Lee Vasi
Appearances
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
i like wavered and just it's a it's ever evolving yeah and i wish people understood that you know because it's not perfect he doesn't expect us to be perfect exactly yeah he has grace for it yeah right he has expectations of us as his children like he doesn't want us to live righteously but i think that as i've come to know the lord for myself more it's like he wants us to live righteously because he loves us so much and is trying to protect us from all of these things you know
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Like, that we think, like how I used to, like, this is where my liberation is. No, that's your bondage, baby girl.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And he gives us these, you know, these commandments, right? Not to restrict us, but to protect us and to prepare us for when he comes back, right?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
But I feel you. I've been there, like, literally with sex, also with alcohol.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Well, so for me, like I was, I was using alcohol as a crutch and I was using it as, as a number, you know? And I think also just kind of, you know, I was introduced to alcohol like when I went to college and it was, it was, it was binge drinking. Like, right. It wasn't just like a cute little glass of wine here and there.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And the Bible is really specific about like, Drunkenness.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Right. And the regret and the shame. Like God don't want us to live like that. He wants us to be like comfy and have a good day and not think about what we did last night. You know? And so I experienced conviction with that.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Um, and it's God's grace because, uh, so what, what God actually did, cause he knows me and I'm still, I still got to work on being a little stubborn, but so God put me on a TV fast. Hmm. in 2023. He was like, and we had gone to church and the pastor was like, ask the Lord to reveal to you like things that you're keeping in your life that are keeping you from what he has for you.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And this was right before I started to release my Christian R&B.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
and i asked the lord you know what that thing was for me and he told me tv like you watching too much tv stop watching tv for 21 days right only consume like christian podcasts or christian content yeah and so um so i stopped i stopped watching the tv and started watching christian podcasts and i'm watching christian podcasts and i would get my you know drink watch these christian podcasts
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Right. But because God knows how to talk to me, right? It's like, because I had taken all the distraction out from all these other sources and I was only taking in content that was reminding me of Him, naturally, my spirit started to be convicted, right?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And naturally after 21 days, like that habit started to become a thing that I recognized was keeping me from him, right? And it's a personal conviction thing, right? For everybody has to go on their journey with it. But so I stopped drinking alcohol in September of 2023. I'm proud of you. And I watched my life change.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And the biggest thing of it for me has been just focus, right? Like God knew, and it's so funny because the pastor's question was about like, what is there that's keeping you from what God has for you, right? I didn't know what God had for me on the other side of that obedience, but I just did it. And I watched, I was like, oh!
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so now, you know, and I did wonder, like, I was like, okay, how am I going to? you know, like who am I without drinking, right? Because I started to become a young adult and be the version of myself that I knew, like drinking, right? I was like, so who am I if I don't drink? Can I still go out? Can I, you know, go to events or, you know?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And I really did have a season where it was just really quiet in my life and it was really just like going home, doing my work and talking to God, you know, and didn't feel like I could have the self-control or the discernment, you know, to keep up what God had called me to. And so, but now I can, right?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Like now it's not a temptation for me, you know, and it is something that I'm seeing like what it means to grow in the fruits of the Spirit. because I'm like, oh wow, I'm actually not tempted in this space, in a place where I thought I had to become a shell of myself or a hermit.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Exactly, exactly. Girl, I'll go get a good mocktail. I love me a good mocktail. I love a little zesty mocktail, you know? And you can still go live your life and have fun and just represent him wherever you go.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
come on ding ding ding i was literally gonna say that i was like because you who you are in him is the real you yes right yeah and we think that when we go to him that we're gonna well okay yeah we do lose ourselves but we're supposed to right because it's like the self that you're losing is not you no it's not you and he wants so much more for you on the other side and walking with him you know i love that for you thank you
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah. So it was a process. So I had quit music. I moved back to North Carolina. I like waved the white flag. I was like, OK, well, I was wrong because I can't. I had no peace. And I was like, I guess all the visions that I saw that God showed me from my life, me on stage and, you know, different things that I would see come to pass. I was like, OK, I guess I read all of it wrong.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so I went back to North Carolina. I got my real estate license. Like I like gave up.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And I was like, OK, God, like I would pray to him like, I want to know you like reveal yourself to me because something's not clicking. I didn't I still didn't know like who God was for myself. I had only heard what people had told me about him. You know, I had the Bible. So I would like go back and read the Bible sometimes when I was like, you know. in the lowest places.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
