John Isaiah Welsh, a singer and rapper from New York better known as Leuca, started his music career about four years ago during his first year of high school.
He recently dropped his latest EP called “Soul(o),” which was inspired by specific events from his home life.
Leuca started off his career with the name Melanoleuca but quickly transitioned into calling himself Leuca.
“I was in bio class in ninth grade and my teacher said a term, melanoleuca, and I asked her to repeat it because she said something about, like, black and white mammal.”
Because Leuca is biracial, a mix of both black and white, he was very interested in the term.
Leuca said, “I was like, ‘Wow that’s crazy! Like, wait, hold up. I’m black and white!’”
This was his first encounter with his new stage name.
Leuca said, “I wrote it down and I looked it up when I got home and started really just growing fond of it.”
After calling himself Melanoleuca for a while, Leuca decided the name was too long and needed something that would be shorter and catchier.
Leuca said, “At first, I started calling myself the entire term, but Xavier Omar [a friend of Leuca’s] actually suggested to me, ‘you know, just chop it in half and just refer to yourself as Leuca.’”
Leuca has had a few songs throughout his music career so far, but his first and latest EP, “Soul(o),” was inspired by personal experiences in his life.
“It was about my dad who obviously is an alcoholic, so each track was a response to the home environment and the situation that, you know, is happening,” Leuca said. “It was really just letting go of all the emotion that I had— all the emotion that I built up over the years— and just putting it into one project and just letting the world hear what really is going down.”
Although the past can hurt, Leuca used his talents and experiences for positivity rather than negativity.
Leuca said, “A big thing that really pushed this music to happen and I guess pushed every lyric was really, like, you have to use your pain to do something positive.”
“It would be a completely different ball game if I was sitting here oppositely effected by my dad and went to go drink just like him and, you know, got lost and that kind of thing,” Leuca said. “But what I did was I used my pain and I made a beautiful product out of it.”
Where did Leuca start?
“I was singing all my life,” Leuca said. “I started singing in church a lot, but then I started doing events and it just became a real cool passion probably four years ago.”
Leuca started off in a rap group from his church called Living For God, or LFG.
“I was really inspired by the group LFG and when they took me in and I was able to start making music with them, that’s when I realized it was just something I really enjoyed,” Leuca said. “I started writing a lot and that just became something that was just second nature to me.”
Leuca said, “As it started to take off I was like ‘you know, might as well’ and I just developed a crazy love and passion for it so now I just really want to make it a full fledged career because I wanna be happy doing what I do.”
Leuca’s Personal Inspirations
My mom is definitely a good inspiration for me just because of her strength,” Leuca said. “It just helped me to put everything into perspective as to where it all started and what I’m to push towards because of everything that she’s provided for me.”
“She definitely is always encouraging me to always stay true to myself first ‘cause if you don’t do that, then you’re really not gonna be affective at all,” Leuca said. “She’s always been supporting me since day one.”
Leuca’s brother Stephon Beckford, who is also his manager, has also played a huge role in his support system and inspirations.
“My brother who is managing me at the time being, he’s literally provided [everything],” Leuca said. “Literally all his friends have given me the studio time that I needed.”
Since Beckford has friends in the music industry, he is able to provide studios and venues for Leuca to use through those friends.
Leuca said, “I haven’t paid for studio time at all, it’s been off of his connections, it’s been off his recourses.”
Along with his mother, sister and people from church, Leuca sees his brother as a great inspiration in life and in his career.
“He’s just always been there, never ceasing to do anything to provide for the music because obviously he believes in me but also because he loves me dearly and he wants to see me succeed, so him and my mom have definitely been huge huge support systems,” Leuca said. “He’s definitely bent over backwards for me and I’m really thankful for that.”
With the addiction that his father struggles with, Beckford became more of a father figure for Leuca.
“The relationship Leuca and me have is beyond brother to brother,” Beckford said. “I’d say more father to son. I’ve seen him grow tremendously in all aspects of life at a fast rate.”
“He’s always been somewhat of a renaissance guy and I’ve seen him manage and finagle a lot of commitments his whole life accordingly which is not easy to do in my opinion,” Beckford said.
As a younger brother, Leuca has always looked up to Beckford and, with that, being Leuca’s manager came inherently to him.
“I feel I naturally became his manager because a lot of things Leuca ever wanted to pursue were through me,” Beckford said. “From music to sports and everything in between. I had a part in it.”
How do people describe Leuca?
Beckford describes Leuca as “God-fearing, disciplined and humble.”
Peter Hazle, videographer and photographer for Leuca, describes him using the words driven, persuasive and raw.
Hazle said, “Three things about Leuca I can say: number one: he’s driven. I’ve never seen anyone more progressive in thinking that ‘yeah I can do more with what I have.’ Two: he’s very persuasive. There are a lot of times where everyone doesn’t see eye to eye but he makes sure you know what he wants and then he’ll explain it until you’re totally 100 percent on board. Number three: his emotion is just raw.”
