In early 2014, I was making what I thought were hip hop beats in my parents’ basement. One of these instrumentals was an airy, triplet-based record sampling Tennyson’s “No Answer” and Ryan Hemsworth’s “Every Square Inch.” I scrawled out a descending major pentatonic melody on piano, chopped and rearranged samples, tuned the bass to match the detuned synths, and smoothed out the shuffling drums. Yet I still believed the track needed something.

When I signed a record deal at the age of 19, I was prepared to release an album. Several years passed, and my label had approved release of just a handful of songs under my artist name, MELVV, all released as singles. The A\&R who initially signed me left the company, and I was assigned someone new. The head of marketing on my project left for a job in Europe. However, despite the temptation to play the blame game, the vast majority of my struggles were not the fault of any individual on my team, but more so the fault of the corporate infrastructure.