B.W.D: Interview w/ Sebastian Mikael x Tiffney Cambridge

While many artists spend a lifetime chasing “international status,” 24-year-old classically trained singer-songwriter-musician Sebastian Mikael is already starting his career where others can only hope to finish. Born in Sweden to a Swedish father and Ethiopian mother, Sebastian Mikael—formerly known as De-Lor (which is French for “of gold”)—was raised in a diverse household that was enriched by music. While no one in his family ever made music professionally, Sebastian Mikael inherited his passion for music from his father and the sounds he grew up listening to inspired him to find out what was going on behind the music.

Feeling a glass ceiling approaching in Sweden, Sebastian Mikael set his sights on America and enrolled at California’s Musicians Institute to study audio engineering in 2008. After living in California for two years, he relocated to Boston in 2010 to attend Berklee College of Music. While a student at Berklee, Sebastian was signed by Slip-N-Slide Records CEO Ted Lucas and in late 2011 he released his first mixtape, J’Adore, which received rave reviews from his steadily growing fan base. His breakthrough video single, “Beautiful Life,” in which he sings an inspirational message about appreciating life, captures the essence of Sebastian Mikael’s music as a whole. “My lyrical content is not always about love, but what we go through and feel in life,” he sa