This female MC is here to break all stereotypes.
Snow Tha Product, born Claudia Alexandra Feliciano, is a Mexican-American hip-hop artist from California. She just released her latest EP Half Way There and if you're someone that appreciates lyrics, then you'll applaud Snow's storytelling and infectious beats. During our interview with the 28-year-old artist, we got to learn who a bit more about who she is beyond the surface. Just like any good Drake track, Snow has plenty of possible Instagram captions from her song "Nights"—here are some of our favorites:
"What's a little liquor to a cold heart?"
"It can never end if it don't start"
"Slow up I think the world hatin'"
"Came up and now the whole view changin'"
"Words are getting slurred and now your vision kinda trippin'"
"If it's vibes you want then it's vibes you get"
"We're tucked underneath all these city street lights"
"I've been on you since I walked in"
"You know Latin girls and that Patron"
"Baby, I could change your life, that's if you let me"
So we just heard you EP, so many different influences that we picked up on. Who inspires you? Lauryn Hill, Big Pun, Eminem, Missy Elliott, Gloria Trevi, and Alejandra Guzman. It's mostly them, but there are a few others.
You reference your family members a lot in your tracks, how big of a role do they play in your life? They're very important. I've always been very close to my brother, he does my tour managing, he does a bunch of things—my cousin does my merch. My family has been super involved in my career. My mom is one of the main reasons why I want to be successful, so I want to show her that I didn't chose the wrong route in life. She didn't want me to rap, so I really took a gamble on doing this genre of music. I've always wanted to prove it to her, I took her on tour and she really loved it. I feel really happy and having my family around is just everything to me. If I couldn't do that and have them around, I just wouldn't be doing this.
Since you've been doing this for a while, where do you want to be five years from now? I just want to be established as an artist. I want to be one of those people that can have a personal life and also have a career and be able to cycle through things. Right now, my whole life has revolved around music. I just want to be established, I don't want to stay being the underdog that has been fighting for so long to get here. I just want people to listen to my music, respect it and like it.
There are a lot of messages in your music; quickly I picked up on a sense of female empowerment. What is the most important message that you're trying to deliver? I think overall, that I do think that you could be hot and sexy, but the biggest thing that makes you is your confidence. I think you need to be a boss and do things on your own terms. Especially being Latina, I feel like Latinas are oversexualized—it's always about that. I just want to be known for the music, and talk about my feelings and emotions. I'm not knocking any one that does it, but I want to show the option of not having to do that.
Being a Latina myself, I'm often overgeneralized—does that ever happen to you? I feel like it's always about being a spicy Latina and being a firecracker. Yes, I feel like we're very confident and we might sometimes come off as that, but it comes from a good place—we've struggled. Latinas struggle a lot and we've really had to prove ourselves.
Let's say, right now you could you could collaborate with anyone in the industry, who would it be? That's easy…J Balvin
Your name…how did you come up with it? I came from the Disney princesses. Years ago, my friend Crystal, who is an amazing singer, we used to sing and pretend we were Nina Sky. We would just vibe all the time. One day she's like, "We're going to make it. We're going to be living like princess." So pretty much she was Princess Belle and I picked Snow White. Then along the way, way later, someone added "Tha Product." They were explaining the industry to me and how my music was basically a product and I said, "I'm Snow White Tha Product!" Then Disney got involved and I stayed with "Snow Tha Product."
There were a lot of feelings in this EP, any songs about an ex? "Nights" is totally about feelings that I've had recently. I can't write about feeling while I'm going through them. "Nuestra Cancion" is more like my feelings and it those moments always involve alcohol. "Not Tonight" is about wanting to find to find love, but not tonight.