User:Ezequielvanegas/sandbox

= Ezequiel Vanegas = Ezequiel Vanegas is a 17-year-old alternative rock artist from the DMV area based in Western Maryland. He is known for having many unique musical styles across his music. His upcoming debut album, Hopeless Lover, is heavily influenced by acts included but not limited to Blink-182, Green Day, The Kid LAROI, Powfu, Chase Atlantic and Cigarettes After Sex. He mentions that the reason his music does not fit strictly with one genre is so that way his music can be listened to in any emotion, mood, event, and situation.

As of right now, Ezequiel Vanegas has released one mixtape album, Ten, one ep, the b-sides, one compilation, For The Valentine Day Loners, and a few singles.

= Early life = Ezequiel was born in Portsmouth, Virginia to two military parents, Carolina Toscano and Abraham Vanegas. From there, he lived in Norfolk, Virginia until he was 6 and later on moved to Silver Spring where he attended Sligo Creek Elementary School.

Throughout car rides with his mom, she would always play music from acts like Backstreet Boys, Mariah Carey, and Spice Girls. These car rides along with his passion for Disney movies and Thomas the Train inspired him to start singing as a child. Although he was a shy child, he always wanted to sing and it was when he watched the "Baby" music video by Justin Bieber where he dreamed to be a pop star just like his idol. He was such a big fan of Justin Bieber that he performed it for his fourth grade karaoke party.

Up until fourth grade, he heavily enjoyed pop music until he moved to another part of Silver Spring and attended Forest Knolls Elementary School. There he discovered a liking for rap music which grew heavily once he attended middle school at Silver Spring International which included acts of Drake, Post Malone, XXXTentacion, Juice Wrld, Travis Scott, and it rekindled a love for one of his present biggest idols, Eminem, that was previously shown to him from his uncles at the age of four.

During his eighth grade year, he entered the pandemic and after a incident that affected his views on rap music for a long while, he turned to indie pop with acts like Jeremy Zucker and blackbear and pop punk with acts like Machine Gun Kelly, Paramore, and Blink-182 and he started making music daily using Garageband.

= Career =

Early career
Around his seventh grade and eighth grade year, he was heavily influenced by the emo rap scene with acts of XXXTentacion, Juice Wrld, Post Malone, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Xan, Lil Peep, and The Kid LAROI. The latter two he despised but as time went on he grew so fond it later became one his influences to his present music. With this heavy influence of the emo rap scene, along with peer pressure, he decided to start rapping as an output for his feelings. He went under the moniker of Lil Chase, later Yung Chase, to sort of mimic the "Lil" part of every rapper and to show his love for his all-time favorite TikTokker, Chase Hudson, better known as Lil Huddy (presently just Huddy). Although never truly releasing any music or performing live at any shows, he used to make a lot of (now deleted) emo rap beats with his acoustic guitar on his iPhone using GarageBand and he would leak them on his Snapchat story. With the amount of praise he was getting from his friends or random people for the love of his beats, he gained a love for producing and wanted to take it seriously. He also gained a love for songwriting and dabbled in that, despite openly admitting he is not the greatest at it. In July 2020, he had a very personal issue he had to deal with which involved him dropping the moniker, Lil Chase, dropping rap music, and leaving social media for about a year. Throughout the next month while listening to the radio, he came across two songs that he enjoyed; supercuts by Jeremy Zucker and hot girl bummer by blackbear. These two songs had a great production, great instrumentation, and great lyrics that he felt was relatable to him. After hearing those two songs, he listened to those two artists more and became big fans of both of them, blackbear having a bit more love. With these two artists in mind, he started to make music inspired by both of them and started to love lowercase stylization for all of his titles because of Jeremy Zucker's album, love is not dying. From them, he started to branch out to artists like Clairo, Rex Orange County, Chelsea Cutler and started to dabble in the indie genre which created his first song, "your love."

