Two names, one soul.
Myeka arrived first. Lady CoCo was named twenty-one years later, sitting on a DJ case outside a bar. SoulCraft is where I keep them both.
Before I had words for what music did to me, I felt it. A bassline could settle something in my chest. A voice could make a room feel safer, or sadder, or bigger than it really was. I didn't understand those feelings yet, but I followed them, listening for the moment a song changed the air around me. Long before I owned a single record, I was already collecting something: the way sound can hold a feeling, and the instinct to protect that feeling and pass it on.
So by the time I bought my first record in high school, it felt less like a beginning than a confirmation, even though I still didn't understand a turntable could become a passport. Two weeks after my twenty-first birthday, Supreme La Rock, the man I now call PaPa, asked me two questions: did I like records, and what was my favorite song? That conversation turned into an apprenticeship. For my first years behind the decks I played only vinyl, and it taught me to listen to a room the way you listen to someone you love: closely, and for the things they aren't saying out loud.
The records carried me farther than I ever imagined. In 2017 I headlined New Year's Eve at Cavallo Club in Bahrain and stayed on as a resident. I curated music for JW Marriott in Doha, held destination residencies at Niyama in the Maldives and played a special-guest run in Greece. Every room taught me the same thing in a different language: the right song can make a stranger feel at home.
Coming back to the Pacific Northwest, I wanted to build rooms of my own. Hot Buttered Soul, a Sunday dig through soul, funk and boogie at Easy Street Records, flyers and all. Honey, a space centered on BIPOC women, where I was a founding member and resident. Four years on the rooftop at The Mountaineering Club. These days you'll find me at Altitude Sky Lounge every Thursday, 8pm to midnight.
CoCo began behind the decks, but she followed me into everyday life: into the books I can't stop pressing into friends' hands, the records I hunt for, the way I set a table and the small rituals that keep me whole. SoulCraft is part taste letter, part personal museum, part curiosity cabinet. A place to notice more, feel deeply and stay open to what life is showing us.
