Semmuel “Semme” Preason Jenkins a resident of Pensacola, Florida is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer and Tik Tok sensation.
By Photographer Bobby Lee
An Interview with Semme Jenkins / Interview by Bobby Lee
Interview conducted on December 18, 2020
Good afternoon and welcome back. It is a pleasure to have you back with us. As some of you may remember Semme was our very first “ON THE BLOCK” artist first interviewed by me a little more than a year ago. The first interview was published in the December 2019 issue of VIVYD Magazine. We are here today getting an update and to see what he has been doing over the last year. So Semme again welcome back!
Thank you so much for having me.
Absolutely, it has been a pleasure being with you for a small part of your journey, but let’s bring everyone up to speed on some of the things that you have been doing over the past year.
It’s been a crazy year. It has been the craziest year that I can recall so far. A lot of ups and downs, but definitely more ups than downs. In short words there has been a tremendous amount of growth personal and professional growth.
When you say growth please explain in what way?
Mentally, physically, spiritually, and in any other way that I can. I still do my affirmations, I have a trainer now, so my day begins with a trip to the gym around 6:30 AM. I train, I pray and get a good breakfast. This pretty much starts my time blocks for the rest of the day. I try really hard to adhere to the time blocks that I have slated for the different activities all while I balance my time with Ansem.
Ok, sounds like a solid start to the day, please tell us about Ansem?
I started Ansem close to 5 months ago and it is a small startup marketing company. What I do is help small to medium sized businesses grow online and improve their internet footprint. I assist them with marketing campaigns and ads and other things of that nature. I started it because last year I hurt my back really bad and that injury prevented me from doing much. I figured I must do something and that’s when I came up with the concept of Ansem. Now Ansem is growing, I have three employees and we are continuing to build and expand.
That sounds awesome! Nothing like building something from the ground up. Let’s switch gears a little and talk about the elephant in the room for every business. How has the pandemic affected what you were doing from our last interview to now?
It really had a big affect on me at the beginning of the year. The job, that I was working had to let people go, so for a couple of months I had to do what a lot of people had to do and live off of my savings. The music wasn’t making money at that time, so I had to figure out something else. It was tough. I was stuck at home and I was worried about what was going to happen next. I fell into a depressed state for a while. So, to get out of that I started reading, and that really helped me turn it around. Now I try to read at least two books a week and try to feed my mind with positive nourishing thoughts. I am a big believer in manifestation, your mind has the best soil in the world and whatever you put in it that’s what will grow. If you put negativity in your mind that is what will grow, but if you put positivity that is what you will get in return.
You spoke about depression; do you think it was based on the pandemic or any other outside influences or a combination of both?
Yeah, it was everything in total. I was dealing with life issues, relationship issues, financial issues, and what to do next with the music. It was just a tough spot; I was taking medication for my injury which gave me bad anxiety. I can even say now that as of a few days ago, I have been five months clean from any type of meds. Through it all I made it and now everything is 180 degrees in a different direction. My mantra now, is I do not complain about anything. I take full responsibility for the things in my life. In my opinion, I think if most people would stop complaining and take full responsibility, life will just become better.
Very true, very true. Many do not realize how much being positive will get you started in the right direction every time. Give us a little discernment on some of the things that you consider your strengths and some of the things you view as weaknesses.?
Weakness, by far has to be time management. I say yes to too many things and I end up running around like a chicken with my head cut off a lot of the time. I have tried to manage it, but it is a work in progress. As a matter of fact, I struggle with any type of time management, whether it is friends, family, it does not matter, but I am really working on it. My biggest strength has to be my ability to communicate. I consider myself to have great communication skills. I can talk to anyone about anything at any moment. Also, my ability to acquire knowledge and then apply that knowledge. I love learning and I love feeding my brain.
Since day one I have found you to be inspirational and impressive. Your motivation and your positive point of view has and continues to be admirable. What makes you do you? What is your driving force to being you?
The thought that I can influence someone’s life in a positive way. The crazy thing is I never thought I had this influence until recently. I have nieces and nephews, and I watch them as they sing their favorite songs and watch their favorite videos and I see how our (entertainers) influence really affects them. We as entertainers in some case are there just as much or maybe even more of an influence than the parents. When I started to think about it in that fashion, I wanted to make sure that the media that I put out is responsible. I would hate to know that a kid made a bad decision based on something that I put out, or because I glorified a specific lifestyle, or I made it appear that a bad decision could actually get you somewhere in life. Everything I do, I try to look at it as a seed and I just want to make sure that I plant the best seed that I can. My goal is to positively change one life at a time.
Again, let us change gears just a little. Is there anyone special in your life? And how difficult is it to balance your professional and personal life?
There was a significant other not too long ago, but we are not together now. She is still very special to me, but a river runs in many different directions and right now we are not running in the same direction. As far as the balance, it is kind of tough. Whether people know me or not the very first thing that people always notice about me is that I am albino. When I am out in public people cannot help to want to ask me questions or to stare. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to deal with, even for me. Plus, I am a serious person and I take my vision for life equally as serious, and when you do not have that person in your life that can support that vision or have equal passion it can cause undue stress on the relationship. You can easily find yourself giving too much of yourself to someone who in the end will not be there.