2020-2021: "your love" and other projects
In august of 2021, Ezequiel came into contact with a friend of his that he did not visit since he was eight years old. This inspired the creation of his first song, "your love," because when they were younger, she wanted to be with him all the time despite him not wanting to and now the roles were reversed. He sometimes calls it a "crappy love story." Throughout working on solely this song, he came up with an idea for his debut album titled to the girls, part 1 and 2, a (now-deleted) concept album where he would give a message to every girl that had a significant romantic part in his life and where he would release part 1 and 2 separately and then together as a double album with "your love" being the first single. He worked on a bunch of other singles including "ice," "replace," and "mystery girl." The latter would be the only one not presently deleted and futurely released on Ezequiel Vanegas' first ep, the b-sides. Throughout this time, he also wanted to create consistent albums with different genres but with the same constant idea of him being a kid that likes multiple genres. This album titles included; "Punk Kid," "Rap Kid," and "Country Kid." Even though the ideas were scrapped in the end, we can see how much of a unique catalog Ezequiel was thinking of make his discography. It was also at this time where Ezequiel found his love for pop punk thanks to blackbear and to Machine Gun Kelly's pop punk album, Tickets to My Downfall so his sound was slightly changing. "Your love" was released May 18th 2021 exclusively on SoundCloud and it marked what he likes to call his "first step" to being a successful musician and reaching the level of stardom that his first idol, Justin Bieber, acquired. After he released "your love" on SoundCloud, he later released a few covers to not leave his profile boring, these covers were "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, "The Eulogy of You and Me" by Huddy and "Topanga" by Noah Cyrus. The latter performed live in a youtube stream for his ten viewers. He stopped making music for a few months to focus on his last few months of online freshman year and to prepare his move to Poolesville, Maryland.

2021-2023: Ten and other projects
Once he arrived to Poolesville, Maryland, he wasted no time getting back on music. What helped him even more was a bet put by his new friend to make an album of ten songs that blow up and end up having more then 1,000 streams combined all for ten dollars. This inspired his mixtape album and although in the end, he lost the bet and was not able to complete it, he released his first single, "drama queen," to Soundcloud on April 20, 2022, and then to streaming services August, 17, 2022 and although his song did not blow up like he wanted to, it gave him a massive presence at his school. This also allowed him to create his next major single, "perfect," released to Soundcloud on August 4th 2022 and then to streaming services on August 20, 2022. After finally releasing Ten on December 17, 2022 to all major streaming services. After releasing Ten, he was able to perform drama queen at his school talent show, create a b-sides ep, and set the foundation for his upcoming music career.

2023-2024: Doll Apartments, Hopeless Lover and other projects
After releasing Ten, Ezequiel Vanegas wanted to work on an album that had soley pop punk or alt-rock influences. With the help of one of his close friends, he was able to create the idea of his debut album Hopeless Lover, an album that revolves around the idea of him being a lover boy but failing miserably at it resulting in a hopeless love life. This album has influences of Green Day, Blink-182, and Chase Atlantic along with Powfu and The Kid LAROI. Around this time, he also joined the band Doll Apartments, a alt-rock band based in Rockville, Maryland with many influences from Blink-182 to Slipknot. Joining this band influenced his music production and especially his songwriting which can be proven in his album, Hopeless Lover. Along with Hopeless Lover, he also released a few eps including a Christmas EP, which includes a cover of Happy Holidays, You Bastard by Blink-182 and Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass by All Time Low, and an EP titled, part 1: church girl that kicks off another idea for a project he has had since he first started his music career back in 2020. This ep also marks his switch from pop-punk to just general alternative rock.

2024-present: EUPHORIC and others
After Hopeless Lover, Part 1: church girl, and Part 2: butterfly effect, his sound has gone from a pop-punk sound to an overall alternative rock sound. Although switching sounds, he always makes sure to include a pop-punk style song or cover in his projects or shows to let the audience know that although the pop punk sound died for the most part in his discography, the love for pop punk will never cease. We get a taste of this new sound in Part 2: butterfly effect where he takes influence from the self-titled Blink-182 album and Box Car Racer as well as his new project, EUPHORIC. After listening to Travis Scott's ASTROWORLD and most of Chase Atlantic's discography along with the Weeknd's, he wanted to capture the same essence with EUPHORIC in a way that he mentions it "makes you feel like floating or getting hype and mosh pitting." He mentions although Chase Atlantic has been one of his great influences throughout his music career, in EUPHORIC, they had a greater influence as he enjoyed the fact that they are able to incorporate emo rock and pop punk with alternative pop, r&b, and hip hop to create a certain unique sound that he enjoys listening to. With many beat switches, seamless transitions, simple yet mesmerizing guitar riffs, and hard hitting drums, Ezequiel hopes EUPHORIC creates a feeling that has never been felt before and another feeling of, well, euphoria. He continues to work on other projects as well, and continues to perform and release music with his band.

Musical style and influences
Ezequiel's musical style is very versatile going from rock to rap to pop to even hints of country and metal. But his main genres that he sticks with are pop-punk, alternative rock, lofi hip hop, and alternative pop. He cites Blink-182, Green Day, Chase Atlantic, and Cigarettes After Sex as his major influences, but he also added Eminem, Powfu, the Kid Laroi, Sum 41, Avril Lavigne, jxdn, Kendrick Lamar, $uicideboy$, and Justin Bieber as just a few of his many other influences. He has also stated that although he's not a fan of Taylor Swift, he enjoys her songwriting skills and would one day love to hone it in a song or future project of his.