Brilliance
Brilliance (aka Mike Sundberg), the young Motor City-made rap artist whose debut single “Shades Down” became a Detroit radio and Internet sensation and whose new jam “Beautiful in Every Way” is gathering serious steam, has parlayed his work ethic, determination and natural talent into the bright light of stardom. He has attracted a management team that includes Brad Kallen, son of Detroit’s internationally renowned boxing manager Jackie Kallen, and has become the latest studio protégé of Jeff Bass, the Grammy- and Academy Award-winning producer famed for his work with Eminem and the smash single “Lose Yourself.”
Brilliance is a hip-hop performer from Detroit, who’s working with Jeff Bass. He couldn’t avoid the comparisons if he tried.
“It’s always come up, even though he was just beginning to break out when I started,”
Brilliance says. “I’ve always tried to stay in my own lane, do my own thing, as far as content and that stuff. I’m not trying to follow in his shoes or emulate his sound or anything like that. Yeah, those comparisons are going to come, but I really don’t let them bother me at all. If anything, it’s more motivation to prove people wrong. ‘Oh, you didn’t think I could do it because he did it?’ I want to kind of rub their faces in it.”
Bass – who, like any truly creative mastermind, never wants to repeat himself – sees obvious distinctions. “He’s much different from Eminem,” says Bass, whose son, Jake, is playing keyboards for Brilliance and acting as associate producer. “He’s more on the pop side of things. He appeals to all ages, with positive lyrics, which is unique today for someone in his 20s.”
Brilliance, who was given two tracks by Bass to prove his ability before the producer even would agree to talk to him, says, “It’s a great chemistry that we have going on, man. It’s like everything he plays, no matter what the track sounds like or what feel it gives you, I’m writing to that feel. We have fresh new songs with Jeff that are incredible. I mean, I love every one of them. We’ve been arguing back and forth about which ones are our favorites, and everybody has a different one, which is a good problem to have.
“Also, I have like nine years of training in studios all over the place,” he adds. “My first producer, Asar (the Detroiter known for his work with Hype and Royce da 5’9”), took me on when I was 16 and I worked with him for years. I moved out to LA and recorded there for a while, been to New York. So I’ve had a lot of practice, and I think that really helped. Jeff was really impressed with the way I recorded and just nailed it. Basically all the connections I’ve made are just off people believing in me, my sound and my talent. That’s really what drives me.”
That drive began as a child, when he began learning piano. At the age of 13, he had progressed to playing blues guitar. “I listened to BB King, John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, all those guys,” says Brilliance, who cites his wide-ranging musical influences from Eric Clapton to Tupac Shakur. By 16, “the music my peers were listening to, you know, at the middle school and high school dances, probably got me into rap. I started freestyling, but I never narrowed my genre down to just one type of music. It was like everything just kind of tied into each other.”
Entering a freestyle battle at a local radio station, Channel 95.5, “I was the champ for like three weeks running,” he recalls. “Eventually they just asked me to start coming to hang out there. ‘No one can beat you, why don’t you just come by the show?’” He began networking with all the DJs at the station, as well as the other R&B and hip-hop stations in the city. Through his singular perseverance, Brilliance got “Shades Down” played on three Detroit stations simultaneously as an independent release.
During all this, he also was working as a graphic designer for the local entertainment magazine Real Detroit Weekly and freelancing on the side creating concert flyers. “The graphic design thing helped my shameless self-promotion,” he says with a laugh. “In the flyer business I met all the DJs, club owners, club managers, producers, all bringing me in to design their stuff. They were like, ‘Man, you do music, too?’ thinking I was doing it on the side, when actually I was doing graphic design on the side. Once people heard that I was making music also, they were even more supportive.”
For someone who once named himself Pestilence in his teens as an underground MC, Brilliance admits his soaring career potential has been dazzling, even to himself. “Yeah, it’s definitely exciting,” he says, “but more motivating than anything, just to keep going. Because I could have stopped when I had one song on the radio, gotten lazy and said, ‘Aw, I got my music played on the air.’ But my thing is, I raised the bar that time, now the bar is higher and I have so much more room to go. You can’t get distracted, you’ve got to stay humble. What it adds up to is, I’m more excited than ever and trying to be as productive as possible.”
Now that the ball is rolling at top speed, Brilliance’s five-year plan is “to have three or four albums out by then. Jeff says once you get a deal you’ve got to put out an album every 18 months. Hopefully they’re successful, and I’m on the road and touring.
“Eventually I’d like to establish myself as an artist and get my music out, but I also want to get my music into films and TV and all that stuff, and piggyback into getting into movies myself. I consider myself not just a rapper or an MC. I’m an all-around artist – recording artist, graphic artist, performing artist. I’ve always liked expressing myself in different ways, so the more I can do that, it’s awesome.”