Sabrina Claudio
I'm still learning about myself, my body and my mind, but I'm not afraid to tell my story.Collection: Learning
Rain symbolizes darkness but also represents an essential part of rebirth.
By letting go of my fears and concerns, I've gained so much happiness and freedom. With that freedom I've also gained confidence.
Holding The Gun' symbolizes loyalty and an everlasting type of love.
The main part of living in Miami is that you have to learn how to dance salsa.
I love the type of music that comes out of Miami, but it's not the artist that I want to be.
I work on my own music every day. I'm pretty much always working on it so it's like, after I get out the studio, I just want silence.
Flowers are just a natural thing in my life. I gravitate towards them so much, just in every video that I do, every visual, for some reason, flowers are incorporated.
I'm not a bug person, but something about butterflies I can handle because they're kind of cute.
I'm not a fashion person, but I would describe my style as very neutral. I love a good silk slip.
When I first started writing, when I was 15, I would go to work with people and they would tell me my lyrics were too mature for my age!
I've always had a maturity within my writing.
I'm growing as a woman and I'm able to write about things that I wanted to write about when I was younger.
I'm really happy doing normal things.
There's such a stigma against females and them speaking their mind and them being confident and stubborn that it's almost like it becomes a fear that we don't want anybody to think of us in a specific way.
I get most of my influences from specific genres. I listen to a lot of R&B music, obviously. But, jazz, and bossa nova music, too.
On 'About Time' there were about three times I had a co-writer with me. The rest of them was me, I wrote them myself.
I think that R&B is something that people need to hear.
When it comes to creation, I am open. However, I am extremely picky when it comes to who I create with.
What am I afraid of as an artist? I guess I was scared before of just not being heard. But I'm too loud now.
I wrote 'Truth Is' with Julia Michaels during our first time working together. The song is about emotions we often think of but are afraid to voice - the feelings we try to convince ourselves we don't actually feel.
Those two words, 'Truth Is,' symbolize everything this album is about.
I do write my own stuff.
The only time I write with someone else is with one of my friends but I write everything myself.
I'm Cuban and Puerto Rican and Miami is very Cuban oriented. Growing up around the music - all of the salsa and meringue influenced me as an artist. I find myself gravitating to latin influences, sounds.
Before moving to L.A., I was working with a lot of people who were manipulating me, where they either wanted to put things out immediately or didn't - I was on everybody else's time frame. But once I was on my own, I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to do this right and take my time, and I'll put things out only when I'm ready.'
Everything is tough when you're just starting out in this industry, because there's a lot of shady people out there. So finding the right people is the toughest thing.
I started making original music during my YouTube process. And as a young female, dealing with a lot of male producers who were older and had more so-called experience, they would discourage me, telling me that what I was doing - and even my vision - was never going to work. And that lasted quite a long time.
There was a lot of disappointment and rejection that came really early in my life, until I had to change my mindset and become even stronger.
Becoming an artist and finding my way, I did kind of veer off into different genres and none of them ever fit.
I did 'Oh Holy Night,' which is one that I grew up listening to because I was in choir in high school and we would do Christmas concerts and competitions every year.
There's such a theme when it comes to Christmas, and we're so used to hearing that theme over and over in different ways with the classic Christmas songs.
I'm not the happiest when it comes to my music.
Everything that I do, it just has the sultry vibe behind it.
I'm an extremely introverted and isolated writer, but I was starting to feel exhausted and as if my writing was becoming redundant. As much as it was a silly fear of mine, I began opening myself up to other writers and it was the best decision I could've made for my art.
The visual for 'Holding The Gun' is a love story. It's about a ride or die and unapologetic type of love and a kind of loyalty that only comes once in a lifetime.
I'm usually most inspired when I finish performing and traveling.
I feel like L.A. is my actual home.
I went through a gothic phase at one point. All black: black lipstick, purple lipstick. It was very weird, and then I went through a phase where I wore shoes with no less than a three-inch platform.
Going from Miami to L.A., it's such a different scene. In L.A., it's always dressing to impress. Miami is not, unless you go to South Beach.
No Rain, No Flowers' is an inside look into my journey of healing and growth.
I like to put people in their feelings.