Artist and musician Basi Vibe’s first foray into music began in high school with singing cover songs and uploading them onto YouTube.
Basi Vibe, who would prefer to go by his artist name, said he wouldn’t call it making music at the time because he was trying to sound like John Legend or Musiq Soulchild.
Realizing he wasn’t that good then, he worked hard to perfect his sound and singing voice.
“I just remember spending so much time right after school, coming straight home, and just grinding,” Basi Vibe said. “I was singing songs over and over again, and that was kind of like the beginning of the very early stages of music in my life.”
It wasn’t until his sophomore year of high school that he played an open mic at his school. He said the students went crazy when they heard him sing. From that point on, Basi Vibe said he felt seen, and that’s when he knew music was what he wanted to do.
“That was the first time that anybody ever really saw me for real and recognized me,” Basi Vibe said.
At that moment, he wasn’t the artist known as Basi Vibe; that didn’t come until he moved back to Sacramento from college, where he attended Sonoma State University for music.
“I felt like I could create something new. I could be anything I want, like I'm starting fresh, I'm back home,” he said. “But all the people that I'm falling into, all these artists, all these musicians, this whole scene is like a whole fresh canvas for me to do whatever I want and be whoever I want. So I created Basi Vibe."
Basi Vibe is a musician from Sacramento who now resides in Los Angeles. (Photo courtesy of Basi Vibe)
Basi Vibe is a singer-songwriter and producer born in Santa Rosa but grew up in Sacramento. He crafts his artistic production by blending R&B and Neo-Soul with dulcet, jazz-infused chords.
He is streaming on all platforms and has performed numerous live shows in the City of Sacramento, including Harlow’s, Ace of Spades, and Concerts in the Park. He will play at CIP again this year at Cesar Chavez Park.
Basi Vibe also created and hosted a live jam session series called Vibe w/ in 2018. In this series, local musicians play their music at different small venues in Sacramento. The jam sessions in Sacramento ended last year, but he continues to do them in Los Angeles, where he now resides.
According to Basi Vibe, he chose to pursue the genre of Neo-Soul because he was primarily inspired by the artist D’Angelo. He recalls watching D’Angelo’s first televised performance in 12 years during the BET Awards 2012.
“At the time, I remember being so glued to the TV, I might have been sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, honestly,” he said. “I was shook because I was like ‘what am I listening to?’ I don't understand what I'm listening to, but my spirit does, and that is when I was like, I don't know what that is, but it is in me, and I feel that, and I've never felt that way about any other particular music.”
He said that from that moment on, he studied and listened to a lot of D’Angelo, Soulquarins, Eryka Badu, Common, The Roots, and Mos Def’s era of music.
“I really have to chalk it up to all of that, because, for whatever reason, that music calls to me,” Basi Vibe said. “At some point, as I started to write music and become well-versed in songwriting and being able to manipulate noises with the piano or guitar or with my voice, naturally, what came out was Neo-Soul.”
Artist Basi Vibe. (photo courtesy of Basi Vibe)What’s next?
According to Basi Vibe, he now resides in Los Angeles and made that move because he needed to grow. He said there’s only so much growth that can be had as an artist in Sacramento, and he needed somewhere to land that was a little bigger.
“Sacramento is an amazing place to learn how to do what you do, and apply it in seemingly large ways,” he said. “But when you step out of Sacramento and apply those things to out here in other cities, you realize they could be even greater if you had the resources and the space to be able to stretch those wings.”
He said he kind of outgrew the city in a sense, but a lot of amazing things have happened because of his move to Southern California.
“Sacramento is a bubble and for a lot of artists that I really am rooting for, and have had a lot of support for, it's detrimental to their careers to just be in Sacramento and be a big fish in a small pond,” Basi Vibe said. “I knew that the lifestyle that I had said yes to is the lifestyle of the artist who loves to create, push themselves, and search. I just wanted to search and grow, and I could not do that any more than I had already done in Sacramento.”
Basi Vibe said one of his goals for the future is to continue his jam session Vibe w/ and bring it to more cities across the nation. He said the one he hosts in Los Angeles is everything that it was in Sacramento, but 10 times more.
“I really like the Vibe w/ concept of the building of community,” he said. “I would like to be able to bring that to different cities, and let those be able to move separately as entities in those cities. That's also actually a pretty big goal of mine right now.”
He said he would also love to tour the festival circuit nationally and internationally. Basi Vibe would also love to perform at Madison Square Garden in New York.
One piece of advice Basi Vibe would give to new artists who would like to pursue music is to be authentic.
“First of all, have a message to bring, something to offer,” he said. “And if you stick to that, that's your mission, that's your purpose. When you move in your mission and in your purpose and in your message, everything aligns all the things.”
On May 16, Basi Vibe will return to Sacramento to play at the city’s free live festival Concerts in the Park. The last time he played at CIP was in 2015 when he released his Extended Play Somnus.
He said he’s honored to play at CIP again this year because he hasn’t lived in Sacramento for almost four years.
“Everywhere I go, not just in Los Angeles, but any city or state, anywhere, I am Basi Vibe, and I'm from Sacramento, California,”he said. “It is an honor to be a part of the lineup again, and I think Aaron Le and Yoni are also rocking the stage with me that day, so it'll be cool.”
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