Meet the Muse: Naomi

Nobody starts out knowing how to nail the live shot, turn a story on deadline or ask the right follow-up every time.

Before Naomi became the Portsmouth neighborhood reporter at WTKR News 3, there were four years at Elon News Network, three NBC News internships and two years reporting in Macon, Georgia.

That’s a lot of reps.

Those early years come with the stuff a journalism degree can only prepare you for so much: your first real deadline, your first mistake, learning when to keep asking questions and eventually realizing you’re much better at the job than you were a year ago.

Naomi has covered elections, hurricanes, education and the everyday stories affecting the communities she serves. At So You Wanna Be a Journalist?, she brings the perspective of someone still early in her career, but far enough into it to know what those first opportunities actually taught her.

Xquisite Ice Avenue, our woman-owned jewelry partner for the evening, is joining us as we celebrate the women doing the work — and making their mark while they’re at it.

RSVP HERE

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Btw… We opened HQ.

Beyond the Myc’s Substack is becoming our dedicated home for editorial stories and cultural analysis. But community updates, event invitations, opportunities and first access to Muse drops are moving to the Muse Circle at beyondthemyc.com.

If you want to come with us, make it official and join the Muse Circle.

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Okay, we told you there was something coming.

Our partners at Xquisite Ice Avenue are giving one Muse Anklet.

XIA makes signature jewelry for your becoming: the new job, the big idea, the birthday, the pivot, the random Tuesday when you decide you want to show up a little differently.

And since So You Wanna Be a Journalist? is all about figuring out what your own career can look like, this felt like the perfect time to put a little something new in one Muse’s jewelry box.

To enter, simply join our virtual panel on September 16th at 7pm. The winner will be announced and selected live.

RSVP HERE

Consider it a little reminder to Wear Your Power — wherever you’re headed next.

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Btw… We opened HQ.

Beyond the Myc’s Substack is becoming our dedicated home for editorial stories and cultural analysis. But community updates, event invitations, opportunities and first access to Muse drops are moving to the Muse Circle at beyondthemyc.com.

If you want to come with us, make it official and join the Muse Circle.

Stay Exquisite.

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A quick reminder: Beyond the Myc’s community updates are moving into our new HQ.

Substack will remain home to our editorial work. But if you want event invitations, creative opportunities, Muse drops and updates from the growing Muse Circle, you’ll need to become an official member at beyondthemyc.com.

Membership is free, with a paid option for Muses who want to help financially support the vision.

Make it official → beyondthemyc.com.

See you at HQ. 💗

Beyond the Myc

Meet the Muse: Kyla

Kyla is a journalist, but her work doesn’t stop when the story is published.

Alongside her reporting on Tallahassee’s food scene, culture and community, she’s built a personal platform around the places she goes, the things she finds and what life looks like in her 20s.

For young journalists, that raises a bigger question: How much of your career belongs to the newsroom, and how much can you build for yourself?

That’s one of the conversations we’re bringing to So You Want to Be a Journalist?

And because your personal brand includes more than what you put on a résumé, our partners at Xquisite Ice Avenue are joining us as a woman-owned jewelry brand built around self-expression and making your style your own.

RSVP HERE

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Btw… We opened HQ.

Beyond the Myc’s Substack is becoming our dedicated home for editorial stories and cultural analysis. But community updates, event invitations, opportunities and first access to Muse drops are moving to the Muse Circle at beyondthemyc.com.

If you want to come with us, make it official and join the Muse Circle.

Subscribe now

Beyond the Myc has grown beyond the inbox—and now the Muse Circle has an official home.

Moving forward, Substack will be where we share Digital Diary stories, cultural analysis and everything editorial. Event invitations, opportunities, merch drops and community updates are moving to the Muse Circle at beyondthemyc.com.

If you’ve been reading, supporting and growing with us, it’s time to make it official.