But I was like, I still don't feel like I've ever seen your face. I've never, I don't know who you are. And so that was my prayer for about like an eight month period. And I was just, you know, I would go and I would watch sermons and you know, music was nowhere in my mind. I was like, okay, that's a thing of my, passed.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so I ended up getting an opportunity to move back to Atlanta about a year later and I was weeping just tears of joy the night before I was moving back because I love Atlanta and I always wanted to get back here and it really does feel like home for me but I didn't know how it was going to and how I was gonna get back here.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so the night before I moved back, I was just praising God for all he'd done for me, all he'd healed me from, walked me through, and the fact that he had revealed himself to me. And I feel like, okay, now I know who you are. And I was like, okay, God, when I go back, like, what do you have for me? And this was the first time that I ever felt redirected by the Holy Spirit in prayer.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And the Holy Spirit redirected me to ask the question, God, what do you need from me? whoo when i go back what do you need from and i it was like a movie the way that i then heard the voice of god speak to me and i'm here because it was right here on my left side that i like felt and heard the voice of god say music And I trembled because I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay. I just heard God.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Like, that was God. Like, I know that was God. And he, like you said, music, like, I don't, how, you know? I didn't understand what that meant to do music for him, you know, and to, you know, still stay walking in the new life that I had, you know? Because Yeah, I just didn't know that Christian R&B was an option.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
When I moved back to Atlanta, probably two weeks later, I reconnected with my manager who we had met in 2019 when I was kind of hustling out here as a songwriter and trying to figure out the secular space. And he now was working in the Christian hip hop space and invited me to some events out here in Atlanta.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, man, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so the first events I went to in Atlanta were, in this round of my time here, were Christian hip hop events. And my mind was blown. I was like, oh, like completely. So everybody's sober. You know, this is hip hop music. You know, and we're just turning up in Jesus name. It blew my mind.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And and so like with that exposure, I was like, oh, now it's clicking.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so I was like, okay, God, I see you. And so then I got curious about all the different things that are happening in the Christian space, right? There's obviously Christian hip hop, Christian R&B, Christian reggaeton, Afro beats Christian. Like there's all these different genres that I had never been exposed to prior to that.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so I heard him, but I was like, okay, like, I don't really, I still, I was scared. I was scared to get back into music. I was like traumatized. I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You know, I hadn't written music. music in two years. I hadn't listened to music. I wasn't even listening to music during this time of my life. I was quiet. It was just quiet.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so then I ended up actually getting a health scare in May of that year that really made me like think about death in a way that I had never had to before. And I was like, if I don't make it through whatever this is, I had to go to God and answer why I didn't do what he told me to do. He told me to do music. you know? And so I ended up just going on YouTube, finding some YouTube beats.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Cause also my manager was like, you know, you have to create new memories around your gift, right? Like this fear you have of it, this, you know, your gift right now is in kind of this thicket of like, you know, it's in kind of like a clouded forest and you have to just break out of it and give new memories to your gift. So go on YouTube. I know how to, how to record myself. And he was like,
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
on YouTube, get you some beats and record yourself, write you some songs and figure out that you don't you can you can just do it. You don't you don't need anybody to co-sign or you can just do it. So I did that. And I, you know, I was kind of finding my songs with God.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
I was like, I don't know what my new voice is as a writer, as an artist. and I just kind of started pouring my heart out to God, and that became my EP, From Me to God, because I didn't have an audience at the time. I was in my little cocoon, and then in September of that year, I released My Bad, and the rest is kind of history, but it was a really organic kind of flow with God.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, yup, yup. I'm a huge J. Cole fan. Definitely was hometown hero growing up. But yeah, originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina, but also kind of spent a lot of time in New York as a kid, chasing my dreams and doing things. But yeah, I'm from Fayetteville.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
