Christian Crosby was the opening performer at SelectCon Atlanta, and he was excited to showcase his talent to creators, innovators, and professionals at the event. Based in Philadelphia, Crosby loves exploring his life experiences in his music while touching on topics such as self-love and being the best version of yourself.
Crosby spoke with rolling out about his music journey and how he developed his sound.
Where did your love for music come from?
It came from my family; we’re all lovers of music. My father sang, and my mother, brother, and sister sing, and we all love oldies, new school, classical, R&B, and hip-hop. I just grew up in a household where music was always playing. As I got older, I started to create music at church and I was like this young, little, cool church choir boy who made all these songs about Jesus, and everyone loved it. I fell in love with performing at an early age and just kept going with it.
[There was] a period in my life when I stopped making music, and I was scared because I cared too much about what people thought. Then coming out of the pandemic, I just was like, “I gotta be who I am; I don’t know what’s going to happen. This world could end tomorrow for all I know. I need to start just embracing my true purpose.”
How would you describe your musical sound?
The best way I would put my sound is more about the message and purpose behind my music. You’ll hear a lot of self-love, self-freedom, and self-discovery type of lyrics that I have. You also hear lyrics about just being the best version of yourself. I make a lot of lyrics about living a healthy lifestyle and exercising; I make lyrics about being in a healthy relationship with one girl and not sleeping with everyone else’s girlfriends. It’s what you hear a lot in hip-hop, which is cool, but we just need a little more balance in it.
You’ll see a lot of my lyrics are unconventional and hip-hop, and that’s what is most unique about my music. I’ll say it the way you would hear someone else say a different type of lyric, but I’ll be saying something about having good credit or something. What makes my music special is I’m truly being myself in my music and I’m talking about what I believe in truly. I’m not holding back or selling out in any way to get more clicks, views, or listens.
How do you hone into your musical style?
It’s a different process every time I make a song, but I try my best to find something that’s real or true to me, and then I deep dive into that. I think I struggle the most when I’m making songs that I don’t have a connection to when it comes to the topic; I find that I do better when it’s about something that truly matters to me, that happened to me, or that I’m looking forward to doing or having something. My process is fine. I work with different producers all the time. I’m in an experimental phase of my music career, so it’s always different.
