Emerging with the rise of artists bridging West African and American hip-hop, R&B, reggaeton and zouk, Marie Romance, is finding his stride in music with a sound of his own. Based out of Spokane, Washington now, the artist has released several tracks known for their honesty, warmth and soul, ruminating spirituality and pain through often lighthearted, rhythmic grooves.
Yannick, who was raised in Lomé, Togo and now makes music as Marie Romance, describes the home he grew up in as an artistic one, with a father that was entrepreneurial and an artistic mother who was a novelist. He also had a grandfather that played piano at the church, and he still has 2 uncles that are active musicians in Benin. The future artist first got into music with an interest in hip-hop and r&b from the United States. He describes seeing the music video for Naughty by Nature’s Hip Hop Hooray as the first time he truly fell in love with American urban music, after which he immediately wanted to start making similar songs. After arriving in the United States as a teenager, he started recording songs on a desktop and burning CDs to bring to school.
In the time since his initial start in music, Marie Romance has honed in his approach to music as a vessel to inspire himself, as well as uplift his audience. With releases spanning 2017’s Kaka, Pain and Passion, 2018’s Heaven’s Up and 2020’s Only Want You, he displays a project-by-project range from celebratory and bright to introspective and searching to spiritually resolute. He finds that music is often therapeutic during darker times and also that his experiences on stage and off make for writing that can deeply resonate with listeners. He expresses that in all of his projects, he aims to find the “sweet spot” on every track: the point where happiness, pain and excitement in the music reach equilibrium.
Heaven’s Up, one of Marie Romance’s most successful releases to date, was inspired by an encounter with God that changed his understanding of himself and the life that he was meant to live. He explains that on most occasions, he hopes to use his platform and talent to glorify God with the music that he makes. He also is very honest that he does not like to include themes in his music that he believes would mislead others or would give any of his listeners a sense of false belief in the wrong direction.
He attributes this to his larger goal in music to make music for people, speak and stand for something, and make sure that his listeners have an injection of positivity in their day before anything else. He often goes on social media to encourage listeners to not trade their identities for clout and to be themselves as much as they can, further enshrining this idea that music should be a means of therapy and encouragement, rather than a vanity project or a chain reaction of industry-released trends and pressures.
Marie Romance is saving the future to himself for the time being but does mention that more is to come in this rapidly growing catalogue in the near future. For now, we can look back on the honesty and soulful approach that Marie Romance takes to each release with an artist’s purpose, a cultural pride, and a voice that knows no boundaries.
You can follow Marie Romance at:
- Website: marieromancemusic.com
- Instagram: @iammarieromance
- TikTok: @iammarieromance
- YouTube: @marieromancetv
