BiB: Nikitaa – From Mumbai to LA: How She Defied Tradition & Broke Into the Music Industry

0:00 What is going on? It is Adam. Welcome back to Bringin It Backwards, a podcast where both legendary and rising artists tell their own personal stories of how they achieve stardom. On this episode, we had a chance to hang out with Nikita over Zoom Video. Nikita was born and raised in Mumbai in India and talks about how she got into music. Comes from a musical family, but no one pursued music professionally in her family. She she's the first to really take a stab at being an artist and doing music full time. Nikita started playing piano and took vocal lessons from a very early age. She also always wrote poetry and started to put the two together, songs and melodies like around 13 years old. At 17, she took a music songwriting workshop and met somebody that had attended the Art Institute in Los Angeles. So she moved from Mumbai to to Los Angeles, went to college there.

0:59 And that's where Nikita started to release her own songs and met a lot of people, producers, started working with other artists. She talked about releasing her first song, Honest, and the success that that song had as well as the next one that she released, Exodus. Both of them got on editorial playlists on DSPs and they've got hundreds of thousands of streams. So she talks about that being a big validating moment for her in her career. She talks about putting out her first album, producing and recording the entire thing herself during the Pandemic. And we hear all about the new album Nikita is putting out with the most recent single being a song called Soldier. You can watch the interview with Nikita on our Facebook page and YouTube channel at Bringin It Backwards.

1:43 It'd be amazing if you subscribe to our channel like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, Twitter and tick tock at Bringin Back Pod. And if you're listening to this on on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Podcasts, please rate and review the podcast. It helps us out tremendously. We'd appreciate your support if you follow and subscribe to our podcasts. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we're bringing. It Backwards with Nikita. You may have heard of HelloFresh. They are the number one meal kit in America, making home cooking easier with with chef crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. But this fall, they're serving up even more to love. This isn't the HelloFresh you remember. It's bigger. HelloFresh has doubled its menu. Now you can choose from 100 options each week, including new seasonal dishes and recipes from around the world. Dig into bigger portions. That'll keep everyone satisfied. HelloFresh is healthier. Feel great with an even healthier menu. Choose from 15 + High Protein Recipes each week with options like grass fed ribeye or lamb chops. HelloFresh now helps you eat greener with new veggie pack recipes that have two or more veggies per dish. HelloFresh is even tastier. Now get steak and seafood recipes delivered every week for no extra cost. Now with three times the seafood options.

3:12 How are you doing, friends? It's Adam from Bringin It Backwards. And we love HelloFresh in this household. We just had the brown sugar bourbon steak with apple pan sauce, mashed potatoes and broccoli. We love it in our house. Love the fact that it comes right to the door. I love. I know exactly which day my box of HelloFresh is coming. It just makes meal planning so easy. Everything comes right in the bag. No trips to the grocery store. I had the sour cream potatoes. I had the steak, chicken stock, brown sugar, broccoli, apple. Everything came right in the bag. So easy. We again, absolutely love hellofresh in our household. And the best way to cook just got better.

4:09 Go to hellofresh.com bibtv10fm now to get 10 free meals and a free breakfast for life. One per box with active subscription free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com bib tv10 to get 10 free meals and free breakfast for life. Bringin it Back.

4:58 Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, thank you. My pleasure. I'm Adam Lisicky. It's very nice to meet you. And this is about you and your journey in music. And we'll talk about The Eiffels, the new record that you just put out. Awesome. Sounds good. Cool. I always kind of start off with your origin story. Tell me about where you were born and raised. Oh, I grew up in Mumbai, India. Wow. Okay. Are you still in India now or. No, no, no. I'm in LA right now. I moved when I was just about to turn 21, like three months shy. Okay.

5:40 Came out here to go to a music school. I went to musicians institute, and then I started working here and I just st right on. So you grew up in Mumbai. What was that like? So different. Yeah, I bet. Very, very different. I feel like the closest that I can get to describing what Bombay is like is like more like New York it's like jungle. Very busy, a lot of hustle and bustle, crazy traffic. Yeah, I just, I loved it there. I love my people, but I also just like, never felt like I fit in. I kind of like always knew that I wanted to, like, leave at least for a little bit and see what it's like somewhere else. Interesting. Did you always want to move to Los Angeles or to move to? No, actually.

