ORLANDO, FL – Before launching a successful music career, Video 4.0 was an athlete, author and professional dancer. In each of those four phases he’s stayed true to his core beliefs – to work hard, be loyal to friends and family, and just have fun.
Today, on the heels of his successful single “Slide Out,” Video 4.0 continues to embody those characteristics as he grows a fan following that started in Florida but which is making its way across the U.S. He’s taking the success and audience from his past endeavors and using it to launch a music career that he hopes will make him one of the best-known artists in the world.
But it all started with humble beginnings at a young age. Like many budding musicians, Video 4.0 was born into a family that loved music. His mother and aunt were heavily involved in their church Gospel choir, and he remembers them singing every day. Others within his family played any variety of instruments and Video found himself constantly surrounded by music.
But he didn’t pursue music like the rest of the family did. His artistic talent instead developed in the form of writing.
“I picked up writing when I was about 11 years old,” Video said. “I used to write down a lot of feelings – usually bad feelings. I wrote so much that it started to become a book. And one day I threw all those bad feelings in the garbage, and it helped me a lot. I just balled them up and threw them in the garbage like I was throwing away my problems. I was throwing them away on paper and it was like I wasn’t having those bad feelings anymore. By ninth grade I started realizing I could actually write music, and that’s how my writing eventually became songs.”
While he was exploring his ability as a writer, Video was also pursuing professional football. Like many sons, Video wanted to live up to his father’s expectations, and throughout high school that meant being the best he could be at football. He became so good, in fact, that he was heavily recruited by Division I and Division II schools. He even went to the Dallas Cowboys training camp one year.
“But that wasn’t my dream,” Video explained. “I was doing it for my father and a lot of my friends, but I wasn’t doing it for me. So I moved on with my life into the dance industry.”
He and his brother joined in a small partnership to later create a small dance company in Florida that almost immediately blew up with success. New Dimensions Studio a.k.a New Dimensions Dance Academy – both of which still exist today and are highly successful – became his world for many years. Dancing led to acting gigs, and allowed Video to travel much of the world. It became the majority of his life and it laid the financial foundation for his pursuit of a music career.
But before he would fully launch into music, Video decided to show the world just how talented he was as an author. His first book, “The Way I Wrote It,” was an inside look into his life – who he was and how he felt about a lot of different things. It was picked up by a publisher and went on to be modestly successful. He soon followed it with a book of poetry called “Original Poetry Through Different Eyes.” It was a compilation of poems inspired by stories from people he’d interviewed – telling him about their various relationships and experiences. A couple of years after that he released the book “Different Shades of Gray,” a collection of poetry and short stories that dives into the deeper and somewhat harsher feelings of his life during that stage of his life.
He still writes today – and is, in fact, working on a fourth book called “Facts to Face,” which will explore the different stages in his life and where he plans to go with his music career. It’s that music career that he considers the fourth phase of his life, and which serves as the inspiration for his stage name Video 4.0.
“The name Video originated when I was in the dance world,” he said. “Everybody wanted me to do things over and over again, like watching a movie video. But when I went into music I wanted an upgrade, and I thought of the four stages of my life and that’s how I came up with 4.0. Now that I’m into a music career, I want to help people remember what it’s like to really have fun. A lot of artists carry the weight of being stuck in one genre of music and not reaching out to other pieces of music. I want to show the world an artist who can have fun with all types of music. I like EDM. I like metal. I like rap, rock and grime. I like to mix it up and have fun. When you listen to Video 4.0, you don’t just get one sound, you get many. You look at every spectrum. When people listen to my music, I don’t want them to just hear one piece or to categorize me into one single area. And mostly it’s about having fun and touching everybody who loves music.”
Twitter: @video4_0
