When rapper and singer Bryce Vine wrote some of the material for Problems, his EP that’s being released on August 21, he didn’t realize he was foretelling the future: “Some of [Problems], I wrote during quarantine – and some almost predicted it,” he says, calling from his Los Angeles home. “Like, I wrote the song “It Falls Apart” talking about if everything’s falling apart, we still have each other. It even mentions the bars closing and riots in the street. Very strange.”
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Still, even with the dark times he somehow anticipated, Vine still shows an optimistic streak on Problems, which he says is deliberate. “I wrote the songs for people that need to feel better when things really feel like they’ve gone to shit. People are more depressed than ever, we are more separated than ever. They’re polarized politically and personally.” But, he says, “I try to stay a pretty positive person. I try to capture a feeling. I know my job is to bring people together.”
To that end, even when Vine addresses difficult topics, he still makes sure that his lyrics offer hope and encouragement. He wrote the track “Life Goes On” after basketball player Kobe Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash in January, but “I tried to capture the feeling of loss and struggling through life and not doing it right and sucking it up over and over again – but life goes on,” he says. “It has to: you’re meant to see where the story goes, so that you can tell it.”
Vine hopes that the title track for Problems, in particular, will resonate with listeners during these trying times. “I think it will be a classic song one day,” he says. “It’s not so specific to the quarantine, but it’s about it – about being locked in and looking outside and only seeing the problems in the world because that’s all it’s shown to you and it’s hard to look past it and try to find new ways to better yourself.” Again, however, that song has an optimistic vibe.
Vine has found that he must get himself into a good headspace before he can create this type of song, though. “It’s funny, because songwriting is one of the only professions that is completely dependent on your mood that day to get it done,” he says. “I’ve noticed if I’m doing the right things so far that day, like I’m taking care of my car payment and if I went for a run that morning, then all those things play into where I end up in the writing process.”
As for his specific approach to that process, Vine says, “I’ll usually write with friends – people that I feel really comfortable with. I can get kind of weird in the studio around people that I’m just meeting, because you’re putting yourself out there when you’re showing somebody what you do and how you think.”
Vine is also cautious about who he keeps around him when he’s working because he doesn’t want anyone to make him feel under pressure. “Sometimes I move really slowly,” he says. “It’ll take me a couple of months to finish a song or I’ll do it in one day, depending on my comfort level and where I’m at. I’m very meticulous. It takes me a long time to figure out what the right words are. But when I do, it’s good.”
This songwriting talent became evident early on for Vine: he started making music when he was 13 years old. Even at that young age, he was sure he was on the right path. “That’s all I wanted to do,” he says. This love for music, and the determination to create it himself, came out of what he says was a confusing childhood.
“I was an only child,” Vine says. “I didn’t really have anywhere to put my anxiety and feelings of insecurity. I was a mixed kid in a time where there weren’t a lot of mixed kids, so I kind of fit in with the white kids, and kind of fit in with the black kids, but I wasn’t really into sports and I was more of a nerd and I liked rock music and rap. My parents weren’t together, so I lived in two different households, that played into it. My music comes from being that kid, and having to find an outlet that made him feel better.”
Vine started off playing in a punk band. “That’s how I started performing,” he says. “I loved the energy of punk music and how it made me feel. It got me over my problems at 13, so that helped me a lot. Then I found rap music in the ‘90s with Tupac and Coolio.”
By his late teens, Vine was accomplished enough to get accepted into the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He still sounds gleeful as he recalls that memory: “I found out there was a music college. I was like, ‘You mean I can actually go to school for this?’” While attending Berklee, Vine expanded his repertoire even further, delving further into pop and rap.
After college, Vine released his debut EP, Lazy Fair, in 2014. In 2018, he made his first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the single “Drew Barrymore.” He hit that same chart again last year with the single “La La Land,” off his full-length debut album, Carnival.
Vine believes that he was able to create his own distinctive and successful sound thanks to his history of being open-minded toward all kinds of influences. “There’s got to be a piece of all these different things in your music if you want to create something that hasn’t been made [before],” he says. “Your options are unlimited if you open yourself up to all these different things.”
Even non-musical influences are important, Vine says. “It literally can start from anywhere,” he says. “I saw a comedian on Comedy Central singing and playing guitar, his name is Stephen Lynch. All the songs were beautifully sung, but the lyrics were hilarious – they were dark stories, things that you probably couldn’t even talk about now. But they were so funny, and they made me feel better. I was like, ‘I want to be able to do that! I want to be able to pick up an instrument and write something that has an effect on me and somebody else.’”
Now that he’s become a professional songwriter, Vine still maintains that mindset: “I try to think of it from someone else’s perspective and what it would do for them, how it would make them feel, how it would motivate them. Where they would be and what they’d be doing when they listen to the songs.”
With Problems, Vine hopes that he’ll continue to inspire and entertain people. “I live to put music out,” he says. “I like being the soundtrack for people’s lives – it’s how I bring people together, in my own way.”