6:30 LA was not on my radar until I worked with someone. Her name is Natania Lalvani. She's also an Indian singer songwriter. And she had done this songwriting workshop with my vocal coach at the time. And I took the workshop and she really believed in me. And she was like, I think you should do this and like, apply to music schools. And she had gone to Musicians Institute and so she recommended it. And then up until then, I really didn't. I didn't know too much about LA, really. I have cousins up in the Bay, so I was familiar with like, Northern California, but I. Yeah, I just came in blind into Los Angeles. Oh my gosh, that. Yeah, it must have been quite a shock. Yeah, in some ways, I think so. I feel like on like a general level, coming to America wasn't so much of a shock because I, like I said I visited cousins and stuff before, but coming to LA and then like being in the music scene, it was definitely very different.

7:36 Than what I thought it would be. And I think I was just very like, bright eyed, bushy tailed when I came in. And just like, I. I had not. I was not exposed to the jadedness of LA. Okay. Let's just put it that way. Very cool. Well, what about, as far as music goes, do you come from a musical family at all or musical household? Not really. So my mom's side of the family has a history of being musically inclined, but also has a history of like, not having the opportunity to have pursued it. So. Yeah, so my mom had several uncles and stuff that like, never told their kids that they ever played any instruments. Some of them were like, they played the flute and other things, like, never told their kids, never talked about it and just kind of like buried that side of themselves, even though it was something that they were really passionate about. My own grandmother was really passionate about it, but it never amounted to anything until me.

8:38 So I'm kind of the first in my family to even attempt to do this. Wow. Yeah. Really cool. Were they supportive of that? I think now, yes. But I think, you know, being brown parents living in India, it was very. They were very averse to it. In the beginning because it's such a. It's such a risky life path. Like, you don't know what's gonna happen. You're kind of like, shooting for the impossible, as my manager at least likes to say, like, you're trying to just make a career out of hypotheticals, basically. And. Right. That's not appealing to. To people who are used to, like, hey, steady job, you go to college, get a. Get a ticket. Right. Yeah. Your parents, like, you're moving to LA to pursue something that they're no guarantee behind. Right. But I think underneath that, for my mom especially, like, the main fear was, you know, she watched her own mother kind of. Just.

9:41 You know, break her own heart over the fact that she couldn't pursue music, and she didn't want to see me in that same place. So I think, like, that was like, her number one fear. But once she, like, got past that. She'S been my number one supporter. I could not. For more supportive parents when it comes to, like, music. As far as you learning how to play anything, did you pick up an instrument in an early age or. Yeah, vocal lessons or anything like that? Okay. Yeah, so I. I had both vocal lessons and piano lessons at a very early age. I started vocal lessons when I was four. I started piano when I was five. Wow.

10:25 I badgered my mom until she got me a Indian classical dance teacher. Because one time I saw my cousin on stage doing this particular Indian classical dance form, and I was like, I want to do that. I want to be on that stage. And then I was three at the time, and I badgered her until she found me a teacher. And I did the same thing with music. And my grandma, my mom's mom, she really encouraged my mother with that because she heard me sing one time, and she was like, oh, my God, you have a great voice. And she was a singer too, so she was like, you should get lessons. She needs to get lessons. So. Yeah. That's awesome. That's really cool that your grandma saw that too and was willing to, you know, hey, hey, mom, you need to, you know.

11:12 Yeah. And it was hard too, because back then in, like, suburban Mumbai, which is where I grew up, you didn't really have that. Any piano teachers, keyboard teachers, anything like that. So my mom actually really had to hunt to find someone to teach me. But we did eventually, and I. I kept up lessons from, like, the age of five up until, I think, like 10 or 11, which is when she kind of left Town. And then I just didn't continue. But I still play. I was gonna say, did you keep playing or did you kind of put it down at that? I mean, I'm not like a maestro. Like, I can't, like, play a classical piece for you, but I still play. Like, I produce my own stuff. And knowing how to play the keys. Helpful. Yeah. What about songwriting? Was that something you started doing young as well? I started actually writing poetry when I was really young, so I always loved writing poetry. I think the first one that I wrote was just like, a four liner. I was three. I couldn't even write. It was in Hindi. I had to get my aunt to, like, write it down for me. Wow. Yeah. And that was my first poem. And I actually had several books. I didn't find this out until later, but I used to keep these, like, black diaries filled with poetry. And then when I got old enough, my mom told me that my grandma used to do the same thing. She also had a black diary. No way. Yeah.

