting rap lyrics, constantly challenging myself to keep recording covers. I do all of this as a motion for supporting musicians, and I don’t see myself ever stopping.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Being in California during the winter months is drastically different than winter in Chicago. Without a doubt, I would take whoever comes to visit me to the beach. Chicago does have beaches along Lake Michigan, but during the winter no one wants to go to them — for obvious reasons. The idea of being on a warm and sunny beach in the middle of winter is completely abstract to me, so to embrace the time I have here and the opportunity to visit a California beach without freezing to death, I think anyone who was to visit me from Chicago would not be opposed to sliding to the beach, too.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I have been writing music for a long time. It started in 8th grade when I was gifted my first ukulele, I would roam the halls of my middle school playing it for everyone to hear. I must’ve had a knack for it because everyone was always asking me to bring it and play. Even though I have been playing piano since I was 5, the ukulele was my first take at writing original songs. Throughout high school, I was heavily involved in music classes, participating in all of the courses my school had to offer, such as band, orchestra, choir, and I was encouraged to write my own music because I was excelling so much. I wrote my first song my sophomore year, and fortunately enough, by the time senior year came around, I was able to record it for an album project the music department was running. The song is currently on Spotify, titled “Doesn’t Have To Be” under the album “This Is Amateur.” Fast forward to 2017, I started messing around with GarageBand on my iPhone, producing on piano, and writing raps for fun. I was inspired by this famous social media personality, Roy Purdy, who is the same age as me and I figured if he could produce his own raps, I could, too. It wasn’t until Summer 2018 I decided to take my music production to the next level and invest in Logic Pro X. I was obsessed with music production; my first project on Logic was a 10-minute song, which I had produced in less than 3 days. You can find it on SoundCloud, titled “10,” under my name. And for about two years after that, I was non-stop producing my own electronic compositions. It got to a certain point where I was running out of fuel — one can only produce so many songs without burning out. It was at this point I started aspiring to create rap beats because I had seen the demand in the market for them, but because I didn’t have the experience or network to delve into that realm, I somewhat let go of music production.
I discovered Polo G beginning of 2020, and I was drawn in by his vast array of piano-heavy rap records. Also with him being from Chicago, I wanted to support him and his music as I’m also from Chicago. This was before his sophomore album, “The Goat,” and by the time it came out, I started noticing the extent of how much piano he had used in his music. That summer, I spent most of my time listening to his music, and I started covering his songs going as far as composing a medley of some of his tracks where I play and rap his music. I was consumed by this creative process until one day it clicked in my head: I can literally play a majority of his songs on the piano, and if I can play his beats, then I can create my own beats, too. And from then on, I started composing piano loops left and right. And because I was pretty good at it, a lot of people started coming to me asking for loops. It was these conversations that put my foot in the door, and because I had a growing enthusiasm for rap music, I started covering other rap artists’ music, like Tsu Surf and Ocho Munna, and eventually, that started picking up traction, too. The first viral video I had was a cover I did off of King Von’s album, “Welcome To O’Block,” where I did a 15 second cover of Prince Dre’s verse on “Back Again,” and he discovered it and put the video on his Instagram page. That video has received more than 200,000 plays on his page, and from then on, countless people were coming to me to cover their songs, too, and I started ending up on other rappers’ pages, like Memo600, G Herbo, Boss Top, Tray Tray, Sleepy Rose, Tweet Mack, Slimelife Shawty, Shoebox Baby, EBK Eski, Kiddo Curry and many more. There are a lot of people I have to credit for my virality on rap covers — in the beginning, it was Tsu Surf and Ocho Munna, and as time went on other major artists started hopping on my support train, but the one person I give the most credit to is Polo G. It was his music that rekindled my passion for music production, and from then on it was a domino effect of me writing music and covering songs that brought me to the recognition I have today. Without Polo G, I would have never started on this path, and I have every reason to thank him for inspiring me to do what I love doing.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melodybylena/