Belly Full: A Conversation with Hillarynx
How Hillarynx made the leap from listener to artist.
Osob Hersi
Being a young person in the UK post-2020 means choosing between your dreams and stability is more daunting than ever. Black British creatives, in particular, have a mile-high disadvantage stacked against them. Going after your dreams in times of uncertainty is risky, explains 20-something singer-songwriter Hillarynx [Hillary] over Google Meet. Her unique sound blends elements of R&B, Jazz, and Jungle, and she draws inspiration from artists such as Sade, Lalah Hathaway and Nia Archives. Hailing from South West London, she tells me that music and singing have always been her passion, but like many other young Black Brits in the arts, she found it unsustainable and went into the civil service for guaranteed income. After receiving three funds to help kickstart her career, she's ready to introduce her music to the world.
Osob: How did you get started as a musician?
Hillary: In 2022, I applied to the Next Gen Fund after having a conversation with my friend about creative work. She highlighted some other funding platforms, such as Funding With Mina, but I ended up applying for NGF because I was like, I might as well shoot my shot and see what opportunities I can make for myself as I had never created a full-body of work before. It also helped that I could work with my friends, one of them being sober akin, who produced my debut track, Belly Full. The second fund I received was a scholarship from The Ivors Academy, an academy for songwriting, lyricists, and composers. Senior members of the industry fund the scholarship. It helped me navigate things such as royalties and how technology is impacting music. And thirdly, I was granted access to the fund from the Arts Council for my dyslexia. This one was a long process and honestly felt like a part-time job.
Osob: How has dyslexia impacted your journey?
Hillary: For me, my main weak area is phonetic processing (sounds and words). It’s not only reading that impacts me, but it’s also my social communication. When I was recording the first draft of a demo, I realised that my brain was processing the words differently—it’s jarring when I’m trying to sing, and it’s not matching up to what I’m thinking. I have to double-check and make sure I’m doing an assurance check that I’m not rushing what I’m saying.
Reading sheet music has also been challenging—I’m not classically trained, so I mostly rely on my ears to learn sounds. When I’m working with other people, especially teachers, I make sure to let them know that I’m dyslexic, and what’s nice about Ivors is that two of my teachers are also dyslexic, so they understand how to navigate that space. Also, as my own manager, I send out emails and correspondence with people, and I have to make sure it’s all in order because it might come across as unprofessional when it’s just my dyslexia.
Osob: You mentioned that because of your phonetic processing, your brain processes sound and audio slower, is that why you gravitated towards genres such as jazz and soul?
Hillary: I wouldn’t say slower. It’s more that it processes differently. If you say the word fur, I might hear it as far sometimes. It changes how I hear the words. But that is a really interesting question and possibly? One thing that I love is scat singing because it’s all about phonetics and how you place the sound or imitate an instrument with your voice. There’s no requirement to remember words. That being said, I go to jams a lot in London, and most of the time, I’m making up words on the spot or doing covers of songs.
Osob: Oh, that’s so cool. What kind of jams do you go to?
Hillary: Common Sound (Kentish Town), Orii (Hackney & Peckham) and Straight Pocket (on hiatus).
Osob: I really loved your music video for Belly Full and how it gave a communal vibe. Could you tell me a little about that filming process? It looks like a homegrown project.
Hillary: It really came from my friends. I reached out to one of them for photos from dinner parties they’d host at their house, and they said I could use their space for a music video. So the video is full of photos of us at dinner, and I used the photos to fill in the plots, somewhat like silent movies made by Charlie Chaplin—a lot is said without using words. The food in the video is stuff we cooked, which lends to the homey feeling. Plus, I wanted it to feel like one of those photobooks your family has. I didn’t record it as a video because I wanted it to give the essence of intimacy without disturbing the privacy of my friends, which is why I used the 3D element of the photos— it helps viewers realise that these are real people.
Osob: You mentioned earlier that you got to work on a full body of music. When's the next single going to come out? Is it going to be an EP or an album?
