Brittney Chantele is a Pittsburgh rapper who is very involved in local activism. Her activism is informed by a college degree she earned when she once thought she would become a police officer.

“I figured I might as well go for criminal justice and political science. After my freshman year, I really wanted to chance my major. I recognized that being a police officer was not the way I wanted to go. I wanted to be a teacher of some sort. I ended up not changing my major. I am grateful for the fact that I majored in criminal justice. I learned a lot and it’s helped my activism.”

Chantele is quite at home in the hip-hop and R&B genre, although lately, she’s been working on breaking out of that sound with an experimental pop album.

“There’s been this thing brewing in me. I really want to do something so out of the box and so creative. I’ve really been struggling [with], you know, “Should I stray into a genre and is that okay?” What I’ve noticed is a lot female artists get a lot of backlash for changing their genres. I always was just like “Well, I’ve branded myself as a hip-hop artist and I can’t move into anything else.” And it’s not true.”

Keep an eye out for future releases from Brittney Chantele that defy her current hip-hop sound. More on Brittney Chantele is at her website.

Listen to the full conversation with Brittney on The Local 913 Podcast.

Photo by Dylan Rosgone