Self Awareness Is Key, Ask Priest Mastersson
Photos provided by Priest Mastersson
By RayJaun Stelly
Born on the military base Fort Lewis, Priest Mastersson understands the level of discipline it takes to be good at anything but as easy as it sounds, was not as smooth as it went. Growing up and dealing with bullying in elementary school and being in the foster care system, Mastersson always was infatuated and connected to music, with that he found his calling when he was gifted hundreds of tapes whether it was Run DMC, Beethoven, or Metallica the list goes on.
”I listened to everything, the beginning of tape decks and I had a tape on at all times, ended up with a family through the foster care system and we went to church, my brother was a drummer and we became the musicians,” said Mastersson. “That was the introduction of music, because the church didn’t have any musicians, and they were like here play something.”
Bouncing in and out of the foster care system, having different families didn’t derail Priest’s love for music in anyway, shape, or fashion. Finding Ro Hill of Clown Car Media helped elevate his career, moving into Hill’s home and always in the studio where Mastersson stayed for two to three years.
Everything was music, music, and more music, already having his instrumentation base following that up by rapping and coming to terms that he could rhyme.
Mastersson expressed, “I realized I was good at rapping, it kept on going and growing, now I produce everything that I do, I’m a one man team right here in house. This is what I do, I’m essentially a lifelong musician and it brings me joy, I’m a great entertainer it brings other people joy, it’s just a win-win. Me not doing this for a living and how I live it would be doing myself a disservice.”
Understanding and accepting the fact that music is calling, whether he’s producing, engineering, and going into the booth to rap. Mastersson is a firm believer that no matter where you come from, what you’ve gone through or done in life, you can always move forward in life.
“The message behind all of it is, you can step out of that life of fear and live in love again, just because you have those elements in you from the past doesn’t mean that you can’t move forward and be great,” said Mastersson. “All of those things may stick with you and whatnot that just builds your character, it makes you a stronger individual for the people your going to need to be there for eventually.”
Balancing when to be serious and to have fun, Priest is in tune with reality and takes tremendous proud of being the person who you hear in these songs. Having a song ‘Being Me’ he alludes to the fact he’s fine with being himself, and not providing a falsehood to appease others.
Staying true to himself and always finding motivation to create, Mastersson thrives when his world is appearing to be crashing down or after taking a loss because he refuses to let the current issue derail him.
“I work my best when everything is messed up or coming back from a loss, because I’ve come back from too many losses for it to be an issue for me,” said Mastersson. “There’s a learning experience in every loss, so I don’t take no loss unless it's a learning experience. If you stop learning at something that you do there’s a chance you’ll stop loving it, that’s when you fall off and that ego takes over.”
Mastersson continued, “I fell out of love a long time ago for music, I love music but I’m not in love with it, anything music doesn't always wow me, sometimes songs aren’t good and I’ve deleted songs before because I didn’t like them.”
Priest has four albums on Apple Music, Power Circa 2013, Problemaddict, Priest Mastersson, and his newest album titled Micheal. In addition to that more of his catalog can be found on his YouTube channel @PriestMastersson.
