Before the brand, the visuals, the strategy — you need to know who you are. This guide walks you through how to find that, with real stories from artists who had to fight through years of doubt, rejection, and reinvention to get there.
Before the Brand, There's the Person
Most artists start in the wrong place. They think about the brand before they understand the person. They design a logo before they know what they stand for. They build a presence before they know what presence they're building toward.
The result is music that feels like it's floating — technically good, visually polished, but missing the thing that makes someone stop scrolling and actually listen.
That thing is identity. And identity isn't something you design. It's something you excavate.
Your archetype already exists. It's in the stories you keep writing, the sounds you keep coming back to, the feelings you want your audience to walk away with. The work isn't creating it. The work is getting honest enough to let it surface — and then being brave enough to commit to it fully.
The artists who've done that haven't had easier paths than you. Most of them had harder ones. Here's what their stories actually teach us.
SZA: The Artist Who Had to Lose Control to Find It
Before Ctrl was one of the most important R&B albums of the decade, it was three years of delays, 200 unfinished songs, a hostile relationship with her label, and a hard drive that her label eventually had to physically take from her to force the album out.
SZA had signed to TDE — Kendrick Lamar's label — in 2013. She had real talent. She had the co-signs. She had written for Beyoncé and Rihanna. And she still couldn't finish her own album because she couldn't figure out who she was in it.
"I just kept moving shit around," she said. "I was choosing from 150, 200 songs, so I'm just like, who knows what's good anymore?"
The paralysis wasn't laziness. It was identity confusion. She was trying to make music that satisfied everyone — the label, the industry, the expectations that had built up around her — instead of music that was completely, honestly hers.
When Ctrl finally came out, it was raw, vulnerable, and deeply personal — about insecurity, relationships, and the experience of being a young woman figuring herself out in real time. It was the opposite of calculated. And it became a classic.
The lesson isn't that chaos leads to greatness. It's that when SZA stopped trying to control how she was perceived and started writing music that was true to her actual experience, everything unlocked. Her archetype — the Honest Dreamer, the Vulnerable Truth-Teller — had been there the whole time. She just needed to stop editing it for the room.
The question for you: What are you editing out of your music because you're afraid of how it'll land? That's usually the most important part.
Chappell Roan: Signed, Dropped, and Still Herself
Chappell Roan was signed to Atlantic Records at 17 after a label scout found a song she'd uploaded to YouTube during summer camp in Missouri. Five years later, she was dropped. No major album. No breakthrough moment. Just the end of a deal and the question of what comes next.
What came next was years of side hustles, independent releases, and the slow, patient work of building something that was completely hers. She released Pink Pony Club independently in 2020 — a synth-pop anthem about a small-town girl dreaming of dancing at a club in Los Angeles. It was specific, theatrical, and openly queer at a time when none of those things were guaranteed to help her career.
She didn't adjust the vision to fit a safer market. She went further into it.
By the time she headlined Coachella in 2024, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess had been out for almost a year without mainstream traction. The tour was booked at small venues. Then everything accelerated — not because she pivoted, but because she had built something so specific and so fully realized that when people found it, they couldn't stop talking about it.
"The second that I took myself not seriously is when things started working," she said.
Her archetype — the Theatrical Storyteller, the Femme Rebel — didn't come from a branding session. It came from a girl from Missouri who felt out of place everywhere she grew up and turned that into the most defining creative vision in pop music right now.
The question for you: What part of your experience feels too specific, too local, too niche to build a career around? That's usually exactly what makes it universal.
Doechii: Built in the Dark Before Anyone Was Watching
Before Doechii was a Grammy winner with a Kendrick Lamar co-sign and a critically acclaimed debut album, she was a rapper from Tampa, Florida grinding in a scene that most of the industry wasn't paying attention to.
She didn't have a major platform. She didn't have a viral moment. She had a clear, sharp sense of who she was — charismatic, theatrical, technically skilled, and completely unwilling to shrink it — and she kept showing up with that energy whether the room was full or empty.
When Alligator Bites Never Heal arrived, it didn't feel like a debut. It felt like an artist who had been rehearsing for this moment for years, because she had. The confidence, the range, the persona — none of it was manufactured for the album cycle. It was the same energy she'd had all along, finally reaching the audience it deserved.
Doechii's archetype — the Confident Shapeshifter, the Theatrical Disruptor — wasn't built for the spotlight. It was built in the dark, long before the spotlight arrived. And that's why it's so solid now. You can't fake that kind of groundedness.
The question for you: Are you building your identity because people are watching, or because it's who you actually are when nobody is?
How to Find Yours: The Process
These three artists arrived at their archetypes differently — one through forced honesty, one through years of independent work, one through consistency before anyone was paying attention. But all of them followed the same underlying path: they got honest about who they were, stopped editing it for the room, and committed to it completely.
Here's how to start that process yourself.
Start with your story, not your sound. Before you think about genre or aesthetic, ask yourself: what story am I actually telling? What experiences shaped how I see the world? What do I want my audience to feel or understand that they might not feel anywhere else? Your sound will follow your story. It almost always does.
Build a mood board without limits. Collect images, colors, films, album covers, fashion, architecture — anything that makes you feel something. Don't filter it. Don't ask whether it fits your brand. Just collect what resonates. Then step back and look for patterns. The patterns are telling you something.
Use the tools that already exist. The 16Personalities test at 16personalities.com helps you understand how you engage with the world. The Enneagram at enneagramtest.com reveals your core motivations and fears — both of which show up in your music whether you intend them to or not. The Brand Archetype Quiz from Kaye Putnam at kayeputnam.com helps translate personal identity into a creative framework. None of these tell you who to be. They reflect back what's already there.
Write your archetype statement. Once you've done the reflection, put it into one sentence: "I am [archetype] — an artist who [purpose] for an audience who [need]." Keep it honest and keep it specific. This becomes the anchor for every creative decision you make — the thing you come back to when you're not sure if something belongs in your world or not.
Give it a seven-day test. On day one, share something that captures your core story — even just a caption or a short video. On day two, update your bio to reflect who you actually are right now. On day three, build a playlist that sounds like your artistic identity. On day four, capture an image that matches your aesthetic vision. On day five, ask your audience what resonates most with them about your work. On day six, explain your creative process out loud — a live session, a voice note, a TikTok. On day seven, look back and note what felt most true. That's the signal.
Your Archetype Is Already There
SZA didn't invent her vulnerability. Chappell Roan didn't invent her theatricality. Doechii didn't invent her confidence. They uncovered what was already there, committed to it, and refused to water it down.
Your archetype isn't something you'll find by studying what's working right now. It's something you'll find by getting quiet enough to hear what's been true about you all along — and brave enough to build around it.
That's where every real career starts.
Read next: 10 Secrets to Building a Sustainable Music Career →
---
Ready to build around who you actually are? Submit your music to BR Marketing Group →
Comments