Mason Nguyen never intended to reach for the spotlight when he began making music. Instead, he created it as a way to process his emotions when he couldn’t say them out loud. It’s not about the streams or sales, but making sure someone listening in the dark knows they aren’t alone.

“I make music for the lost and broken souls,” said Nguyen. “I hope that when you listen to my music, you know that I was in your position, so that you won’t feel as alone as I did when I was dealing with things.”

Nguyen, who performs under the stage name VTN Lovell, is a Vietnamese hip-hop artist and a  FGCU freshman. He released his debut album, “Reprieve (Son of Cain),” on Jan. 9. The album combines deep lyricism with heavy themes of mental health, isolation and anxiety.

Nguyen’s music journey began with experimentation in GarageBand during a trip to Vietnam. After his skills developed, he began to show them off to others. Adrian Ruiz, a close friend, has watched Nguyen grow as an artist over several years. 

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“It’s just been nice to see him grow from all of that,” said Ruiz. “Ever since the very first song, how much better he’s gotten in making music and how much he’s flowing and expressing himself in his songs.”

As he refined his sound, he began drawing inspiration from popular artists in the genre like Earl Sweatshirt, Mavi and MIKE.

“I just try to find a weird sample,” said Nguyen. [It] just has to be a really rare sample, something that people haven’t heard at all. I’ll change the pitch, change the timing, chop it up a little bit and add some drums.”

The whole process of creating a song came naturally, with most tracks taking around a week to produce. The real struggle was promotion. To help promote the music, Nguyen collaborated with Yonatan Druckman, a high school friend, to shoot a few music videos across the college campus.

“We exchanged inspiration, [as] he brought most of his from the movie ‘Le Samouraï’ and I brought most of mine from ‘Better Call Saul,’ as well as how we can fit those shots and inspo into different places at FGCU,” said Druckman. “We came fairly prepared for filming, so it was overall pretty smooth sailing. We were able to get most of the shots we wanted.”

With the music and videos published online, all Nguyen had to do was wait for his audience to grow. However, he struggled to expand. 

“I can’t find my target audience here. I feel there’s a lack of demographic, mainly people that typically don’t listen to the music that I make,” said Nguyen. “It is a nice college campus, a lot of really cool people, but I’m going to be able to find people who listen to that target somewhere else.”

He’s planning to transfer to a different university, but for now, Nguyen is doing all he can to spread his music locally. 

“Mason’s doing an amazing job growing his brand,” said Ruiz. “I see him posting consistently. Every time I open Instagram, whether it’s a story, a reel or a post, I like that I’m seeing his music show up on my feed, and I know other people are seeing it as well.”

There was a point when Nguyen considered putting music aside in favor of a more stable path, but his friends encouraged him to pursue both stability and creativity. 

“I was like, ‘Hey, just because you want to make good money, just because you want to have a stable job, doesn’t mean you can’t do this as well,’” Ruiz said. 

Nguyen doesn’t plan on ending his career anytime soon. He is currently working on his second project, “The Curse of Cain.”

“I decided to create a series out of ‘Reprieve (Son of Cain),’” Nguyen said. “The next one will be the ‘Curse of Cain,’and the last one will probably be the ‘Death of Cain.’ It’ll definitely have to be better each time. I feel like it’s a long ways away but it’s worth it.”

In the meantime, he’s been attending music events, including Dorm Jockeys, a weekly on-campus concert series for local artists, where he performs his own music.

“My friend Allen is a DJ, I knew him from high school [and] I found out about dorm jockeys through him,” said Nguyen. “It’s a really calm thing where a couple of DJs play with some artists here and there, it’s super chill.”