{"id":157305,"date":"2026-02-16T16:47:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T16:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/157305\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T16:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T16:47:07","slug":"fgcu-freshman-mason-nguyen-drops-hip-hop-debut-eagle-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/157305\/","title":{"rendered":"FGCU freshman Mason Nguyen drops hip-hop debut \u2013 Eagle Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FGCU<\/a> <\/p>\n

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\u2019t say them out loud. It\u2019s not about the streams or sales, but making sure someone listening in the dark knows they aren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI make music for the lost and broken souls,\u201d said Nguyen. \u201cI hope that when you listen to my music, you know that I was in your position, so that you won\u2019t feel as alone as I did when I was dealing with things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nguyen, who performs under the stage name VTN Lovell, is a Vietnamese hip-hop artist and a\u00a0 FGCU freshman. He released his debut album, \u201cReprieve (Son of Cain),\u201d on Jan. 9. The album combines deep lyricism with heavy themes of mental health, isolation and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Nguyen\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s just been nice to see him grow from all of that,\u201d said Ruiz. \u201cEver since the very first song, how much better he\u2019s gotten in making music and how much he\u2019s flowing and expressing himself in his songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he refined his sound, he began drawing inspiration from popular artists in the genre like Earl Sweatshirt, Mavi and MIKE.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just try to find a weird sample,\u201d said Nguyen. [It] just has to be a really rare sample, something that people haven\u2019t heard at all. I\u2019ll change the pitch, change the timing, chop it up a little bit and add some drums.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe exchanged inspiration, [as] he brought most of his from the movie \u2018Le Samoura\u00ef\u2019 and I brought most of mine from \u2018Better Call Saul,\u2019 as well as how we can fit those shots and inspo into different places at FGCU,\u201d said Druckman. \u201cWe came fairly prepared for filming, so it was overall pretty smooth sailing. We were able to get most of the shots we wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the music and videos published online, all Nguyen had to do was wait for his audience to grow. However, he struggled to expand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t find my target audience here. I feel there\u2019s a lack of demographic, mainly people that typically don\u2019t listen to the music that I make,\u201d said Nguyen. \u201cIt is a nice college campus, a lot of really cool people, but I\u2019m going to be able to find people who listen to that target somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s planning to transfer to a different university, but for now, Nguyen is doing all he can to spread his music locally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMason\u2019s doing an amazing job growing his brand,\u201d said Ruiz. \u201cI see him posting consistently. Every time I open Instagram, whether it\u2019s a story, a reel or a post, I like that I\u2019m seeing his music show up on my feed, and I know other people are seeing it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Hey, just because you want to make good money, just because you want to have a stable job, doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t do this as well,\u2019\u201d Ruiz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nguyen doesn\u2019t plan on ending his career anytime soon. He is currently working on his second project, \u201cThe Curse of Cain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided to create a series out of \u2018Reprieve (Son of Cain),\u2019\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cThe next one will be the \u2018Curse of Cain,\u2019and the last one will probably be the \u2018Death of Cain.\u2019 It\u2019ll definitely have to be better each time. I feel like it\u2019s a long ways away but it\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, he\u2019s been attending music events, including Dorm Jockeys, a weekly on-campus concert series for local artists, where he performs his own music.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friend Allen is a DJ, I knew him from high school [and] I found out about dorm jockeys through him,\u201d said Nguyen. \u201cIt\u2019s a really calm thing where a couple of DJs play with some artists here and there, it\u2019s super chill.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mason Nguyen never intended to reach for the spotlight when he began making music. Instead, he created it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-157305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}