You may have heard of a little something-something called the #EgoChallenge. It was a challenge where you rapped about the things that make you, you, over Beyoncé’s “Ego” track. It got thousands of people creating their own version including The Color Purple actress Cynthia Erivo, Orange is the New Black star Danielle Brooks, even the ladies of The Real spit a few rhymes. The originator? 19-year-old Jane Oranika from Montgomery, Alabama.
Last week, I was blessed with the opportunity to chat with Jane about where the #EgoChallenge idea came from, self-love, and creating your own space when society tries to box you in.
You originated the Ego Challenge. Where did this idea stem from?
Honestly, it was kind of just like a random thing. I put out music on a daily basis, and I had gone through a period where I was kind of, I don’t know. Sad I guess? I was really sad for like three days and really down on myself for some reason. I don’t know, it happens. Eventually, I was like, “You know what? Girl, get up. Do something with your life. Be positive.” I ended up making myself a cup of tea, and I was like, “Whenever I finish this, I’m going to go upstairs and I’m going to write something, that means something.” I just started playing a whole bunch of old beats because they resonate more with me and heard the Ego beat. I mean subconsciously based on how I was feeling before, I decided to write something that was kind of uplifting. I thought it would be cool if other people did the same thing because it changed my mood dramatically. I was like, “People need a little bit of that in their lives, a little bit of love.”
Yeah. When I first actually saw it, I was like, “Oh my God, who is this girl?” I actually saw it on someone else’s page. It wasn’t even on your page, so I liked it and commented. Then I realized like, “Wait, this isn’t her. Hold on.” I am not a good rapper at all, like I don’t have that skill, but I was like, “I should make one. This is just so tempting.” You’re right, it was very uplifting and a lot of people further joined in including Danielle Brooks. How did that feel, and were you taken aback by that?
I was shook really, to be honest. It took a minute for the challenge to actually pick up which is crazy. People thing I posted it and then it went viral. That’s not the case. The video sat there for like a day and a half I think, and it had a cool response. People were retweeting it, but no one had joined it. It was kind of just a thing that was being passed around. I was like, “Cool.” I didn’t do it for myself to get recognized, so I was kind of like, “Aw, I wish people would join in.” Then after like a day for some reason, it just picked up. To see Danielle do it, Cynthia Erivo do it, it was not strange but this weird, surreal feeling like, “Wow, people actually got the point of it and not just people who are like me, just chilling here. People who have actual platforms and big voices.” That’s the point of it. It was a good feeling. I was happy, I was happy.
Besides songwriting, what other artistic mediums do you work with?
I literally do everything because I have the attention span of a squirrel. I paint. I used to make YouTube videos on just dumb things, just really dumb stuff. Yeah, paint, I do spoken word poetry, songwriting. I play guitar. I literally do too much, to be honest, like I do the most.
That’s good though. That’s actually a very rare trait to be able to do things like that and do it well, not just, “Oh, I can strum a few chords.” Well, you’re not playing the guitar; you’re strumming a few chords, you know what I mean? It’s actually something to be very proud of.
(laughs) Well, thank you.
So who are some of your artistic inspirations?
Well currently, Chance, he’s everything to me. He’s been everything for a minute, but the fact that he stayed independent for so long and is so successful, it’s so refreshing to see. I love that. I love it a lot because that’s what I want to do with my career. I don’t necessarily want to sign a deal. Frida Kahlo when it comes to artistic mediums. I’m obsessed with her because she was just a G, like she was a thug. She was great. She was. Bad Bitch goals, like I really want to be her. Yeah, Frida Kahlo. There’s so many. My best friend’s a spoken word artist. Her name is Luki, but she inspires me a lot. Her poems are great. To be able to know the reality behind people’s artwork and she’s my best friend, I get to see that really often. To hear the words that are formed from the situations. You wouldn’t think that people would be able to take terrible situations and make them so beautiful and make it sound so effortless. Yeah, as corny as she sounds, she’s literally one of my inspirations.
Yeah, she’s great. I used to be a really big fan of Wale, like was for a minute. We’re actually good friends. Him, he was cool. I think that’s it, honestly. J. Cole because he’s also amazing. He’s just a cool guy, but yeah. Those are basically all my inspirations. There’s so many that I could say, but those are the ones that stand out to begin with.