Join the Muse Circle

The world is yours. Go see about it. 💗

Beyond the Myc

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There’s a reason Xquisite Ice Avenue felt at home in a Beyond the Myc conversation.

Shamya Jones founded XIA in 2020 with a love for fashion, self-expression and entrepreneurship. What started with lashes and accessories eventually became a jewelry brand centered on something bigger: creating pieces for the woman you are and the woman you’re becoming.

Sound familiar?

XIA calls it “Wear Your Power.” The idea that getting dressed, putting on the jewelry and choosing how you show up can all be part of becoming more intentional about who you want to be.

So, for So You Wanna Be a Journalist?, we’re bringing our worlds together.

And XIA brought a little something for one of our Muses, too. 👀

A giveaway is coming.

RSVP FOR SO YOU WANNA BE A JOURNALIST?

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You’ve been a Muse. Make it official.

If you’ve been reading, showing up, sharing the conversations or finding a little bit of yourself in Beyond the Myc, you’re already part of what we’re building.

Make it official at beyondthemyc.com by clicking Muse Circle and joining the community.

Stay Exquisite.

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What does it really take to build a career in journalism today?

On September 16, Beyond the Myc is bringing together three early-career journalists for So You Wanna Be a Journalist?, a virtual conversation about finding your way into the industry, building experience and figuring out what comes after you get your foot in the door.

We’ll talk reporting, producing, multimedia storytelling, career pivots and the realities of building a journalism career while the industry itself continues to change.

Featuring Naomi, Kyla and Alexis. Over the next few weeks, you’ll learn more about our Muses as we prepare for this virtual conversation.

And because building a career is also about how you show up along the way, we’re teaming up with Xquisite Ice Avenue, a woman-owned jewelry brand rooted in personal style and self-expression, to bring a little extra Muse energy to the conversation.

RSVP HERE

Whether you’re studying journalism, early in your career or simply trying to figure out where your storytelling skills can take you, this one’s for you.

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You’ve been a Muse. Make it official.

If you’ve been reading, showing up, sharing the conversations or finding a little bit of yourself in Beyond the Myc, you’re already part of what we’re building.

Make it official at beyondthemyc.com by clicking Muse Circle and joining the community.

Subscribe now

Committed soccer fans knew the players and understood the stakes. Outside that audience, interest was limited. Only 29% of Americans said they were at least somewhat interested in the tournament, while 54% were not interested at all, according to YouGov. Forty-six percent did not support any team.

By the end of the tournament, people had found plenty of reasons to pay attention beyond the score. TikTok turned players into personalities. Creators documented the experience for their own communities. Opening ceremonies and a first-of-its-kind halftime show brought music fandoms into the conversation. Together, those pieces stretched the World Cup across television, streaming, social media and live entertainment, giving marketers far more to buy than ad space around a match.

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TikTok Made the Roster Personal

Diamond Spaulding helped give the tournament one of its most memorable player introductions with a TikTok comment.

Spaulding encouraged viewers to support No. 16 on the U.S. team. Users identified the player as her younger stepbrother, defender Alex Freeman, and soon began calling him “Diamond’s little brother.” U.S. Soccer and Concacaf eventually joined the joke.

Freeman’s résumé already established him as an elite athlete. The nickname made him easy to remember among viewers who did not know the roster. It came with a proud older sister, a familiar family dynamic and an immediate reason to root for him. By adopting it, U.S. Soccer followed the audience’s lead on how Freeman should be introduced.

Interest in the full team was rising at the same time. Searches for “USMNT” and “Team USA” increased nearly 29 times on TikTok from June 11 through July 12, Forbes reported. The United States began the tournament outside the top 30 in the University of South Carolina’s Sports Social Pulse rankings, which measure official national-team accounts by audience, visibility, engagement and growth. By June 29, the team had climbed into the top 10.

When the Second Screen Reached the Main Stage

IShowSpeed spent the tournament livestreaming from host cities and worked with FIFA, Fox Sports and YouTube on select broadcasts. He also appeared on the official World Cup album with “Champion.” Before the final, the 21-year-old opened the closing ceremony with the song.

