“Shake it up b***h like Bella Thorne” raps Vayda on “Hood Zendaya,” a single off of her recently released new project, Forrest Gump. And shaking it up is what the Atlanta native is doing down south.

Vayda’s wittiness is not lost on her steadily growing fanbase either. Her whisper-quiet, yet snarky bars are catching folks’ attention in The A and nationally, while her persona is as mysterious as her sound.

The avant-garde rapper often mixes a range of genres as everything from traditional ATL plugg to the sputtering hi-hats of drill and high-BPM backed dance make their way into Forrest Gump’s versatile sonic landscape. Songs like “Tweaker” and single “Adele” prove that out, but if you needed a comp – think of her sound  like an FKA Twigs mixed with early 2010’s and modern-day Jersey club. And really everything in between.

The child of a rapper herself, Vayda says her father imparted some of his talent upon her, but perhaps more than all, it was his love of music that had her wanting to be in the industry since she was little.

“I always knew I wanted to do music because of how listening to music will make me feel good. So from a very young age I was writing raps and making up dances,” she told BET during a recent interview.

Growing up in Atlanta, Vayda notes that the city’s landscape and tough lessons prepared her to succeed anywhere. “It made me smart like I feel safe wherever I go because I survived Atlanta,” she says. “In high school I would be on Twitter selling beats. If people wanted to rap on my beats, I'd give it to all my friends in high school. I always had a hustler mentality just being from Atlanta.”

Above all, perhaps, is Vayda’s zeal to be “angry” in her latest music. The Tom Hanks-led movie title isn’t simply a funny name to catch perspective fans’ attention. Rather, it’s how she sees herself in society with a lot of past trauma, requiring her to cut off some of her “fake friends” in the process.

“The content, It's kind of angry but I added some soft songs in there too,” she explains. “Forrest Gump was taken advantage of the whole entire movie, but he still was like a millionaire though. He still had more money than everybody that was taking advantage of him, and he was still smart even though people thought he was slow.” 

All of her most recent success wasn’t without personal reflection, however. In 2019, around the time when she began taking rapping and producing more seriously, Vayda details how her lifestyle was at odds with making a music career shake. Daily partying, neglecting her real friends, and living at her grandmother’s house were weighing down her potential. But then 2020 came around – and like so many other artists – made her stop and think about where she was with her career.

“I just like started paying attention, and I was like, There's nobody calling me. I'm always calling people,” she says. “And I was just like, You know what, it's not even worth having [those people] around at this point. I feel if you say no to stuff God is gonna give you stuff that's better. Stuff that's not for you, God's going to turn around and give you something that's better and more for you.”

Just wrapping up a couple of opening performances at spot dates with Detroit rapper Veeze, Vayda is currently experiencing the best state of her career so far. She’s caught the attention of her hometown newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who had her grace their cover while GRAMMY.com labeled her “at the forefront” of the south’s newest sound. With her latest project just released to close out 2023, next year will be one of growth for the young rapper.

“I started thinking about Bella Thorne and how she had that Disney special,” she explains of her “Hood Zendaya bar referenced at the top. “Each line kind of led up to the next and I was like, oh yeah, Bella Thorne has this last thing. So I was like, let's shake it up because shake it up the show. Let's take a look like Bella Thorne. I'm feeling euphoria.” 

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