It's not like I set out to do Christian R&B, I was just setting out to be obedient. And I ended up in this space, and it's a really cool place to be.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, so definitely I wanted I want to do all of it like I want to I want to act I want to write I want to produce I want to do all of the things I want to you know, I want to do Broadway again. I want to you know, I There was a time when I thought that I had to give up everything I was wrong about everything and now I'm in a place where I'm like, oh
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Now I just have to do everything huge for your glory. That's it. You know?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
So I want to go do all of it. I think roles. So I have some ideas of roles that I would like to create. OK, come on. I like that. But yeah, I mean, I think that I would just love to. I'm really big on representations of liberation.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
and what it looks like to be a modern, liberated woman and walking with God in that. And so I think any roles that align with that, that's where I would like to be.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah. So I obviously have new music coming out. Yes. I have a lot of new music coming out this year. I really feel like I'm making the music that sounds like my soul and how I really have always heard myself.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
So I'm excited to release more music and some some some creative business. Okay.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
adventures as well and definitely more live shows I'm gonna you know hopefully be able to go out and you know do some touring this year too and really just just be with the people I really love performing you know I was a theater kid so I love to be in person and you know social media has been so great to be able to connect with people from everywhere isn't it crazy the reach that you have in social media
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Come on. Jesus. Jesus. If I had to say, can I say a church boy with street edge?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
I was nine. I was nine when I booked it, and I did it until I was 11.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Oh, these are really good questions. These are tough. I know. Because I really love my natural hair. Okay, right now I'm going to have to say bundles because I'm in my boho era.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
It was my first professional role, but I was definitely theater kid growing up. I started performing with my siblings actually at the local theater when I was seven. And my brother actually used to get me ready for auditions. And he actually found the Lion King audition and I ended up booking it off an open call. I didn't have an agent or anything at that time.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Okay, Psalm 94, 19, when anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Thank you. I'm so proud of you. I just want to touch and greet. I'm so proud of you. And the vulnerability that you just like so freely share with people with your journey matters. It's important. Don't let nobody condemn you. You're doing the Lord's work. Thank you. And that's all that matters. And I'm so proud of you.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so, yeah, pretty quickly it turned into, you know, my career and what I was pursuing, so.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Because it's also very intricate, makeup and hair. Like, they attach a thing to your hair. Like, it's this whole thing for young Nala. So I did have a great makeup and hair team and dressers and everything. So, you know, I love the production of theater. I love, you know, the pace of it. And you have to be on. It's live. It's, you know, eight shows a week.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, well so I think something that I really love about theater is the preparation that's required because you're doing the same show.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
every night right and so you get to a point where it's kind of in your muscle memory obviously you have to improv and you know there's different things that come up every night you know maybe a technical difficulty or what have you but it really just kind of lives in your in your body at a certain point and so for me especially as a kid it really wasn't pressure because I just felt so prepared and I loved it you know I was really just having so much fun
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
So actually the first technical difficulty I had was not in The Lion King. It was in my first show. I did The Wizard of Oz. Wow, girl.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, yeah. In my local theater. So that was my first show. And I was a munchkin. And, you know, we were wearing these huge, you know, munchkin land shoes. And one of mine came off in the middle of us, like, in a ring around the Rosie situation. And my sister was also in the show with me, and my sister kind of just kicked the shoe off, offstage.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so, and I was just so happy to have my sister there for me in that moment, because that was my first time. I was seven. I didn't know what to do. But, you know, you keep going.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
So yeah, so that definitely was like a core memory for me to just keep swimming. You know what I'm saying? Just keep going.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
I kind of like never stopped. I just shifted my focus. So when I was in the Lion King, I became interested in songwriting. Okay. And I was like a huge like music nerd since before I can remember. And so I used to watch all the MTV, VH1, like behind the, you know, music, like those kinds of episodes. And I'm a huge Mariah Carey fan. I was really big on Neo growing up too. And
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
i was like okay they're songwriters so i need to learn how to write songs um and so i asked for a guitar for my 10th birthday oh and i got one and i started writing songs on my guitar when i was 10 and so that kind of opened the door for me uh really just thinking about music is what i wanted to pursue um because before uh you know i was really young so you know the world was kind of my oyster and i was like i could do
