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Saweetie Reflects On The Early Days Of Her Career After Facing Difficulties: ‘I Miss College Saweetie’
As the saying goes, “the grass isn’t always greener,” which is something Saweetie is finding out now as she continues to reach new heights in her career. The Bay Area rapper recently announced her partnership with Champion as a global cultural consultant and she is nominated for her first Grammy for her hit song “Best Friend” featuring Doja Cat.
But she wants fans to know that the life of an entertainer is not as glamorous as everyone thinks. Saweetie talked openly about challenges she’s faced and more on the PEOPLE Every Day podcast. “I just feel like as artists, you know, we have it tough. I feel like we have all the spotlight on us and people think that it's glamorous when in all actuality there are a lot of difficult things that happen behind the scenes,” she said.
She continued, “Hopefully you have a great team. Hopefully, the creatives that you're working with, aren't overcharging you ... It's like everyone who's around: You have to pay for this. You have to pay [for that] …”
It appears that the Grammy-nominated artist does have a great team behind her. She’s been able to secure several brand deals from MAC to Crocs and even hosted a show on Netflix. And she arguably has some of the best content on social media, but even with all the creative projects she has been a part of, she admitted that it doesn’t feel as authentic as it did when she was first trying her hand at a rap career.
“I miss college Saweetie, and me meeting other creatives,” she said. “I just wanted to make something else. Now everyone wants to charge for every second and it kind of just takes the art out of it.”
Reflecting on college Saweetie, she shared advice that she would give her knowing what she knows now.
“Take your time. And don't [jump] at the first opportunity," she said. “I felt like those tough lessons definitely made me a wiser woman, but I think I would've just taken my time ... Who [you] surround yourself really, really affects the trajectory of your career.”
As of late, Saweetie has been vocal about her struggles with mental health and being overworked. In December, she cut off all of her hair as a way to “start fresh” and she even began meditating and praising its positive effects. In a February 2022 interview with Power 106, she explained, "I wanted to start over and I did research about hair and hair holds a lot of energy. And I really wanted to just feel new and fresh with this new music. I won’t say new me. But elevated me. I really just wanted to start over again."
Here are other things the rapper has said about mental health and how she is navigating it all.
On Being Overworked and Finding Balance
"It's like I live, sleep, eat and breathe music and business. My team is really small, so I have to take on responsibilities that eventually somebody else will, but because my team is small, I have to help them out."
"It's just trying to find balance right now. I have no balance. Everything is just work, work, work and I don't have an outlet. I don't have a therapist. I don't hang out with any of my friends because I work so much, so it's just trying to thug it out into until the New Year."
"Balance needs to happen. I feel like I'm being run down to the ground right now and my body doesn't feel good. I've had mental breakdowns and it's just really stressful, but it's nice to be acknowledged because it lets me know that my hard work isn't going unnoticed," she said via PEOPLE.
On Meditating
"I'm just saying the peace you get, the clarity you get, it's really important for everyone to meditate. And I think the reason why I was so discouraged at first, I--- because I'm thinking that you have to be in a cream[-colored] room, like yoga-ish. But I meditate everywhere," she said via PEOPLE.
On What Self-Love Looks Like to Her
“Self-love is being conscious of self and making sure that you’re taking care of yourself. It’s almost as if it’s a high maintenance requirement to take care of yourself spiritually, physically, mentally. It’s about being conscious of all of the things that you intake, think and say. When you love yourself, you don’t want to pollute your mind, body, soul, and spirit and you protect yourself from the things that pollute the important things," she said via LADYGUNN.
On Her Definition of the "Elevated Saweetie"
“She meditates, she’s centered, she has clarity, she knows what she wants, she puts her foot down. I feel like before I discovered meditation, everything was, ‘Yes yes yes, I’ll do it.’
"No matter how bad my body felt, if the opportunity was great, I just said yes and I kept running down my mental, my spiritual, my physical. But how am I gonna continue to work if I’m depleted?" she continued via Power 106.
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This Black Woman-Owned Creative Agency Shows Us The Art Of Rebranding
Rebranding is an intricate process and very important to the success of businesses that want to change. However, before a business owner makes this decision, they should determine whether it's a rebrand or an evolution.
That's where people like Lola Adewuya come in. Lola is the founder and CEO of The Brand Doula, a brand development studio with a multidisciplinary approach to branding, social media, marketing, and design.
