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19-year-old Parisalexa is gearing up to take the music world by storm

With over 150,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, this Seattleite is building a nationwide audience

Dan Ray August 8, 2018
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19-year-old Parisalexa is gearing up to take the music world by storm August 8, 2018

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Parisalexa onstage at CHBP 2018. // Photo by Dan Ray

Parisalexa has the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen. Looking up at her onstage during her Capitol Hill Block Party set, it’s hard not to be mesmerized by her beauty and consumed by the mystery of if she’s wearing highlighter or if she’s just a magical goddess that glows in the sun. Probably the latter, but it’s too close to call.

The 19-year-old native Seattleite shot onto the national music scene when her track “Ballin” was picked for Spotfy’s Fresh Finds playlist in April of this year, which she also graced the cover of. Now, Parisalexa has over 150,000 Spotify monthly listeners from across the country: she said Seattle is actually her third-largest fan base, after New York and LA.

But, that doesn’t mean she’s planning on abandoning her Emerald City roots anytime soon. She currently lives at home with her parents, but she’s using her music to propel her into independent financial stability.

“I’m in this limbo process of like, oh I’m making money enough to live and support myself while I’m at home, but being a single person in Seattle, that’s the leap that I’m kind of making right now,” she said. “It’s scary and daunting, but it’s really exciting. Hopefully within the next year I’ll have my own space.”

In an age where more young adults than ever are living at home with their parents — whether out of necessity or choice — it’s quite impressive that this not-even-20-year-old is already gearing up to be able to support herself through music.

“I’m very fortunate that I’m young, and I know that some people don’t have this opportunity,” she said. “That’s another thing that drives me to be financially stable —  so that I can make way for people that aren’t and for artists that want to make this their career.”

It’s partly that attitude (the other part is her radiant complexion) that makes this young R&B artist so compelling. Her desire to help others and constant recognition of others’ contributions to her journey is readily apparent within minutes of talking to her.

“My musical journey has been kind of charted for me. Some stuff has happened along the way that’s just genuinely eerie the way that it comes about. It has nothing to do with me. I think I’m very uninvolved in this whole thing, honestly,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy though. I feel like I’m just a vessel, and at this point it’s been happening for so long and things have just fallen into my lap that its like, I’m meant to do this for something thats way way bigger than something I can even comprehend. So I’m just gonna follow the path that’s been charted for me.”

While Spotify and good fortune have definitely played a large part in Parisalexa’s success, there’s no denying that she has raw talent. Her tracks play like unfiltered looks into her life and psyche, from the beats she creates herself on her loop station to her unabashedly frank lyrics.

“My artistry is born out of me, and I’m a very genuine, honest, unfiltered type of person, so it only was so appropriate that that’s how the music transitioned,” she said. “And that’s why I’m so meticulous about what I put out: because I want to exude just realness and genuinity, because that’s me.

“I realize that people are listening now, so I have to be meticulous about what I’m inspired by. I cannot be inspired by just myself. I just can’t, like ‘oh my gosh I’m gonna write a whole album about me every day and what I do and the people that I surround myself with and I’m so cool.’ I just can’t do it. I’ve been trying to come up with things that are relatable but that people aren’t talking about or that people haven’t done songs about. Especially being a songwriter and having half my job be listening to modern music, it’s just like, wow like you guys can really make five billion songs about the same thing: we go to the club and the night’s gonnaend so we have to dance like there’s no tomorrow. Wow, we get it.”

Parisalexa still knows how to have fun, though. From “LV,” a track about her Louis Vuitton purse she bought to try to emulate the “swag” of her mom, to “Like Me Better,” in which she talks about how she likes herself better when she’s not with her ex, both of these tracks from FLEXA, her second EP, showcase the wide-eyed, carefree attitude of a young adult.

When she’s not creating music, Parisalexa takes pride in making her own clothes: she custom-bleaches her merch, and she’s working on debuting a clothing line of custom pieces with her friend, Mikey Metgala. She also has goals to start music producing more and to start hosting youth events around the city.

“I’m trying to do everything,” she said. “We will see how many bases I can cover.”

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).