Hillary: There’s going to be a Belly Full part 2. It’s more of a Jungle remix with some Jazz elements included. The singles are part of a wider EP called Sayings, and it’s about how words create worlds. with a total of 6-7 songs.
Osob: How has the funding that you've received helped you with your music career?
Hillary: It’s helped to be a catalyst for creating space for me. With the scholarship, I’ve been able to dedicate time to learning how to navigate the music industry and diversify my income since streaming doesn’t pay as much. Even if you were to have around a million streams a month, that still wouldn’t guarantee a stable income, especially if you’re splitting that payment with your team. I’ve also learned and have financially been able to work with other people and launch my newsletter, where I share my journey into the industry. Part of the reason I got the job at Attitude Is Everything is because of my work with my Youth Music Fund, which helped me with community building, and now I’m managing AIE’s disabled artists network. On top of that, the Arts Council Funding is the largest investment I’ve received so far, and I said earlier the process was incredibly long.
Osob: Congratulations, it’s a very hard grant to receive, and the process is lengthy, as you’ve said.
Hillary: Thank you! What helped a lot was that The Arts Council gave me an access support worker who helped me with the process, so I was able to get help with the writing part of it. I would basically brain dump and flesh out ideas with my support worker, and they’d write them out for me. It was a reflective thing because it made me think about what I wanted to do right now. I’ve done the corporate thing because it’s more financially viable.
Osob: Honestly, you have to find a way to pay your bills at the end of the day. London is such a hard city to live in if you don't have any financial backing to be creative of any sort.
Hillary: Yeah, and it shaped what I wanted to study and do after uni and didn’t give me enough to figure myself out as an artist. The NGF helped me cover singing lessons, but having this real dedicated time and support from The Arts Council to sit down and think about the pathways you can go through if you didn’t go to the Brits School, for example, was so needed. It also let me take lessons such as singing, vocal production, bass, guitar and studio time.
Osob: Basically, The Arts Council funding has allowed you to basically enhance your artistry.
Hillary: Yeah!
Osob: How long did the process take?
Hillary: We wrote the application within a week, but I had a lot of time to work on it due to my freelancing. If you aren’t, give yourself a month and a half to complete it because you need to be precise about what you want. For example, you must note how much time you spend doing activities related to your craft. References are also a crucial part of the application process. You need them to talk about your craft in a way that will benefit you. Before I got the fund, I scenario planned financially to see what I could afford without the fund. This helped me to know what my limits were and how I could get to my end goal.
Osob: That would be helpful for our readers as I don't think a lot of people know that singers and individuals can apply for it. They assume you must have an organisation or arts charity, but also, what do you do as a freelancer?
Hillary: I worked for South London Gallery and UAL’s Making Sense project for the past year. It’s about using arts education to explore racism and inclusion. I was working with young people in areas of fashion, tech and art, and like, we created a piece that was showcased at the South London Gallery, and that was quite fun. I taught them about data ethics and creative coding as well. Then like most recently, I was building a CRM for a community project focusing on how data is distributed in the black community across the UK.
Osob: You’ve done quite a lot, and it’s all tied back to your core skill of community building which ties back to your song. What does community mean to you?
Hillary: Community management is very neo-liberal. It can come across as you are socialising people towards a shared collective goal. Community shouldn’t be rooted in productivity.
Osob: I mean in your personal life.
Hillary: Community in my personal life is a spiritual place. It’s a place where spirits come together and feel free. In bell hook’s definition of love, she mentions six elements that make up the word: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. Community cannot exist without love, and there needs to be vulnerability and shared resources for that to happen.
Osob: To end us off, who’s your dream collaboration?
Hillary: Robert Glasper. The reason is that his black radio projects are so phenomenal it’s disgusting. Do you know when something is so good it disgusts you? Not necessarily in an envious way, but as in, wow, you set the bar! One of the things I love about his projects is how cohesive he is and how he reflects the collaborator. For example, on [his album] Black Radio III, he has a song with Esperanza Spalding, who is bilingual (she speaks English and French), and the song is about language and how we communicate with one another as well as climate, it’s just amazing work.
Hillary’s favourite songs