12:40 Wow. At what point then do you start taking these poems and realizing, oh, this could be song lyrics? Yeah. I think I was maybe 13 when I kind of started to try to do that. Try being the keyword. It was rough. For several years. Like, it was nothing of note. Nothing. I just. I feel like it takes so long kind of to find your voice and how you want to approach songwriting, and so. And also, I just, you know, it was very daunting because I had no one in my family or like, in close proximity to sort of help me with it. So it was kind of this thing of like, I'm just trying to figure out how to put melody to words. I don't really understand how this works. I don't really have anyone to teach me.

13:26 I was just winging it for a little bit. And it was all in just, like, my little diary that I would put down. And this was in the 2000s, so, like, I couldn't even, like, voice memo anything if I came up with, like, a melody or anything like that. Right. So, yeah, like, trying to remember everything in my head. And then it was finally at. I think I was 17 or 18, that I took that songwriting workshop where I was like, oh, I actually do have a knack for this. I actually do like this. And. And then I couldn't stop. It was. It was addictive. I didn't want to stop. It was everything. It was like therapy. I just couldn't. Everything that I felt good, bad, ugly into a song. So with that, though, like, you know, you take the songwriting workshop. Is that. You said you had a manager. Is that where you met the manager? Was through that, or did that come after years later? After that?

14:19 Oh, no. So I met my manager very recently. Okay. Two years ago. And I'm kind of in, like, an artist development situation with them. But, no, I didn't know them then. I didn't. I didn't have any. Anybody, really. No team, no nothing back then. I was just. Yeah, you just took this class and then what? Finished taking this workshop? Like, you get a couple songs and you're like, let's put them up on the DSPs. Like, how do you start? No, I. Even then, like, I didn't put. Put them up on the Internet. I wrote a couple songs. I. I still knew that I wasn't entirely happy with it. I was like, okay. Like, this is. This is a good start. Now I know I can do this. But I. I still wasn't happy with what I was writing, so I didn't put anything up. I'm. I. I very much am a perfectionist, and I've had to learn to let that go as I've gotten older.

15:10 But back then, I was like, no, no, no. No one can see this. This is for my eyes only. I rarely ever even showed any of it to my parents or to my family. Like, yeah, maybe once that I brought them into my room and was like, here's a song I wrote. Yeah. But I did have a phase where I was. I would just, like, do covers, and that's all I did on, like, Facebook. I would just upload covers. And I had fun with that. And I think that that was my kind of way of trying to figure out what I wanted to sound like before I knew that you can just go into a studio and record a song and all that. I didn't have any of those resources in my hand. I didn't know any people. So I was just kind of just trying to figure it out on my own. Like, one time. Do you know the song Rock it by Beyonce? Yeah. So I. One of the covers that I was attempting to do, I recorded the entire thing acapella, like, everything.

16:09 All the instruments were just. I just used my voice to, like, recreate everything, and I just had fun with it. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. That's really cool. Yeah, you put that up, and I did. I did put it up for a while, but that page is gone. So no. One find it. Yeah, it is somewhere on my hard drive sitting around, but that's about it. When do you get the Courage to put a song out or show people what you were up to as far. As your songwriting went, I feel like. So I went through music school. I did music school even then, was like, kind of figuring out what to do. I feel like when this is in la, then. So you went to LA at that point. Okay. So you meet and you. You get this idea through this songwriting camp you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. So I did. I did the workshop, and then I applied to music school eventually, after I did my bachelor's degree in India. So she's a double graduate. But I did my bachelor's degree and then.

