“I’m a Survivor!”
Crowdfire Spotlight: Grammy-nominated recording artist, entertainment attorney, music producer, singer-songwriter and cancer survivor. This is Tracy Randall’s story.
I wasn’t quite sure how my interview with Tracy Randall would go. I’d reached out over email and interacted mostly with his assistant before the day, so I assumed I’d be speaking with him in a professional, staid setting and a formal, mellow manner.
All my assumptions dissolved within the first few seconds of our video call. He started with a laugh, he laughed some more then he talked some and ended with another big laugh. The kind of laughter that is so uplifting and infectious that I couldn’t help but laugh along with him, even though nothing we were talking about was funny.
Out of left field
With all of that laughter, you wouldn’t know the trouble life had brought him. Tracy is the eighth child of ten and the only one in his family to graduate from high school. Always ambitious and truly a self-starter, he’d started out towards becoming an electrical engineer but the complicated coursework and unending formulae drove him to tears.
He switched his major to Business and after undergrad attended law school at UCLA and started working to get his PhD. Around the same time, he scored a record deal with Def Jam, an event that really left him laughing. He barely thought himself a singer but he definitely wasn’t going to complain about such an opportunity.
He got to write songs for famous artists such as Diana Ross and Deborah Cochrane among a host of other Top 100 artists. But when Def Jam’s parent group Universal merged with Polygram, the entertainment production company, Tracy found himself dropped from the label. Since he was finishing up law school, he thought he’d practice entertainment law and become an attorney and a manager for the “underdogs”, given his experience on both sides of the industry and as a recording artist, a songwriter, producer, and lawyer. It turned out to be very lucrative working in music publishing, along with film and television. Today, his law firm even manages sports athletes from the NBA and NFL.
Tracy’s career was on an upward trajectory and life was looking bright and promising. That’s around when, in 2006, he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukaemia or ALL. February of the following year saw the doctors telling him that there’s nothing more they could do, declaring he had only 3 to 6 months left to live. “When they told me I only had that much time to live, I thought they were joking. And something like that’s devastating for a guy in his early thirties to hear — with a family, kids, the whole nine, you’re thinking, ‘What the hell next?’”
Prepare for battle
Tracy was in shock. He found himself walking in a stupor in the cold New York winter, from 23rd street all the way to 86th and 8th Avenue. That’s when he heard a voice that shook him out of his thoughts. “Everything’s going to be okay,” the mysterious voice said. Tracy didn’t know what to think but he just assumed it had to be God’s voice asking him to have faith and to be strong.
The next few months would be a bitter battle with chemotherapy and with trying to wrap his head around this life sentence.”There would be times when I didn’t want people to see me, and I’m an outgoing guy.” So Tracy worked on writing and producing music for his albums during that time. He released “Sinners Have Souls Too” in 2007. It debuted on the Top 40 Independent artists list, and it was to be followed by the release of his second album, Troubled Times.
Too ill to promote the record, Tracy kept it on the shelf and focused on beating the cancer. Miraculously, he survived the year, and more years after that as well, finally releasing Troubled Times in 2011. It turned out to be another Top 40 album on the Independent Artists and Urban charts, an event that Tracy regards as truly incredible.
Tracy attributes his continued survival to a lot of different aspects, one of them being his outlook on the disease and the way he lived his life from that point on. “A lot of people think it’s strange, but for me, it (beating cancer) was more about being the strength for everybody else. I was never concerned about me, I was concerned about my children. And my sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews.” Tracy can’t explain why he was so focused on them but ultimately, his concern for his family is what kept him motivated to keep fighting.
“I don’t know if my cancer was a major impact to them because they never showed it. Our motivation was beating this, not dwelling on it. Your outlook is very important in anything,” Tracy insists. He also believes the best way to overcome hurdles is to learn from them and try to stay above the negativity of whatever’s threatening to drag one down to despair.
“I’ve never considered myself a singer. When Def Jam signed me, I was laughing. But later on, everything changed. I started taking my art seriously, training under vocal coaches. People tell me I’m a great singer but I still don’t hear it,” he laughs.
No sugar coating
But the cancer came back with a vengeance. Tracy had gone into remission in 2013 but in June of 2015, the cancer showed up with tumours in his lungs, head, and left eye. This time around, he chose to forego the chemotherapy treatment. “The first time I was diagnosed with leukaemia, it (the chemo) was horrible.” At 6 feet tall, his weight dropped down to 118 pounds and he looked skeletal.
