Samara Cyn’s artistry feels like a slow exhale — that moment when you finally stop running from yourself and start facing the mirror. Raised as an Army brat who bounced from Tennessee to Hawaii to Colorado, she grew up shapeshifting through cultures before she even knew who she was. 

“I never knew I was gonna make music until I was already in college,” she told BET.com. “So, like, I guess all of the pulls from moving around kinda came naturally and subconsciously.”

That constant uprooting left her with what she calls “a self-identity crisis,” one that eventually became the fuel behind her art. 

“Growing up a military brat and moving around constantly, I think, like, as a child, you naturally assimilate into the different cultures that you're introduced to,” she explains. “So, I was raised in the South — Tennessee, Georgia, Texas — but even Texas was predominantly Hispanic. Then I went to Hawaii, with predominantly Hawaiian and Asian culture. Then I moved to Colorado, where the people are predominantly white. It was a lot of different culture shocks constantly.”

Those experiences built her empathy and her delivery. 

“Me feeling like the odd one out constantly, I think, also has given me a soft spot for wanting other people that come into my world or come into my space to feel comfortable here and accepted and heard and felt,” she says. “I make music for the extraordinarily ordinary person.”

Before the world knew her for her introspective sound, Samara started with poetry. Her mother, an English teacher, played “Brave New Voices,” a youth collective of spoken word poets, in class, and it stuck. 

“I remember seeing it as a child, like I want to say, like in the fifth grade or something like that, and being so, like, enamored by the art that it was and wanting to write poetry after that,” she recalls. “At the time, what I was writing about got more authentic and more genuine because I found a way to be honest.”

Honesty would later become her trademark. She credits her father with introducing her to hip-hop — specifically Slick Rick’s “The Great Adventures of Slick Rick.” 

“Originally, my dad had shown me ‘Children’s Story,’ and we connected on that,” she remembers. “But I really loved ‘Mona Lisa’ off of that project. I love how animated he is, and how, like, committed he is to telling the story.”

That foundation in lyricism still shapes how she listens. 

“Now, no matter what the genre is, the first thing I listen to is lyrics,” she says. “And I think it's because of listening to Slick Rick when I was young and being like, ‘oh, like, this is, like, well-written.’ I can see this happening.”

Fast-forward to today, and Samara’s name is on Denzel Washington’s playlist. When he mentioned her song on “Good Morning America,” she almost didn’t believe it. 

“My dad sent me a screenshot of a group text, and somebody said, Oh, Denzel mentioned Samara on GMA. I thought he was trippin’,” she laughs. “Then Smino sent me the clip, and I was like, wait a minute. Somebody look at this!”

That moment — along with a co-sign from Nas and a tour to match — still feels surreal. 

“I think when you have no expectations as you're moving through something, the things that come to you, it's like, oh, okay,” she says. “It just gave a huge sense of validity and kinda checked the imposter syndrome that might come sometimes with Internet success.”

Her latest project, “The Drive Home,” digs even deeper into self-acceptance. 

“I realized that the lesson isn't to get to the other side of, oh, I know who I am,” she says. “You're always going to have the ebbs and flows of feeling very confident and then also feeling very insecure… what I realized is having grace throughout all of those different things.”

Through her growth and her grace, Samara keeps creating a world where truth and vulnerability sound like freedom. “It’s accepting that everything is meant to happen for a reason,” she says. “Even though this is kicking my ass, I understand that there's a reason I'm having to go through it. There’s something I should be paying attention to right now. And even if I don't know it yet, I will know it eventually — because this is another ebb, and there will be a flow soon.”