Wyatt Marshall never thought Las Vegas would wind up being a place to settle down. It’s been seven years since the artist left Southern Utah, and this has truly become Marshall’s home.
“I kind of moved here intending not to stay,” Marshall says. “It was just a stop on my way to California, but once I experienced Vegas life, I fell in love, and now I’m stuck here,” the rapper, 27, tells the Weekly between endearing laughs.
It’s a common story: Small-town kid moves to the big city in search of something bigger. For Marshall, that was music. “It was interesting to say the least,” Marshall says of the move. “It was super easy for me to fall in love with the city. We’re spoiled here.”
Marshall goes by Androjinni (pronounced “andro-genie”), a play on words based on the artist’s identity. ”I’m gender-nonconforming and nonbinary,” Marshall says. Marshall released debut EP Contact High in 2020 and is readying a follow-up, due out this summer.
“I’ve always been a writer,” Marshall says. “I write all my lyrics, and I’ve written lyrics and songs since I was really young, like in high school.” Eventually, Marshall found a group of friends “who hyped me up about my music,” providing the confidence to start recording.
Marshall first performed as Androjinni as a host at the local Bodywork dance event inside Oddfellows, and then at gay bars and dive bars throughout town. Androjinni began as an EDM project, Marshall says, before morphing into something broader and more difficult to pigeonhole.
“I think I just slowly started going more into rap sounds,” Marshall says. “I wouldn’t say that my genre is hip-hop. It’s rap, but it’s more like EDM rap.”
As Androjinni, Marshall works with Vegas-based producer and FVYDID Records creative director Jack Lozeron, better known as JackEL. For Androjinni’s recent single “Can Not Stop Me,” the singer raps over JackEL’s beats, a distinct sample of TLC’s “Creep” seeping into each bar.
“He’s super talented,” Marshall says of the producer, who collaborated with the rapper MIMS in 2016. “He’s known around the world and works with a lot of people in the EDM industry. He knows the ins and outs of the industry. I was lucky to meet him.”
On April 30, Androjinni dropped new single “I Don’t Want to Cry,” which the artist says is “a little more pop-sounding than I normally do.” And while Marshall isn’t able to perform new tracks for an audience just yet, the artist can’t wait to get out onstage.
“I’m sick of sitting at a table bouncing back and forth,” Marshall laughs. “I’m very much looking forward to performing. I’ve done a few little small gigs, but you can’t really do much [during the pandemic]. I miss going out and dancing, just being close to people’s bodies, that kind of thing.”
Androjinni Facebook.com/Androjinni, Spoti.fi/3gMKDda
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