By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Imani McCullough wasn’t thinking of a career in music when she started writing lyrics and setting them over beats.
Then she showed them to friend who was a producer, and he saw the potential in her work and encouraged her.
McCullough who uses IMaNI as her performance name said: “I kind of got into it for fun. I wasn’t thinking it would get this big now that I’m trying to make it as a career.”
Late in summer she released an eight-song EP “Violet,” and then she connected with a group of fellow Bowling Green State University students, who were intent on helping boost her nascent career.
The Capstone Collective is a group of students, all minoring in music industry. Their work with IMaNI is their capstone project.
“Essentially we’re managing a musician,” said Jacob Fowler, who is handling media relations.
IMaNI was brought to their attention, by collective member Micah Pendleton. He knew McCullough through their participation in a couple choirs, including the Voices at BGSU. He’d heard her first released song “Do Not Disturb.”
“That song really spoke to me,” he said. In it IMaNI speaks about her feeling of not being heard.
“If she feels like this, I want to help her be heard,” Pendleton said.
The other team members agreed.
“It was very professional sounding,” Tiffany Czech said of IMaNI’s music.” And she has already established her brand and what she wanted to have for herself.”
The team could then help her further develop that and enhance her profile on other social media channels.
“I felt a lot of the music is very marketable,” said Kelly Ellis. “Almost everything on her EP is something I can hear for radio. When I’m thinking of an artist I want to sign and manage, I want to know how well they’ll do in the court of public opinion.”
“The general gist,” said Hunter Poole, “is we take the business out of her career.” It’s hard enough for a performer to write and perform the music, never mind having to tend to the marketing and business details.
That’s not what they signed up for, Poole said. “We’re trying to get that out of the way so everything becomes compartmentalized. She gets to go crazy with the art. We get to go crazy with the business, and it all works out in the end.”
McCullough was feeling that pressure. “As a full-time student I can’t do everything by myself,” she said.
So, the Capstone Collective moved in.
They helped her launch a professional website with links to all the ways to hear her music.
They boosted her Facebook presence with a professional page.
They arranged to have 800 CDs of the EP produced. Those will be available on the website.
They produced a video for her song “Pretty Boi,” which was released last week. The video was filmed in Wintergarden Park and on the BGSU campus.
With the semester winding down, the Capstone Collective is ready to hand off these chores to IMaNI.
“A really big mission is for us to set her up for after this class is done,” Ellis said, ”and after this semester is over, the big mission is to set her up for success. She has a website set up. She has all these resources she can use for as long as she likes.”
McCullough said that the team, which also includes Taylor Neal and Tre’Shaun Robinson, has set a high bar for others to contracts with to provide these management services.
They showed her, she said, what she needs to progress.
Her love of music goes a long way back. McCullough, 20, spent her first 10 years in Detroit where the sound of Motown resonated throughout her household. Her family then moved to the Columbus area, and she attended high school in Dublin.
She strives to make her music “relatable.” She absorbs the stories of others and weaves those into her songs.
Even as she continues her studies in Video Communications Technology, she finds time to write. It provides a break from her studies.
IMaNI finds her songs maturing, improving from the material on “Violet.”
She’s not performed live much, and COVID-19 has put those plans into hiatus, though she is exploring forming a band. For a person who is shy that’s a bit out of her comfort zone, she said.
She sees herself developing more as a songwriter and producer.
“I do want to have my songs out there and show my face a little,” IMaNI said. “Long term I want to work behind the scenes. Wherever it takes me. This is a kind of go with the flow kind of thing.”