While an evolution is a natural progression that happens as businesses grow, a rebrand is a total change. Lola tells xoNecole, "A total rebrand is necessary when a business’s current reputation/what it’s known for is at odds with the business’s vision or direction.
"For example, if you’ve fundamentally changed what your product is and does, it’s likely that your brand is out of alignment with the business. Or, if you find your company is developing a reputation that doesn’t serve it, it might be time to pump the brakes and figure out what needs to change.
She continues, "Sometimes you’ll see companies (especially startups) announce a name change that comes with updated messaging, visuals, etc. That usually means their vision has changed or expanded, and their previous branding was too narrow/couldn’t encompass everything they planned to do."
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The Brand Doula was born in 2019, and its focus is on putting "the experiences, goals, and needs of women of color founders first," as well as brands with "culture-shifting missions."
According to Lola, culture-shifting is "the act of influencing dominant behavior, beliefs, or experiences in a community or group (ideally, for the better)."
"At The Brand Doula, we work with companies and leaders that set out to challenge the status quo in their industries and communities. They’re here to make an impact that sends ripples across the market," she says.
"We help the problem solvers of the world — the ones who aren't satisfied with 'this is how it's always been' and instead ask 'how could this be better?' Our clients build for impact, reimagining tools, systems, and ways of living to move cultures forward."
The Brand Doula has worked with many brands, including Too Collective, to assist with their collaboration with Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty and Balanced Black Girl for a "refresh," aka rebrand. For businesses looking to rebrand, Lola shares four essential steps.
1. Do an audit of your current brand experience — what’s still relevant and what needs to change? Reflect on why you’re doing the rebrand in the first place and what success would look like after relaunching.
2. Tackle the overall strategy first — before you start redesigning logos and websites, align on a new vision for your brand. How do you want your company to be positioned moving forward? Has your audience changed at all? Will your company have a fresh personality and voice?
3. Bring your audience along the journey — there’s no need to move in secret. Inviting your current audience into the journey can actually help them feel more connected to and invested in your story, enough to stick around as changes are being made.
4. Keep business moving — one of my biggest pet peeves is when companies take down their websites as soon as they have the idea to rebrand, then have a Coming Soon page up for months! You lose a lot of momentum and interest by doing that. If you’re still in business and generating income, continue to operate while you work on your rebrand behind the scenes. You don’t want to cut existing customers off out of the blue, and you also don’t want so much downtime that folks forget your business exists or start looking for other solutions.
While determining whether the rebrand was successful may take a few months, Lola says a clear sign that it is unsuccessful is negative feedback from your target audience. "Customers are typically more vocal about what they don’t like more than what they do like," she says.
But some good signs to look out for are improvements in engagement with your marketing, positive reviews, press and increase in retention, and overall feeling aligned with the new branding.
For more information about Lola and The Brand Doula, visit her website, thebranddoula.com.
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Earlier this year, while having a conversation with a couple of women about, well, a lot of things, when it came to the topic of traditionalism in relationships, one of them said, “I hate submission in all forms” to which I replied, “Unless a man does what you say, right?” to which she paused — and then shrugged and laughed.
It’s what I said next that tripped her right on out, though: “I guess that means that you hate the missionary position too because, I mean, lying on your back and opening up your legs in order for a man to enter inside of you? Not sure it gets much more vulnerable than that.” Her response? “Well damn. Touché.”
Ain’t it though? And here’s the thing, if you’ve ever wondered what the origin story of the classic missionary position is, according to some long-standing lore, it’s not too far off from what I said. That’s why, if you keep reading, I’ll attempt to fully explain what I mean when I say that, along with why, no matter what you think about where the name of the position actually came from, the missionary continues to be a supreme sexual go-to…for oh so many super valid different reasons.
If the Position Sounds Like What You Think, There’s a Reason for That
Back when I toured with an organization that got people out of porn and sex addiction, they put out a documentary about them called Missionary Position. Because it was a Christian-based group, it was definitely meant to be a pun.
I say this because, according to urban legend, the missionary position came from Christian missionaries who believed that getting into that position was the “proper” way to have sex. Is there Scripture to support this? No.
At the same time, though, because there are Scriptures that speak to sex being designed for marriage (I Corinthians 6) and husbands needing to lead their wives as their wife submits to her husband (Colossians 3:18, Ephesians 5:22, Titus 2:5) — many conservative biblical thinkers believe that the position complements, if not straight-up amplifies, all of this.