Many of your posts talk about self-love and acceptance. Has this been something you’ve been so confident with or did you have to learn it over time?
I feel like my story’s kind of weird because there’s never been a moment in time where I just sink back unless I’m repressing it. I can’t think back to a point where I didn’t love myself. There’s been times were I’d be like, “Oh, I want to change this” and it wouldn’t necessarily be because I wanted to change it; it would be because someone else said something, but it resulted in low self-esteem. I feel like I’ve fought it for so long. I’ve fought to never be the person who doesn’t love themselves based on that for so long. And it’s difficult to do that that because after a while, I mean I’m still in young adulthood, but when I reached this point, now nothing necessarily phases me. It’s almost kind of like a “fake it ’til you make it” type deal. I didn’t realize that my confidence was real up until the point where I had to sit back and think like, “Actually, I don’t dislike myself.” I try to normalize it now because people are always like, “How did you get so confident?” I’m like, “Honestly, there’s not a way to do it. Just love yourself, for real, because you’re the only person that you’ll ever know as well as you do.”
So you live in Alabama? Is this where you grew up?
Yes it is, ugh.
Wait, so I was born in Alabama and I was raised in Texas.
Oh, dope. I was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama. I’ve been here since I exited the womb.
Are there things about Alabama that you hold dear? For me, as much as I will not move back to Houston and live there, no one can come at me and tell me that Houston isn’t amazing. You know what I mean? There’s like a pride that I have and a love that I’m like, “No no no, then you don’t know Houston. You didn’t go to Houston. Forget it.”
It’s complicated, it’s really complicated. I feel like a lot of the solidarity that’s here is based on the fact that everyone wants to leave. It’s funny, but at the same time it’s home. Everything that I am, like I was never influenced from another place so I have to attribute it to where I grew up. Even if the environment was somewhere I wish I would’ve left, even though it’s not the ideal place for me to live, it still created this drive in me to be the artist that I am and the person that I am. I hold that dear. It’s very slow-paced here. Just really chill and laid back, and everyone just does their own thing. If I were to ever leave, which I do plan on doing definitely, and someone were to be like, “Oh, Montgomery’s terrible,” I’d have to defend it because this is home and it made me. It can’t be as terrible as I say it is.
It’s almost like that family member that everyone hates, but if someone else talks about them, you’re like, “Excuse me, don’t come sideways. Nah.”
Right, right. So true. I’m sure you’re getting lots of DMs and emails. Have there been any that have floored you or touched you in a way that you didn’t think your artistry could touch someone?
There’s been a few. In fact, all of them kind of do. That sounds so corny and lame of course to say in an interview, but no, they kind of all do because nothing that I do or have done has been expected to yield the result that it does. Even when I did the Ego Challenge, it was just kind of something that I wanted everyone to partake in because of course, you need self-love but to hear people say things like, “Oh, I used to hate my gap and when you said that line about the gap, it resonated with me,” stuff like that. It touches me because I knew we needed self-love, but I didn’t know it was that simple that you could just state that you love yourself and you state that you love something that other people would consider a flaw, and it would just light that random spark for someone else to consider themselves beautiful. I don’t know. They all have that effect on me.
At 19, you have so much ahead of you. Do you know where you’d like to go from here?
Like I do, I have plenty of ideas I would like to get done, but honestly I’m just leaving it all up to God because I been thought I knew where I was going. I didn’t foresee anything, like none of this happening. Of course I want to be an artist and a musician. That’s my actual dream. I’ve been wanting to do that since I was like two, so that’s something I want to accomplish. I definitely want to just create this hub of a place for people who feel like they can’t do anything or feel like they can’t get their dreams done, or think that something’s holding them back whether it be society’s perception of beauty. I want to create a doorway for them to be successful as well. I don’t know, I just want to use whatever platforms that I do gain or maintain in the future to help other people.
Is there anything that you want to tell people? A message that you feel that isn’t really ever addressed either in the media or on social media platforms that you’ve seen and been like, “Oh that irks me so badly, but why is no one talking about it?”