17:15 Applied to music school, came out here, and I think I just dedicated the entire time that I was here to figuring stuff out. And then towards the end of music school, I met someone that I worked with for a really long time. His name is Mukund. We worked on a lot of music together, and he kind of introduced me to one of his mentors, and the three of us worked on a lot of songs together. And that's kind of where I started to, like, flesh out my sound. I think a lot of my influences changed at the time, too. Like, I. I spent a lot of my early years listening to, you know, very, very, very, very mainstream R and B, hip hop, hop. Stuff that crossed over to India. You know, so, like, the Britney Spears and the Beyonces of the world. And then when I moved here, I, you know, my musical palette expanded and I was listening to, like, John Bellion and all kinds of other artists. And so I feel like that kind of opened up my eyes to, like, okay, like, there's a lot of different things that I can do musically. And then my songwriting sort of started to solidify into. The style that I have now with writing. And then I started to take that into the studio and, like, try to get it produced. And. And I think I was just going into sessions for, I want to say, a solid year before I put something out.

18:41 And then we put out Honest. That was the first single that I ever put out. That was the first song that I ever put out, and that did really, really, really well. That was actually a song that we were working on for a different artist for their camp. And. We just ended up keeping it. And back then, like, you didn't have any Spotify for artists. You couldn't pitch to editorials yourself. You didn't have any of that. You just. Right. You just put it up. Yeah. Kind of like nobody was promoting their music, really, on Instagram. At best, you'd just, like, Put up the artwork and be like, hey, my music's out now. You had no way to, like, you know how you. Now you can like, drop the song into your post. Like, not. None of this existed. Right. So I'm just like, I put a song out.

19:30 Yay, cool. And then it got picked up by a few editorial playlists. Again, we didn't try for any of this. We didn't know how. I just put a song out. Happened. Yeah. Yeah. And it just happened. And it did really well. And I think that was the best thing to. For to happen to someone like me. You know, you move from a whole different country, you don't even know if there's a chance of you succeeding in this business. And then something like this happens and it gives you a lot of hope. You're like, okay, well, I'm doing something right. Right. I was gonna say it's definitely a lot of validation, I would imagine. Kind of like, I was kind of resigned. I was kind of resigned to the idea that that might happen because it was like, okay, it's my first song. I can't expect a lot from it. I'm independent. I don't have a label or like a huge marketing budget behind me. I don't have any of these things. It's probably just going to be like a itty bitty thing. And then I remember I put it out, it came out, usually comes out, like with DSPs, they put it out like the night before. Like, yeah. You're like, okay. It wasn't like you put the song out and no one played it. And then, yeah, okay, yeah, that would have probably been harder to continue to be like, do I keep doing this? Do I keep moving forward with it? I put all this time and energy. Kind of like, I was kind of resigned. I was kind of resigned to the idea that that might happen because it was like, okay, it's my first song. I can't expect a lot from it. I'm independent. I don't have a label or like a huge marketing budget behind me. I don't have any of these things. It's probably just going to be like a itty bitty thing. And then I remember I put it out, it came out, usually comes out, like with DSPs, they put it out like the night before. Even though it's set to like a Friday or whatever, it'll come out like Thursday at midnight, usually Eastern time.

20:53 And then I put it out, uploaded on, you know, Instagram and stuff on my stories told. My friends went to sleep, woke up to like, at least five different people texting me and being like, you have 18,000 streams you got on, like, editorial playlist. Are you seeing this? And like, I, I just. It was so cool. It was just so cool to see that. Wow. And so when you go to release your next song, I mean, which also did well. Were you hoping for that same success? Or are you like, hopefully this isn't a fluke, like, hopefully this next one will hit as well, or. I, I feel like it's always such a toss up. I. I kind of Felt like I didn't know which way it was gonna go. Of course, I was hoping and praying that it would do as well. I was like, I got on a few editorial DSPs on them again, but I.

21:43 You can't predict these things. Even more so now with how saturated the market is, like, you really can't predict these things. So I was just kind of like, okay, I'm gonna throw my hands up and whatever happens, happens. But that one did really well, too. That one also got a few editorial playlists. Did really good numbers when it came out. That one's called Exodus. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And you put in a full album out as well, right, a couple years ago? Yeah. Put a full LP out during the pandemic. Produced. Nearly the entire thing myself. No way.