“He shows you bare bones who he is and what he can do and what he is here for,” Hazle said. “The music portrays such an open feeling that you feel like you know him by the end of the EP.”
“You understand who he is and what his headspace is in terms of what he’s going through or what he has been going through, what things make him happy, sad, you know, stuff like that,” Hazle said. “It’s very personable.”
Along with Leuca’s personality, working with Leuca is also described with positive words.
Hazle said, “He’s one of my favorite people to work with because, number one: he knows what he wants.”
“If he doesn’t like it, he’ll tell you he hates it,” Hazle said. “Another thing is he goes above and beyond just to make sure that his product is pristine.”
Beckford said, “Working with Leuca is always copacetic.”
“Everything is always clear cut on what the objective is with what we’re doing,” Beckford said.
Leuca is a very creative person and that shows through his songs, music videos and every aspect of his life.
Beckford said, “He makes tasks at hand a lot easier with his savvy nature.”
The final product
Leuca’s EP, “Soul(o),” is currently available on Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Music and the feedback it has accumulated has exceeded his expectations.
“Plenty of times I didn’t see the project impacting the way that it did. I was heavily discouraged, worried about the numbers and stuff like that before hand but it was really just God sent,” Leuca said.
Leuca was able to use his pain and talents to create music that people would enjoy.
“I understand that I do have a gift from God and I want to use it,” Leuca said.
Through this project Leuca said, “I used my pain and I made a beautiful product out of it.”
What each track means:
Change the world is a self explanatory track that includes a call to action for listeners to try and make the world a better place.
Leuca said, “It’s just about being a positive impact in the world and encouraging people and doing things that are going to make a difference eventually and not so much focusing on vanity and things that really won’t matter at the end of the day because the only thing that really matters right now is our heart and if we don’t have that in order then nothing else is gonna be in order.”
“Circles is more so like, me understanding I guess how everybody is kind of imperfect in a way. Like in the hook it says, ‘I can’t keep running in circles. I can’t keep following all of these people that think they are right.’ So we all, I guess, have our mistakes,” Leuca said.
Leuca came to this realization through witnessing his fathers bad habits but understands that everyone has their flaws and their flaws should not change the way they are treated by others.
“All these are applying to my dad so as much as he has his mistakes and his tendencies that he’s accustomed to and the addictions that he’s honed, it’s like, we all have these vices, we all have these things that can hinder us from doing better,” Leuca said. “We have to realize that and just push forward from it because none of us are gonna be perfect ever, so just embrace each other as humans, embrace each other as imperfect and really try to develop our own truth.”
“I wrote that the day I found out Brother Noel [Leuca’s former choir director] got locked up,” Leuca said.
Leuca’s choir director was and still is one of his male role models and hearing he was being arrested brought up a lot of emotions so he began writing.
“It was a track that just… like I produced the entire thing and I was listening to it and I just started writing to it,” Leuca said.
Leuca said this track is full of “raw emotion” and fits perfectly with the theme of the entire EP.
“That was definitely my response to Brother Noel getting locked up and like just my emotion behind it,” Leuca said. “Like if you listen to the lyrics you really connect them with a lot of things.”
“Jupiter is more so like a commercial track that we were trying to push so it’s something that you know we feel could be put on TV or radio,” Leuca said. “I just feel like every project has to have at least one of those tracks just to keep people… I guess on their toes really with the music.”
Leuca’s creative thinking allowed him to write a song and produce a music video that would go along with the song.
“All my ideas really just splurged out on that song so I was happy with that track.”
“Meaningless was an ideas based off, I think it was Ecclesiastes 4. I don’t remember when I read it but it stuck out to me,” Leuca said.
In Ecclesiastes 4, the Bible talks about how things of the world are meaningless.
Leuca said “Meaningless” was totally inspired by this chapter in the Bible.
“All these physical things are gonna pass away,” Leuca said. “That was the theme I ran with.”
“The inspiration behind that song was the burden of human nature and all the things that can come with it,” Leuca said.
In this track Leuca points out the fact that life is not easy and calls on people to show their pain instead of hiding it and acting as if they have everything together.
“Even the chorus saying, ‘I wanna see where your shackles be.’ Like, ‘where are you burdening?'” Leuca said. “There’s so many different aspects of life to be covered so it’s just kinda like, you can’t really put everything into perspective ‘cause you’ll kinda go crazy.”
“It’s just that kinda thing that I wanted to touch on,” Leuca said.
Soul(o), the title track of the EP and Daddy Red Face were both direct references to what Leuca was going through at home.
“’Soul(o)’ and Daddy Red Face were just really my response to how it was at home and me witnessing everything that was going on with my dad,” Leuca said. “How he wasn’t doing anything except for drinking and I had to just like be okay with that and kinda like, keep it in because I didn’t wanna tell everybody.”
Leuca came to the realization that he did not want to keep hiding his pain and his life from others.
“It was just my transition from not really wanting to expose that to the world to ‘you know what, this is my reality,’” Leuca said. “This is behind lots of the reason why I write the things that I write.”