You know I totally get that. It is never more important to make sure that who you share your time and space with is that person that is willing to give you the same. Alright, let us talk about social media and your social media presence, what do you have going on your social media? Let’s talk about Tik Tok.
I got on Tik Tok about four or five months ago and the first thing I noticed is how much people were engaging, people were just involved and I have never seen something to where you can reach so many people so fast. At the time I was working at Walmart and I would wear my headphones all the time, you know listening to music, books, and so forth. Long story short I was filling out a resume for another job and I remember they were asking me all of these questions. The main thought process to their resume was that they wanted you to just be you. And then it clicked, I should make a resume for Tik Tok for other social media influencers to have the opportunity to get to know their fans. My idea was to create something like the work force, where everyone on Tik Tok had a resume where it lays everything out just like applying for a job. I knew it had to be clean because of the children and I knew it had to have a certain type of beat. After that it just came to me, what’s your name? What’s you age? Where you from? What’s your sign? Who you love? What’s your style? What do you do? And what do you drive? Then I wanted to come up with a dance part, so after a couple of days of brainstorming I came up with stop, drop, and roll, do dat. It was universal and simple and catchy. It met all the criteria that I wanted to have in my music. I even have a Spanish version of the song, but I have not put it out yet.
What kind of traction are you getting on the song? Has it been successful?
After I recorded it, we put it out and for two months there was about 200 people who made videos. Which in itself is good, but after that it really started growing, we went from 200 to 2000 in a month. Then it really took off, within the last month alone we had 30k, with about 80k total.
Man, this is amazing! It is a pleasure to sit here and watch you talk about this. I can see your wheels turning in your head as you talk about it. How does this translate into everyday life? When people talk to you do they actually know that you are the creator of this song?
True story, so when I was setting up a credit card account for Ansem, the agent on the phone ask me what my name was, so I told him. Then he asked me what did I do (kinda sounds familiar right), so I told him I just put out this song and he was all over it. He was like my wife just did a video to that song!!! It has really been cool, people are very receptive and excited about it. Hundreds of people have contacted me after doing the challenge saying how it has changed their life. I am just super excited to have positively affected their life in that way. The song is doing exactly what I have wanted it to do.
What are the negatives of being a Tik Tok artist and all-over social media?
I will be completely honest, I got lucky on Tik Tok. On Instagram people would contact me with mean comments, they call me mean names and for a while I abandoned it. This is the worse side of being on social media, it can be dark. I can honestly say that since I have started Tik Tok, the audience is different. I have probably had one derogatory comment. The way I like to look at it is hurt people hurt people. I try not to take things personally from a personal message, meaning I don’t really know the person on the other side of the message.
What is your number one asked question and what is your most ridiculously asked question?
The first one that pops in my head is people are always asking how much money have I made off of the song? The second question is what is it like to be albino? And the most absurd would be something like are your pubes black? People can come up with some really off the wall things and some weird thoughts.
Any future projects coming down the road?
I actually have four. Next year I plan on putting out a song every single week. I know that is really ambitious, but it is something that I will actually attempt to do. I have four projects with five songs per project. One is going to be a rock project, one is going to be rap, one is going to be pop, and the last is going to be Latin. I also plan on having a few features with a couple of local artists. Additionally, in January 2021 there is a plan to work with the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation (AARBF, www.aarbf.org ) out of California who actually coin the phrase stop, drop, and roll. They are looking at partnering with us and using the song in a project promoting awareness to burn victims and to raise funds for those who have lost their homes to fire.
It has been a pleasure to sit down with you once again. Any parting words of inspiration that you would like to impart to anyone looking to follow in your footstep and maybe just need to hear something meaningful?
Fear can be very important if utilized correctly, I feel fear is an indicator of what you should be doing. If you have a fear of something, then you should run towards it, because on the other side of fear there can be something that is so amazing. And it is win/win if you tackle your fear, if you go for it and fail, then you are not as fearful as you were before you did it. The second thing is focus on one person at a time, attention is the number one thing a person can pay you. Some people think it is money, but if you lose money you can get it back. But attention and the time it takes to give it to someone, you can never get back, it is priceless. We need to value other people’s time more and appreciate when people give us their time, whether it is five minutes or five hours…value their time. And the last thing is Jesus died for everyone and people still are not satisfied. So, if he can’t satisfy all the people all the time, what makes you think that you can.
Finally, I would like to thank you for your time and sharing your vision of life, you are truly an inspiration. A young man with a large voice of positives. If you are looking to find out more about Semme, his music, I Support Albinism, or Ansem you can visit these websites:
www.iamsemme.com
www.isupportalbinism.com
www.stopbullying.gov
www.ansemprojects.com
You can also drop your TIK TOK resume at https:// www.tiktok.com/@albinosemme