Personally, while none of what I just shared sounds totally outlandish, I must admit that I definitely would like to see a chapter and verse that confirms any of this (as far as the missionary position goes) to be true. I tend to check out Scripture a lot and…I haven’t seen it yet. Just sayin’.
Then There’s Another Theory…
Okay, but what about the people who don’t have Christian and/or conservative sexual views? Many of them also partake of the good ole’ fashioned missionary position, so…where do they think that the term comes from? Good question. From what I’ve read and researched, outside of a Scriptural realm, many consider missionary to be a type of “vanilla sex.” I evenread one article that said it’s for couples who are either so in love that they want to look at each other in the eyes all of the time (yeah, bookmark that) or are too lazy to try anything else (hmm…).
On a more scientific tip, theKinsey Institute has its own perspective. Although Alfred (Kinsey) did acknowledge that the tale of Indigenous people learning about the missionary position came from actual missionaries, once the sexual revolution began to pick up steam, many found the story to be ludicrous at best. Not only that but another semi-popular spin is that the Indigenous people of a certain time were not learning about sex from white missionaries via the missionary position; by using the term, they were actually mocking them for thinking that was the best way to have sex.
Some even "despise[d] the European position and consider[ed] it unpractical and improper." Some natives also believed that anyone who felt like sex should be that way, actually didn’t know how to have “effective intercourse.”
Listen, I’ll say this: whether you believe that the missionary position actually came from missionaries or that the term was an inside joke amongst the individuals who the missionaries called themselves trying to minister to — I think that if there are two things that we all can agree on, it’s that 1) the missionary position is definitely an all-time classic and 2) it’s not going anywhere any time soon.
And honestly, since one definition of a missionary is simply “someone who is on a mission”…no matter which theory floats your boat, what possibly could be wrong with that? Besides, I’ve got some pretty solid reasons for why the missionary position deserves its flowers…regardless.
5 Solid Reasons Why the Missionary Position Reigns Supreme. STILL.
Again, whether you like the name or not — shoot, whether it’s your immediate go-to position or not, take a moment to read why you definitely shouldn’t rule the missionary position out or simply chalk it up to some…vanilla sex (geeze).
1. Yes, eye contact is important. Positions that don’t call for eye contact have their benefits (doggy style comes to mind). However, don’t sleep on the fact that eye contact helps you to deeply connect with your partner, puts you in a better mood, increases arousal, and helps you to trust your partner more. If you take all of this into account, if you want to experience a deeply passionate sexual experience, why wouldn’t you choose a sexual position that has eye contact involved?
2. You can get maximum skin contact. When two people are fully naked and engaged in sexual activity, yes, they are going to experience plenty of skin-to-skin contact. That said, when someone is literally lying on top of someone else, it doesn’t physically get much closer than that —and the more that happens, the safer and less stressed you feel. Plus, that makes it easier for your oxytocin levels to surge which causes you to bond with your partner all the more.
3. It hits all spots. This point, I mean quite literally (andy’all can argue with science if you disagree). When it comes to making it easier to stimulate a woman’s clitoris and hit her G-spot which increases her chances of climaxing, the missionary position earns first place (especially if you have a pillow underneath your butt). Although the positioning itself plays a huge role, I’d venture to say that the other stuff that we already touched on helps with this too. Anyway, how cana position that gives more orgasms than other ones be considered “boring”? How indeed, y’all?
4. The variations are virtually endless. I think something that should go on record — not just when it comes to the missionary position but all sexual ones — is there are tweaks and “upgrades” that you can give to them all. For instance, shout out to Men’s Health for their article, “18 Missionary Sex Positions That Put a Fun Spin on the Classic Move.” It contains illustrations ‘n all of some real winners. Take a look. Prove me wrong.
5. C’mon, it’s comfortable. Uh-huh. Whoever the hater was who said that only lazy people engage in missionary sex, I’m going to swap out “lazy” for comfortable. When you’re tired or parts of your body are sore or not as flexible as you would like, the missionary position can definitely get you what you need without you having to stress yourself out in the process. To me, that doesn’t seem lazy so much as smart.
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Personally, I found the potential origin stories of the missionary position to be interesting. At the same time, it didn’t really influence me one way or another. At the end of the day, I’m always gonna be a fan of it. I mean, after all I just said, it would be silly (and counterproductive) not to be.
So-called vanilla sex or not, chile.
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