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
theater I can do movies and you know music I wanted to do all of it and still do you know but I really started focusing on music when I was 16 and I was like okay this is this is the one thing I'm gonna focus on for now before I branch out you know yeah yeah yeah it's dope you talked about how once you got a little older you took a hiatus from everything what prompted that shift to be like I need to take a beat
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Life just started lifin', and I didn't know how to manage it, right? And I think that because I was so young and in this constant pursuit, right, of my goals and of these visions that God had really shown me about what my life would look like, you know, I got kind of lost in that at a point. And, you know, God didn't show me all the mess that was happening between. Right.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And so, you know, I was at a really tough place with my mental health. I kind of was ending up in toxic relationship after toxic relationship. You know, things got tough in my career and I just didn't really know what was next. I just felt like I was kind of on this downward spiral that I couldn't see the end of how to stop it, you know? And so I had to like make a decision to take a beat.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And it was tough to kind of come to that place of like, you know what? This isn't working out. But God used it, you know? And so, yeah, there was just kind of like a whirlwind of just mess.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Sure, yeah. So it was really just a combination of Honestly, like being naive. Yeah, right. I was young, really. Like when I was when I went to college is when everything kind of just fell apart.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
So, you know, and and I think that I also in the midst of all of these things, you know, happening in my family life, like things, you know, that were really traumatic happening in my family and then me, you know, falling in love for the first time in my life and maybe falling in love with the really wrong people to fall in love with.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
You know, I was just, I didn't have the tools spiritually to like understand that what I was going through was spiritual warfare and I needed help with it. And I was at an age where I thought I knew everything and nobody could tell me nothing.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Girl. I was like, girl, I got it. Like, don't. Uh-huh. And so, yeah, so there were some tragedies that happened in my family that I kind of leaned into partying to try to figure out how to cope with.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
And then that, you know, world that I was in led to some really toxic and abusive relationships. And it just became a cycle. And it started to kind of normalize in my life. And I was like, okay, like this is just being grown, you know? And, you know, I kind of accepted that as truth until I just couldn't accept it anymore, you know?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah. Yeah. So my parents definitely gave me that foundation. We weren't, I wasn't a church girl, you know, like we would kind of be in and out of church at different times growing up. But when I was 14, I did do the altar call at a Bible study and I gave my life to Christ, but I did it kind of out of fear because I didn't want to go to hell.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
I'm not built for that no more. I gotta get back at there. You know what I'm saying?
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
you know I didn't do it because I really like understood who Jesus is or like even maybe at that point even really cared to know who Jesus is but I just didn't want to go to hell and so I was like okay I'm gonna do this altar call I'm gonna be saved and and that's cool but I you know then went into high school and went into college and wavered you know and as a kid I wouldn't say I
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
I wouldn't say that anything kept me restricted but me. I was so focused as a kid. Yeah. And so rigid towards myself.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Had a lot of negative self-talk because I was so just goal-oriented. And I didn't party in high school. I didn't have a huge social circle. Like, I was just at the house. I would go to school and go home and song write, and that was it, you know? And so I think for me, then when I got to college, I was like, okay, well, I did the thing. Like, you know, I'm back in New York.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
I'm, you know, pursuing what I want to be pursuing, you know, and I went a little, I went wild, you know, and it wasn't because of necessarily a rebellion from the church, but I think I was rebelling against like myself.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, like I was tired of being so structured and I wanted to know what it felt like to just kind of like...
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
You know, and ended up thinking that all of these things that were keeping me free or making me free, I came to realize these are actually bondage, you know? And so I do thank my parents that they gave me the foundation of Jesus, you know, because then a couple of years later when I was like, I need to just completely reset and
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
deconstruct to reconstruct who I ran to was Jesus and at that point that's when I figured out what a relationship with the Lord is and who the Lord is so yeah people often think that a relationship with Jesus is just so cookie cutter and it is far from that it is ever evolving is that like when they say
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a whole production. But it was great though.
Keep it Positive, Sweetie
Your Will w/ Lee Vasi
How was your first experience? You know, it was full of surprises. I had no expectations. But it was great. I got to meet people like you. And it was awesome. I would definitely do it again.