ATLANTA, GA – Boi Blue’s latest single “A Long Way” is more than just the title of a song that has fans clamoring for more. It’s also the definition of his journey from rough childhood to budding hip-hop star.
To say that Boi Blue – born Lavar Shareek McRae – had a rough childhood is a bit of an understatement. At age 8 his single mother was answering the door in the middle of the night to police officers asking after his whereabouts in connection with a petty crime. By age 12 he was arrested and spent time in juvenile hall. His years in high school were no better. Looking back on those years, he admits that he was a troubled child who gave his mother an undue amount of grief and was constantly making bad decisions.
“I was a follower,” he said. “I was a young man with no father figure, and my mom didn’t know what to do. She worked all the time so she could take care of me and my sister, and so we rarely saw her during the week. I was babysitting my little sister when I was 8. So I was forced to be a grownup at a real young age, and that meant I was hanging out with older kids and doing things that older people do when I was only a preteen. But while I was in high school I started seeing friends around me going to jail, or dying … just disappearing or getting into trouble. And I knew I had to start smartening up. When you’re at a young age and you see things like that, it makes you sit back and contemplate on what you’re doing with your life. I was too young to be going through stuff like that, and I had to make a change.”
To cope with that turmoil, Boi Blue began to put his emotions onto paper in the form of poetry. Not long after that a friend suggested that he turn his poetry into rap, and thus began the early stages of his music career.
It was about that time the he ran into a young man just a little bit younger than him who would change his life. He was a budding music producer going by the name Xqst (pronounced “exquisite”), and he was getting ready to graduate from college and pursue a career in music. The two hit it off immediately.
“We had a mutual friend who was shooting music videos at the time, and I had traveled down to Columbus, Georgia close to where he was living to see about shooting my first music video,” Boi Blue said. “While I was there I asked my friend about networking my music to bigger and better places. I knew I needed a producer who could elevate my music, but I also wanted somebody who I could work with long-term and build a team that could help me work on the craft. I’m more than a rapper, I’m a professional. I like to think long-term and work on the craft and the style – to make things perfect. My friend introduced me to Xqst and told me he was a band major in college who had just started producing. Right away we got each other, and we worked from the ground up and made each other better.”
The first project they collaborated on was a mixtape called “Blue Heffner.” It was nod to Boi Blue’s origins – including how he got the nickname Blue and how it influences his musical style. He considers himself a storyteller first and foremost – writing about anything and everything and putting in a perspective of what’s happening in the world today. Xqst is the perfect companion in that musical writing journey in that he helps discover the perfect beat and the write instrumentation to connect with the hook and lyrics that Boi Blue comes up with.
Ironically, “A Long Way” actually started as a voice note on Boi Blue’s iPhone. Through a flash of inspiration, he knew he had to record something before he lost the hook and so he whipped out his phone and created a voice note that he then immediately sent to Xqst. It didn’t take long for the two to turn it into an amazing new single. And since its release, fans all over the country have been singing its praises.
Twitter: @IamBoiBlue