There’s so much. This is a loaded question. There’s a lot. If we’re staying on the topic of body positivity, I feel like for a lot of women they feel like in order to be someone who’s considered to accept themselves, they have to use derogatory terms for themselves. What I mean by that is a lot of people like the word “fat.” They say it because it makes them feel like they’re taking back the insult, which I understand completely. It’s been done many times in history, especially with the n-word and a lot of other terms that are kind of offensive. I know that as a woman, I’m plus-sized, I don’t like that word simply because it’s a descriptor and no one walks around like, “Oh, brown-head women, take back the,” know what I mean? It’s not that deep to me. I feel that positivity, when it comes to your body it doesn’t have to come in the form of you always calling attention to things that other people would consider flaws. If you don’t consider them a flaw, you don’t think about them like that. I know when I get tagged in a lot of stuff, they’ll be like, “Oh, plus-sized rapper.” I’m like, “Can I just be a rapper?”
It’s been pretty cool with a lot of other publications. They’re respectful of it and they’re just like, “Oh, musician,” or, “Young woman.” I know that there’s been other blogs that have been like, “Oh yeah, fat girls rock.” I’m like, “Can we, can we just quit with the tags?” I just want people to know even if you do love yourself, you don’t necessarily have to rock the labels that other people give you if you’re uncomfortable with it. You don’t have to be that person who’s like, “Well yeah, I’m plus-sized, I address it.” Just be you. If that’s a descriptor of yours, cool, but that’s not all you are and it’s not your identity.
I love that, so dope. I love it. This is awesome. Oh my God, I’m so excited about it. Two of my friends, they have a podcast called The Black Joy Mixtape. It’s so good, and they talk about things that I guess in society we don’t ever really talk about. For instance, I was looking online the other day and I realized a lot of times, there’s aren’t many people that look like me. I didn’t notice that until recently, and I’m 30. I just turned 30 and I realized that so late in life, so I can’t imagine people who are younger and they’re more mindful and they’re very cognizant of these things. With my friends’ mixtape, listening to them, it’s sort of like, “Wait, there are people like me. If I feel that there’s no space for me, then I should create a space for people like me.” You know what I mean?
Definitely. That’s always been my mantra. As much as I would love force media to be inclusive and represent people like me, if I have that capability, small platform or large, I still should do it. I don’t know, that’s what I want my career to be about. I look at people like Missy Elliot and when it comes to the standard, people who look like her. Even at that time, there weren’t very many tomboy-ish girls who were bigger and not even rough around the edges, but just bold in the way that they approach things. She created that space for her. She kind of opened the door for people like me to be here. Representation and creating your own lane, I guess I should say, is super important.
I think what’s crazy too is that now that Missy has come back, there are people who don’t really know about her. They’re like, “Oh, it’s already been done before.” I’m like, “No no no, Missy has been doing this.” Right. People need to be applauding her for creating these areas. I feel as if everyone always felt like, “Oh, if you’re a tomboy and you’re heavy, then you’re a lesbian.” You’re kind of like, “No, that’s not how it works. I just don’t like wearing heels or super femme clothing. Dressing like this makes me feel femme and beautiful.”
You know what sucks though? You know what’s actually terrible? I’m bisexual, which is something I’m really open about, but the label. People assume that you dressed like someone considered “butch”, “x, y, z,” like, “Oh yeah, you’re a lesbian.” Especially because that’s actually my style, but people try to use that and gauge what I would like based on how I dress. I’m like, “If I wore a skirt or a dress, I would still be attracted to women.” People’s perception of what this type of person is supposed to look like is just absurd these days. I’m glad Missy broke that. She literally is just like, “Nah, y’all aren’t going to box me in.”
Yeah, I love that so much. This is awesome. Oh wait, you mentioned you’re bisexual. My question is have you ever felt isolated in Alabama because of that?
I can say like in high school, kind of sort of because that’s the time where everyone’s figuring themselves out. I feel like area kind of has to do with it, but also just societal issues in general. For young queer kids, you don’t necessarily get the whole “coming of age” dating experience that everyone else has because it was so taboo, even up until a few years ago. Where everyone’s figuring out what kind of guy they like, me being bisexual, there was never a time where I could just be like, “Oh, well let me just date a girl openly in Montgomery, Alabama.” It was never a thing. Currently, I don’t hold any resentment about it because it’s whatever, it is what it is, but it is something that when I think back, it’s like, “Wow, if I had lived somewhere like California.” I knew myself very early on. I’d be able to experiment and figure other things out about myself, but it is what it is.