“Combined with the side effects of chemo, it was worse than the cancer itself.” When the cancer came back, he decided to do something different. “I went in for cryogenic freezing, blood optimization and I took a nuclear pill, which was pure radiation, once a week.” The steroids had blown him up to 215 pounds. “I’d never been that huge in my life!” he exclaims. He started walking and jogging regularly to maintain his weight, and he’s now down to a nice and healthy 173 pounds.
But beyond dealing with the physical demands of cancer, Tracy was far more worried about his mental state. “Oftentimes people don’t realize that when you’ve been diagnosed with cancer or a terminal disease, what you need is to find a psychotherapist to help you deal with that.”
He wrote and produced his single, Be Free, about the psychological aspects of having a terminal disease. “There were times I would be lying in bed, and my mind would tell me, ‘you’re not going to make it.’ My mind is really saying these things to me! It was the pain from the cancer, the depression… a lot of people don’t understand that. That’s what the song was about. I just wanted to be free, whether in heaven or on earth, whatever would transpire. I wasn’t going to take my life or anything, but I wanted to be free.”
Tracy’s songs are painfully honest about what he’s going through, without any sugar coating. Even though he’s an inspirational artist, his songs rarely get played on gospel stations. “There has been backlash from the Christian community because I’m honest and I’m real. It’s kind of funny I guess because my type of music is not your standard gospel or inspirational stuff because it has a lot of swag with it. 90% of all that I sing, I write and produce. So, most of the stuff is pure me.”
The mere fact that Tracy’s an independent artist allows him a lot more freedom to pursue his art in its true form. “There’s no reason or rationale to be commercial. The bottom line is singing truthful songs about my life.” His third studio album, entitled No Judgement, has been doing very well since it came out. It debuted March 2015, landing the number 15 spot on iTunes, and number 38 on the Billboard Urban RnB charts.
Don’t let anybody deter you
Even though his life is a daily battle with the disease, Tracy keeps his focus on other things. “The weird part is other people talk about it (the cancer) more than I do. That was a chapter and I’m done, but people want you to talk about it and give others hope.” Though he consciously doesn’t dwell on it, Tracy does have his moments. “Looking at photos of myself back then remind me that I was knocking on death’s door. I’m 45 now and so very very grateful.”
As such, Tracy makes sure to live his life to the fullest. He doesn’t consider himself a great planner but he does set 90-day goals for himself. Why just 90 days? “One, it’s easier to knock things off your bucket list, two, you don’t get overwhelmed, three, you’re not carrying over things you should have done three years ago, four, it’s easier to meet goals every 90 days. And that’s how I do,” Tracy laughs some more. He’s currently vacationing, something that he doesn’t plan either. “I thank God I have so many air miles. Sometimes, I’d wake up and call the airlines to figure out how many air miles it would take me to get to this destination. And I’ll just go.”
An attorney, Tracy doesn’t practice as often as he used to. He only works 18 hours a week, timings that are supported by his great staff. “I work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from 9 am to 12pm. Outside of that, you won’t find me,” he breaks into laughter with more gusto.
Right now, Tracy’s working on his next album — writing and producing it. He hopes to release it in 2018 and sees himself getting back on the road with his band to promote it.
Tracy does have some pearls of wisdom to drop about working in the music industry and just being an artist in general.
“When it stops being fun for you, you need to get out of it.”
He’s also of the firm belief that an artist needs to have a working knowledge of every person they’re dealing with including their job responsibilities.
“The reason for this is, I hear so many artists saying, ‘Oh, I’ll just put this in my manager’s hands, or in my lawyer’s hands.’ But when things go bust, you have no information, you don’t have anything. It’s called the music business for a reason — it’s 90% business, 10% talent. You have to be about your business. And finally, don’t allow anybody to deter you. I don’t care if you’re 98 years old — if you want to do it, go ahead and do it.”
Happily enough, Tracy was handed an NED (no evidence of disease) report in September of 2017. “Hopefully, if I stay this way for five years, I’ll be cancer free for real,” he grins broadly. We sure do hope so, Tracy! Keep laughing your way through life 🙂
You can find Tracy on his Website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