22:24 Yeah. Wow. And did you. So you put. You put the album out during the pandemic or it had, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So were you working on it before the pandemic had started and then that happened? Yeah, there were a couple songs that. That had been in the works before the pandemic that me and Mun had been working on when I was still in LA. And then when the pandemic hit, I was here March 2020, and India started to sort of shut down the borders. So top seven countries that were affected by Covid. Nobody could enter back into India. And then the United States was number eight. So my dad called me in a panic and was like, you need to just get on a plane. Like, forget everything. Get on a plane right now, because otherwise you're going to be stuck on a visa. You don't know if you can work. Don't know what's going to happen. So went back home, and then I was stuck in India for the entirety of the pandemic. I didn't come back to the United States until 2022, March. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

23:29 Was the goal always to come back to LA then? I had always kind of wanted to teach myself how to engineer my own sessions and get back into production. I had a flair for production while I was in music school. And then I had someone that I looked up to, who I will not name, but who I looked up to, who I kind of asked for advice, and I was like, hey, like, do you think, like, this is something that I can do? Like, what do you feel? How do you feel about, like, you know, a female singer, songwriter and producer. Producer, like, you know, what are your thoughts? And she literally was like, I think you should just stick to the songwriting and singing. Like, leave the production up to others. And that kind of just. It broke my spirit a little. I'm not gonna lie.

24:21 Like, I. Yeah, I bet production for a while, and I picked it back up because I had gotten to the point where a lot of my musician friends were turning to me and sending me their songs and being like, oh, like, this mix doesn't sound right. Or, like, I don't like this synth. Like, what do you think? And now I'm the one giving everyone advice. I'm like, okay, I. I have a good ear for this. I don't know why I put it down in the first place. Now I have all this time on my hands and nothing to do. I'm stuck inside. The India lockdown was very intense. I practically did not leave the house for two. Two years. It was very, very intense. And luckily, I had sort of a back catalog of songs that were already recorded, already produced that I could just send off to mix and master and put those out. That's how Clutch and Goddess and Universe, those songs came out during the Pandemic. And then while those were coming out, I was working on this entire project by myself. And I remember. Wow. Yeah. I remember when I started, it would take me, like, a week to just work on one song because I'm just trying to figure everything out

25:54 and then getting to the point by the end of the project where I'm like, oh, yeah, four hours. I can crack a song out in four hours. It's fine. Wow. Thing in four hours. So, yeah, so you're basically put yourself through almost like a boot camp of. Of. Of its own learning how to produce. Like, okay, this might say it started with a week, and now I can crank these out when I have an idea. Four hours. Yeah. And I would. I would, you know, I would ask Mukun, like, what do you think of this? What do you think of this? Like, I kind of had now, like, a sounding board, a listening ear, and I felt more open and able to even share it with, like, my family. So my family was also A sounding board. We would, like all. They would all sit in the room after I was done, and I'd be like, play them stuff. And they would give me feedback. Like, I like this. I don't like this. Obviously their feedback wasn't as technical as it would get, you know, from coming from another musician, but. Right. It's good. I mean, those are most of the people that are listening to your song. Exactly. Yeah. People that are listening to music are not going to sit there and be like that. The frequency of that bass is off. Like, nobody's gonna be. Yeah, right. So it was not. It was great to have that feedback. And then Mukund also kind of helped me navigate Pro Tools. So I produce on Logic, but I record my vocals on Pro Tools. And so he kind of helped me navigate that and, like, figure out how to sort of engineer my own recording sessions and everything. So I was doing all of it. I was engineering my own sessions,

27:25 recording myself, writing everything, myself, producing myself, like, like, all of it at the same time. Geez. And are you doing that now with these new songs that are coming out? I still do a lot of that. Even now. I don't exclusively do that anymore. Yeah, that's a lot of work. Yeah, it is a lot of work. And I feel like after a while, you know, you just. You become saturated and you sort of start to regurgitate the same ideas musically and in terms of songwriting and things like that. And I don't. I didn't want to get stuck there, so of course I, I, I collaborate with a lot more people now, but, yeah, I still do that a lot. I still record a lot of my vocals from my own apartment. Like, in my home studio. I have a whole setup, which is what I'm sitting in front of right now, talking. Oh, nice.

