CLEVELAND, Ohio — Chelsea Pastel is on the rise.
The local musician’s hip-hop skills have been featured on Cleveland radio stations and will soon pop up on TV shows thanks to a partnership with actress Issa Rae’s company Raedio.
But the rapper (whose real name is Chelsea Ferguson) got her start, she said, as a band geek at the Cleveland School of the Arts.
“When I say band geek, I mean it,” Ferguson said. “Band camp in the summer, the whole nine yards.”
As a kid, Ferguson learned to play a range of instruments, starting with alto saxophone and later picking up trombone, bass trombone, drums, tuba and piano.
“Tuba was actually the most fun one,” Ferguson said. “Think of a rap song. It’s the 808 of band. If you’re not there, the songs just don’t sound right.”
Those wind and brass instruments might not be heard in Ferguson’s current releases as Chelsea Pastel, but they informed her understanding of beat-making and producing. After graduating high school, Ferguson went to the University of Toledo and later transferred to Cleveland State, where she bought a MacBook and taught herself how to make beats and produce tracks.
She worked at local recording studios and, at night, she’d start rapping and recording her own songs, she said. In 2016, she put out her first few songs.
Ferguson’s music tells stories about her life. She raps about college, her family and experiences working a 9-to-5 job.
“I might embellish a few lines, but for the most part, I like to keep it relatable,” Ferguson said. “I’m inspired by my life, day-to-day things that happen.”
Musically, Ferguson cites Jay-Z, MC Lyte and Nicki Minaj as influences. When it comes to beat-making, Ferguson found inspiration through cartoons, particularly the soundtracks of Akron musician and Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh.
“It sounds pretty odd, but when I really got into making beats, I just remember when I was out there in Toledo, we didn’t have cable and we had Netflix,” she said. “When I played my beats back to my friends, they were like, ‘Why does it sound like ‘Rugrats?’’ Chelsea and her cartoon beats. That became the joke.”
In 2017, she released her self-titled EP and followed it up with singles released in 2019 and 2020. She started hitting the stage for live concerts and performed at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.
The show was a highlight for Ferguson, who previously worked at the museum as a visitor service representative.
“To go from an employee to performing there was a highlight,” Ferguson said. “I wrote a lot of music in there, on the clock. It was bad, I used to write so much there that they banned us from having pens and papers while we were on post… but I’m sitting next to Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ outfit; how could I not want to write great music? I don’t know if it was the spirits of the rock stars in there, but I used to write really good music there.”
As Ferguson’s music picked up steam over the past few years, she had to wade through challenging management and production offers.
“I started working with different teams, but I got held up in that process, especially just being a female act,” Ferguson said. “I felt like a lot of the different guys I was working with would put me in these boxes as afar as images and styles.”
As time went on, Ferguson said school ended up taking a backseat to her day job and her music career. She stepped away from college. That is, until the coronavirus pandemic hit Ohio in 2020, putting a pause on live performances.
“I just had a year left, and then the pandemic happened,” Ferguson said. “Then, nothing was going on, so I thought, I might as well finish that year.”
Ferguson graduated from CSU in December 2020 with a degree in organizational management. But she’s focusing on her music career right now.
“The day of graduation, we partied up that night,” Ferguson said. “The next day, after graduation, people were calling up, asking, ‘Are you back in the studio yet?’”
She is. Ferguson has been recording plenty of new material for the year. She released one of her smoothest tracks yet in February, titled “Stop Asking,” with an accompanying music video released in April.
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And she’s got plenty more planned. After making a sync agreement with Raedio, some of her music is slated to be included in Viacom shows, including “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta.” New singles, new music videos and merchandise drops will all culminate in “Pastelevision,” a future EP or album that Ferguson has been developing.
“It’s going to be consistent drops,” Ferguson said. “Right now, our only problem is, what do we want to put out next?”
You can keep up with Ferguson’s upcoming releases, concerts and more at chelseapastel.com.
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