Harlem’s Shoniqua Shandai is a brilliant and beautiful bundle of light, someone who illuminates a scene or room just being her authentic self. She is a natural talent whose gifts flourish effortlessly. She doesn’t have to try, she shines brightly, simply by doing what she was born to do. Shoniqua Shandai is, and has always been, a star.
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind releasing your new singles “Dance” and “Us in Mind” on your birthday?
Yes, I’ve been wanting to sing all my life, but at times I was scared to do it and doubted my ability, doubting if there’s space for women like me in the industry. I released a single a few years ago and God forced that out of me. In approaching 35, my vision, or more so, my intention for myself this year, is to really operate in my gifts and operate fully in my confidence in who I am. The world can say what they want. The world can do what it wants. I’m not going to hold myself back anymore. I vow to myself that this 35th year, I’m only speaking positively about myself. I’m acting as if I am as brilliant as I’d like to think I actually am. I’m going to really operate with a real God-like understanding of who he made me to be.
That’s why I had to release these songs. I had to get them out as quickly as possible so that I could continue to have so much music. I have so much music and so much more I want to do. I can’t be the thing that holds me back. The world will offer enough obstacles. I can’t be an obstacle for myself.
Now, what challenges did you face in creating and releasing the songs, especially during these times in the music industry?
Yes. Well, actually, “Us in Mind” was something I had made years ago. Originally, I wrote it about family. It’s about the love that I felt and discovered when my sister had my nephew. I thought I knew love, but it wasn’t an understanding of God’s love of kindness and gentleness, and love of sacrifice and action, and literally someone walking into the room and bringing you peace of mind. When my nephew says my name, it feels like summertime.
It was about family, but then it sounded so sexy. Just the way that I sing it in my voice… So, I added these poems around it and made it a love song. Ultimately, the love relationship that you have with your partner, a reflection of the love that you share or have developed with family. That’s where you first learn love. As far as obstacles, it took me time to really find the music behind it. I wanted it to be interesting, and I was so blessed to find a producer who could play the piano, and then add all these interesting futuristic tones. I think that’s a big thing for singers. A big obstacle is finding beats, finding producers, and finding people who are willing to collaborate… It’s so interesting that artistry is such a collaborative art form, period. You need other people to create. Even as an actor, I need a cinematographer, I need a writer, and I need a director. As a singer, I need a producer, a drummer, and everything else.
Music is also a big part of your role on Harlem. Was that by design?
That’s by God’s design, really and truly. As I said before, I was scared to sing, and I went to school to sing, and singing was my first love before I even knew what acting was. I’ve always been theatrical, but as a child, I knew music. The enemy, the devil, and the world tried to snatch that ability or stifle it in me as quickly as possible and as much as possible, so much so that I believed it. Yet, in feeling like I could hide in acting, God still made it so that any acting role I took that has been monumental in my career required me to do music. I was in a show, “Sing It,” on YouTube Red, where I played the singer. Then, a musical that I was in was humongous and pivotal in propelling my career. Here I am as Angie in Harlem, playing an actress. I’m playing a singer as I’m acting. Truly, it really is what God has for you. No one can stop it, not even yourself, if it’s meant to be. You got to get out of the way and let God lead because I wasn’t going to sing.
What was it about the character, Angie, that made you choose the role?
One, having the blessing to be able to sing and play a performer. Also, I really understood her. I understood what it’s like to be an unemployed artist because I was before playing the character. I had spent a few years sleeping on my mama’s couch at one point. I also understand what it’s like to see this type of woman, who’s so grand, so vivacious, and so full of life, utilized in other films and TV shows. I am referred to as people’s spirit animal and everything else, including their best friend. She doesn’t always get a chance to tell her own story or pursue her own dream. She often doesn’t get a chance to live her life as her main character. I get a chance to do that, to really help people see this woman that we allow or make be in support of us. We don’t usually give her the space to be a human being and be able to show vulnerability, pain, fear, and love. I give her a full, nuanced experience.
I had to do that for the sake of my grandmother and my aunts and cousins. Honestly, curvy, vivacious women who’ve been forced to be secondary in other people’s stories are the most creative, transcending, groundbreaking, powerful beings on this planet.
Angie is such an amazing character. The way that you portray her, itís just like thereís so much soulfulness in it. How do you feel about the response to the character?
I’m so grateful for it. I really am. I hoped and prayed that people would see her heart, that she wouldn’t just be seen as sassy or all the things that we label women who act like her, who look like her. I’m truly grateful when people come up and… I’m stopped everywhere, first and foremost. Literally, I’m blown away by its international fanfare.
I was in Paris and I got stopped constantly in the malls in Paris and on the street. This show resonates not only with American Black people, but Black people all over the world, as well as White people, Asians, and Latinos. The diversity and the spectrum in which the different types of people relate to this character blows my mind.
How did it feel to receive the NAACP nomination?
I feel so grateful. From the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful that we have spaces like the NAACP Awards to shine a light on Black art because I really feel like this show is amazing. I think we have been severely overlooked… I think this show is brilliant. I think Tracy Oliver is incredible. I think the work that all the actors are doing on the show is extraordinary. I say actors because it stars four women, but we also have Tyler Levely, who’s doing some beautiful, vulnerable, nuanced work with Ian. It’s funny, but also heartfelt… I’m truly grateful for my specific nomination, but also for what the NAACP Awards represent and the space it creates for Black talent to be celebrated.
With all your success, how do you stay grounded and true to yourself, amidst all the fame and success?
Well, one, I keep my family around me. My mom is literally here in my home right now. So having people around you that remind you of who you are is so important. I moved out to LA when I was the tender, fragile age of seventeen, and I witnessed a lot of my friends who were in the same acting program as me shift and conform to what they thought was necessary to be able to survive in a place like LA. It’s a world where the industry tells you, you need to change, you need to conform, you need to fix this, and you need to look this way, act this way, and talk this way. So, having people like my mother there who remind me of who I am is drastically important.
So now that we have these two singles, whatís next as far as your music career?
What’s next is more music. I want to continue to exercise my voice and tell stories through song, film, or pictures. I love to create, and I try to use as much as whatever tools are at my disposal to create, such as the walls behind me. I want to paint the world in as much beauty, color, and Shaniqua as I can so that it hopefully inspires other people to pick up their paintbrushes as well. And so, I’m going to do that with music. I’m going to do that with the paint colors. I’m going to do that with the photo shoots that I do on my Instagram. And hopefully, I would love to, at some point, have the scripts that I’m writing be seen in the world. I would love to use and put as much of my art into the world so that other people are inspired to use their voices as well.
Be’n Original