The booking caught people’s attention because “streamer” and “performer” are still treated as separate occupations. Across the full tournament, however, IShowSpeed’s role was consistent. He had spent years making soccer part of his public identity, then brought his more than 50 million YouTube subscribers along for the World Cup.

His closing-ceremony appearance completed the progression from documenting the production to joining it. Weeks of livestreams, reactions and clips had already made him one of the tournament’s distributors before he stepped onto the field as talent.

The Performances Got Bigger—and Less Distinct

The World Cup staged three opening ceremonies across Mexico, Canada and the United States, followed by a closing ceremony and the first halftime show in tournament history.

Across those shows, FIFA booked Afrobeats, Latin music, K-pop, hip-hop, pop, an orchestra and children’s characters. There was someone for almost everybody, yet the performances rarely settled into identities of their own.

The shows were being asked to represent three host countries, promote an official soundtrack, reach several international fandoms, produce social clips and deliver the kind of spectacle American audiences associate with the Super Bowl. By the final, the lineup looked more impressive on paper than it felt as one production.

Madonna, BTS, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Burna Boy, Gustavo Dudamel, Coldplay and the Muppets were all incorporated into approximately 11 minutes of halftime music. The complete interval lasted about 27 minutes once the stage was installed and removed, Reuters reported. With so many names and objectives compressed into one production, some appearances felt closer to acknowledgments than fully developed sets.

The reach helps explain why FIFA invested so heavily in music despite the uneven execution. Shakira and Burna Boy’s opening performance of “Dai Dai” generated 135 million Instagram views and 49 million YouTube views, according to FIFA. Following the final, U.S. streams of the song rose 52%. Justin Bieber’s “Everything Hallelujah” increased 110%, while Madonna’s “Music” rose 66% and BTS’ “Dynamite” rose 43%, according to Luminate data reported by The Associated Press.

Artist fandoms brought more attention to the World Cup, and the broadcast sent millions of listeners back to the songs. Whatever the shows lacked in cohesion, they made up for in circulation.

The Business of Being Everywhere

Some viewers watched complete matches on Fox. Others preferred Telemundo’s Spanish-language coverage or streamed through Peacock and Fox One. Plenty kept up through official highlights, creator commentary, player edits, watch-party footage, music or jokes that made sense without 90 minutes of context.

For broadcasters, platforms and advertisers, each format offered another place to package the audience. A marquee 30-second advertisement during the knockout stage cost as much as $1 million, more than twice the 2018 level, Reuters reported. Hydration breaks introduced commercial inventory inside a sport traditionally known for uninterrupted halves, with Fox projected to generate at least $250 million from those placements alone.

More inventory also interrupted the game. The halftime entertainment ran long, while advertiser-friendly breaks disrupted the rhythm traditional soccer fans came to watch.

The audience continued to grow anyway. The U.S. team’s Round of 32 victory attracted a combined 36.2 million viewers across Fox and Telemundo. Nearly 63 million U.S. viewers watched Spain defeat Argentina in the final, compared with 22.3 million for the 2022 final. Fox One recorded 2.8 million sign-ups in June, its strongest month since launching.

After each broadcast, the matches were clipped, discussed and redistributed across social platforms. By the conclusion of the Round of 16, FIFA reported 30 billion social impressions, 1.7 billion engagements and 20 billion video views across its platforms. Its accounts gained 54 million followers during the tournament, including 23 million on TikTok.

Those global figures cannot prove that social media caused the record U.S. ratings. Hosting proximity, favorable time zones, established Hispanic soccer audiences, competitive matches and the possible final World Cup appearances of several international stars also drove interest. They do show how much World Cup attention lived outside the live game.

Established fans came for the soccer. Other viewers found Shakira, BTS, IShowSpeed, player edits or a proud sister introducing No. 16 and followed the story from there. By the final, nearly 63 million people in the United States were watching two international teams play for a championship.