28:15 So, well, then tell me about these new songs. Like, when do you start working on this? And is it going to be another album or project? Yeah, it is going to be another album. It's not going to be as long as the last one, but it is an album. I started working it actually around this time last year. Okay. And this one is. A lot more personal. I think that's the most personal I've ever gotten. Musically speaking, emotionally speaking, I kind of got to a place in my life where. So while all of this is happening, I'm moving to LA. I'm, like, working on music, the pandemic, all these things. I was also going through the worst relationship of my entire life. This person was, like, extremely emotionally abusive. It was just not good for me. And so when the pandemic happened, we were already broken up. It gave me a lot of space to sort of process what had happened and fully admit to myself, like, hey, this was abusive.

29:15 This was not good. But I didn't really process all of that until I moved back, got back into therapy, started talking about it, and then. You know, as. As I started talking about it, I felt like the best place to put a lot of my feelings was into the music. So I started writing a lot of material about it. And, you know, there was a whole period of time where all I was able to write was everything that I felt in retrospect, that I never got to feel in the moment, things I never got to say in the moment. And that's where, you know, that's the kind of space that Soldier came from. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was gonna ask you. So that song directly is related to what you're talking about right now? Yeah.

30:02 Yeah. So this entire body of work is kind of like. And very sort of. It took a lot of introspection to kind of make this body of work. And there's a lot of different aspects of that relationship that I felt like I could finally address in this body of work and really just go there and talk about it. I think that. As a person, but also as an artist, I've always kind of been like, no, I'm strong, I'm independent. I'm this. I'm that, which I am. But I think that it can be hard to put that level of vulnerability into your art sometimes. And I just feel much more free now that I've been able to go there.

30:44 And the more I went there musically, the more it felt like I was just, like, taking the junk out, you know? So, yeah, that's what I did. That was like my extended therapy was. Was creating project. Was it difficult to, like. I mean, put. Put those songs out or, like, write those songs and knowing that this person might hear them or other people are gonna hear it and. Yeah, take it. Like, what was that like? Yeah, that was really hard. I mean, even when Soldier came out, the day I put it out and I made. Made a post about it, and I kind of, like, in the caption, went into, like, a little bit of detail.

31:26 About why I wrote the song. I. You know, I posted it, and then I remember just, like, panic checking my. Instagram and be like, the other person gonna see this. This person still blocked. Okay. You can't see anything. All right, cool. Like, it's just. It's hard. I think it's really hard. I think we live in a world where, you know, people like me, we don't really get to speak our truth without other people being like, well, why didn't you talk about this sooner? Oh, this person doesn't seem like the kind of person that would do something like this. Right. Everyone's making up excuses. Yeah. Like a lot of victim blaming and. And, you know, you've already dealt with so much of that in that relationship where you've been gaslit so much and you've been invalidated so much that, like, there's just this level of fear that comes in. But I think the longer that soldier's been out, the less that fear has kind of consumed me. I just kind of, like, set it to the side. And I think I put in a lot of work even before this. I. I've had a lot of conversations with friends that knew me at the time that knew this person, you know, sort of explaining my side of things and. And things like that. And I think that the reason I'm even able to put this project out is because I put a lot of those fears to bed. They don't bother me as much anymore. You know, you said it's an album, so it's all finished. It is in the process of mix and master. A lot of it is in the process of mix and

32:56 master right now. But the songs are done. Yeah, the songs are done. Very cool. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. You've been awesome. I have one more question. I want to know if you have any advice for aspiring artists is, oh. That'S a toughie. I have a few things. Don't fear them. Yeah. Don't beat yourself up for mistakes you make in your career. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to look back and be like, ah, I could have done that better or could have done that differently. Don't beat yourself up for it. It's part of the learning process. You wouldn't know you would have done that differently if you didn't go through it. Right. That's number one. Number two, if there are people critiquing you or saying no to you, I need you to sit back and evaluate. Why? Because some people just want to shit on you in this industry and other people actually want to see you do better. So just be patient. Take your time. Don't rush into things.

33:56 Take your time and evaluate who actually cares, who's speaking to you from a place of. Love and inspiration and who's speaking to you from a place of jealousy and ego. I think that's the most important thing. And that will tell you who you should keep around you in the first place. Bringin it Backwards. Bringin it backward, Bringin it backward, Bringin it backward, Bringin it backward, Bringin it backward.