VSU student Devonte Brown goes by the stage name Vonte Of NeW eRa or Vonte for short. You may have seen him perform at a few MAG events or at the Cypher and remember him by his amazing stage presence and distinct flow! When asked about his unique music styling, he simply stated, “It’s definitely rap but it’s not confined to traditional rap genres like ‘trap’ or ‘conscience’. Genres are convenient boxes for beautiful collections of sounds, and they won’t suffice for my music.”
Vonte wants his music to be felt as an experience rather than just sounds. “The punchlines, the word play, the content, the awkward pauses and running out of breath, the flows, something clever, something deep, something that made you think, a story, something that evoked a powerful emotional response, a contradiction. ” He wants his music to call for reflection as well as it being absorbed by the listener.
His latest release RNLR got amazing feedback! RNLR featured 19 songs and was really an album disguised as a free mixtape. Inspired by the Shakespeare quote, “A rose by any other name will smell as sweet,” Vonte set out to prove that theory wrong. “I wanted to have the content of the mixtape transcend beyond its name to [disprove] Shakespeare’s theory that words are arbitrary, and that I could come from totally left field and still capture an audience.”
He credits music as his outlet and his brother for being one of his inspirations. “My big brother used to be a rapper and he would play classic hip hop albums around the house, and the stories in the music captured my attention and imagination. I had naturally been a writer so hip hop and poetry came as the next logical step, and has become something I love dearly and identify with.”
As far as any new mixtape releases, Vonte says, “They are all secret as of now, because I’m also a secret agent. I probably shouldn’t have told you though.” He did mention he has been working on a few things and will be back, even better! For now, you can still listen to the music he’s already released: https://soundcloud.com/vontebrown