Born in Detroit & raised in Chicago, 19 year old Vivienne Badynee, professionally known as V!V, began releasing music as well as collaborating with emerging Chicago rappers & vocalists in her last year of high school. Growing up in a musical household she was surrounded by the sounds coming out of her dad’s studio. She explains, “as a kid seeing him perform made me want to imitate that and it turned out I had a knack for it, too.” Beyond familial influences her biggest inspiration is Tyler, the Creator. “I studied the way he writes,” she reveals, “and love how free his arrangements are. They can start with a certain feel then end on a completely different one.” Her own music is equally moody and ambitious eschewing repetitive loops for musical movements that ebb, flow, & glow with emotion. Viv’s expressively strong, soul-filled vocals beautifully compliment her clever, heartfelt lyrical wordplay. She can be poignantly graceful one moment, then playfully direct the next. You might hear her being protective of her feelings in a verse, only to have her explode with heart-wrenching honesty in the chorus. As her friend Anahit Yakubovich muses, “listening to her music I am deeply impressed with how she manages to pour so much personal experience, intensity, and emotion into her songs in such a straightforward way that makes them sharply relatable. Viv manages to bring the kind of eccentricity to the girl next door that makes all the other girls next door step out of their house and admire her for a while."