The final audience included lifelong supporters and people who had spent the month learning names, choosing favorites and following whatever parts of the World Cup reached them first. For media companies and marketers, reaching beyond the soccer faithful is what turned an already enormous sporting event into a monthlong cultural property.

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For emerging streamers, the assignment was clear:

Get out of the dorm, make the connection and create a moment strong enough to travel beyond the livestream.

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The Comeback Was the Campaign

For anyone who primarily recognizes Cenat from viral clips or his appearances at events such as the BET Awards, the scale of his influence can be difficult to grasp. The 24-year-old Bronx native is one of livestreaming’s biggest stars. During Mafiathon 3, he became the first Twitch creator to surpass 1 million active subscriptions — paid memberships to his channel — while broadcasting around the clock for a month.

After months away, Cenat did not return with a routine stream explaining his absence. He returned with a cast, a campus and a five-day programming event. His July 6 comeback and Streamer University roster reveal attracted more than 1 million concurrent viewers across Twitch and YouTube, making the announcement a cultural event before the class reached Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas.

Streamer University also arrived with its own hierarchy of internet fame. Established streamers associated with collectives and communities such as AMP and the Clover Boys appeared alongside creators from DDG to Wendy Ortiz. Lizzo and T-Pain joined the staff, while Queen Naija and Skai Jackson enrolled as students — placing traditional entertainers, veteran digital personalities and emerging creators within the same production.

One Campus, Thousands of Feeds

Only 120 students were admitted, but Streamer University’s distribution extended far beyond the people physically living on campus.

About 6,000 unique channels broadcast content related to the event, according to livestream analytics company Streams Charts. That figure does not mean 6,000 people attended Hendrix College. It includes students and mentors streaming from campus, along with off-site creators producing reactions, commentary and other live coverage for their own audiences. Streams Charts does not publicly separate those groups, so the number is best understood as the event’s broader live distribution network.

Together, those channels generated 56.79 million hours watched and reached 1.45 million concurrent viewers at the event’s peak — more than double the previous year’s totals. Cenat led individual channels with 6.75 million hours watched on Twitch and an additional 2.7 million on YouTube.

The fragmented viewing experience was part of the appeal. Audiences could follow the main production, enter a student’s dorm room, watch a professor’s perspective or listen to an outside commentator react in real time. No single camera controlled the entire story.

Then the footage moved again. Clip accounts, fan pages and social users condensed hours of streaming into short, portable scenes for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts and X. The livestream was the source material; social media turned it into a cultural timeline.

The Real Curriculum Was Visibility

One of Streamer University’s running jokes involved DDG’s cameraman repeatedly missing the action everyone else recognized as clip-worthy.

Eventually, Cenat took control of the camera and demonstrated how to anticipate the interaction, frame it and stay close enough to capture the payoff. By intervening, he broke one of his own boundaries against taking over another creator’s camera operation.

Naturally, the lesson became a clip itself.

The moment summarized the week’s real curriculum. Capturing content requires more than documenting whatever happens to be in front of the lens. Creators and their teams must recognize a developing storyline, understand what the audience will respond to and preserve the moment in a form that can circulate without the context of a five-hour stream.

Throughout Streamer University, established creators encouraged smaller streamers to leave their rooms and mingle. Proximity to influential people was valuable, but proximity alone was not content. Participants had to introduce themselves, contribute to the interaction and give viewers a reason to remember them.

For the social media, PR or marketing professional, the process resembles a live conversion funnel:

Interaction. Clip. Repost. Search. Profile visit. Follow. Returning viewer.

A viral moment does not guarantee a lasting career. Without a recognizable personality, consistent output and a plan to retain attention, a creator can become yesterday’s timeline joke. But one effective clip can shorten the discovery process dramatically. Instead of spending months introducing themselves, emerging talent can become “the person from that Streamer University moment” overnight.

