Kay Mabin

When Kay Mabin wanted to be a hiphop artist, she first created her own record label, thereby giving herself a business to house her art. Poedik Muze is her space to explore themes like comfort, perspective, and self-expression, and it’s a chance for her to be her own boss and all the other benefits that come from being an entrepreneur. 

Kay is no stranger to hard work. She spent her childhood honing her athletic skills, participating in soccer, track and field, and basketball. Her JV basketball coach noticed a natural ability for leadership in her and made her the team captain. She enjoyed that role and found that her leadership style was to lead by example. She wasn’t a yeller; instead she preferred to do drills and run plays with the team and make sure she was always the first one at practice and the last one to leave. In addition to leadership, Kay learned discipline from her time as an athlete. She also learned to make a commitment and stick to it, and now she is making good on the commitments she has made to herself and her music.

“Self expression is important to me. My plan is to create that safe space wherever my music, my label, or I am present.”

Taking a lesson from each challenging circumstance is a habit Kay has developed over her lifetime. She and her family moved 20 times over ten years, and although moving that much was hard on Kay, she knows she learned from each experience and only got stronger. She learned how to adapt to new environments, think on her feet, and communicate and advocate for her own needs. She fought through depression and a sense of feeling displaced, and storytelling through her music became an important outlet for her. To Kay, “Self expression is important to me. My plan is to create that safe space wherever my music, my label, or I am present.”

“It was nice to get an objective viewpoint on my ideas and how to take my overall goal and break it down into smaller goals.”

Kay knew she had to start her business when the idea of it became all-consuming. In her senior year of high school, she quit basketball and turned all her attention to her music. Her hiphop persona, Da-Pranik, comes from the Sanskrit phrase for “vital energy.” That is the approach she wants to infuse into everything she does. For her first album, Kay handled every aspect from writing and performing to producing, mixing, and engineering. It took three years for her to finish that album. With her second mixtape, Beat Take Over, she outsourced some of the work and was able to finish the album in five months. What she learned was that she was able to have the same quality product without doing all the work herself. You can find her mixtape on Soundcloud.

So although Kay was already committed to Poedik Muze and believed in its importance, Sky’s the Limit provided an extra boost for both her confidence and her business plan. She connected with volunteer Ismael Boussatta, a technology senior analyst at Accenture, who “helped [her] conceptualize the process of what it would take to get [her] project going, and create a feasible budget for it.” Ismael also provided a sounding board for Kay’s ideas and listened respectfully which made Kay feel like he took her and her business seriously. “It might sound weird but it was nice to get an objective viewpoint on my ideas and how to take my overall goal and break it down into smaller goals.” 

“Working with Kay has been an awesome experience! My favorite part of working with her was hearing her explain the power of music to help people. I think this reframed my perception of music as a business.” -Ismael Boussatta

Like with so many Sky’s the Limit mentor-mentee relationships, the enthusiasm goes both ways. Ismael says: “Working with Kay has been an awesome experience! My favorite part of working with her was hearing her explain the power of music to help people. I think this reframed my perception of music as a business. Furthermore, I was really impressed by Kay’s knowledge of the music business. I think she strikes a great balance of creativity when creating her work and business savvy when licensing, producing and distributing it. We’ve been able to accomplish clearly refining what Kay’s MVP is (her lead single), creating a financial plan which outlines the costs associated with achieving her MVP and her entire album, quantifying what non-financial resources she needs to achieve her MVP (number of hours in the studio), identifying marketing/distribution platforms and applying for and winning the Sky’s the Limit grant! Kay did all the work and she deserves all the credit and whatever good comes her way.”