From Access to Audience Growth

Suburbbaby became the clearest breakout example of 2026. Before the event, his streams generally attracted dozens of viewers and occasionally reached into the hundreds. At Streamer University, he moved throughout campus, interacted with other students and supplied continuous behind-the-scenes access rather than waiting for the main production to feature him.

His channel reached a personal record of 195,300 concurrent viewers, and he had more than 777,000 Twitch followers by the event’s conclusion. He was later named MVP of the graduating class. Streams Charts also reported that students and mentors gained more than 5 million followers combined during the first two days, based on figures shared on social media.

His rise demonstrated the difference between entering the room and using the room. Streamer University concentrated the attention, but individual creators still had to earn a share of it.

Returning personalities gave the event another layer. Creators such as Yonna, who emerged from the first Streamer University with greater visibility, came back in elevated roles; Yonna was listed as a club director for the 2026 class. The shift from student to staff began to resemble an alumni pipeline, allowing previous breakouts to return with established recognition and guide the next cohort.

When the Audience Funds the Show

Livestreaming also converts attention into revenue without requiring viewers to leave the entertainment.

On Twitch, viewers can purchase monthly subscriptions to individual channels or buy “gifted subscriptions” for other members of the audience. A person gifting 20 subscriptions is paying for 20 viewers to temporarily receive subscriber benefits. The purchase appears in the creator’s dashboard and chat, where the streamer may thank the buyer publicly.

The transaction becomes part of the programming. Spending may earn recognition from the creator, trigger a reaction and encourage other viewers to participate. The audience is simultaneously watching, funding, commenting on and redistributing the show.

That relationship helps explain why livestreaming platforms can hold viewers for days rather than minutes. Twitch remains central to the culture, while YouTube expands its live presence and competitors such as Kick pursue many of the same creators and audiences. The platforms are not only competing for views. They are competing for communities willing to invest time, money and identity in the people they watch.

Streamer University made that economy visible on one campus. Its most valuable lesson was not simply how to go live. It was how to enter a crowded cultural moment, create something worth sharing and convert borrowed attention into an audience of one’s own.

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Replies slowed. Plans wrapped up. Conversations paused. Then, almost as quickly as an episode of Love Island USA ended, timelines filled with reaction videos, fancams and debates over recouplings that had happened only minutes earlier. By the next morning, people who had never opened Peacock could often tell you exactly who had been dumped from the villa.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has spent the summer online. Less obvious is what that pattern says about television.

For more than a decade, streaming has been defined by choice. Viewers no longer gather around a single program at the same time; they watch different shows on different schedules, often finishing an entire season before someone else has pressed play on the first episode. That shift fundamentally changed how audiences consume entertainment and, with it, the kinds of cultural moments television could create.

Love Island USA has become a notable exception.

According to NBCUniversal, viewers streamed more than 2.3 billion minutes of Season 8 within its first two weeks, a 50 percent increase over the previous season during the same period. Those figures help explain the franchise’s commercial success. They do not fully explain why the show has become one of the few programs capable of dominating TikTok feeds, workplace conversations and weekend brunches at the same time.

Its influence extends well beyond the hour it spends on screen.

The Group Chat Effect

Calling Love Island “appointment television” doesn’t quite capture what’s happening.

Traditional appointment television depended on scarcity. Audiences watched because there was one scheduled opportunity to see an episode. Miss it, and you waited until the rerun.

Love Island operates differently. Episodes stream on demand, but the surrounding conversation moves in real time. Viewers who wait too long risk opening TikTok to a spoiler, finding an Instagram carousel dissecting the previous night’s elimination or walking into a group chat where everyone else has already moved on to the next storyline.

The result is a different kind of viewing habit—one shaped less by broadcast schedules than by participation. Watching the episode becomes one way of joining the conversation, but it is no longer the only way. The internet has effectively expanded the boundaries of the show, turning social platforms into extensions of the villa rather than destinations that compete with it.

That distinction matters because it reflects a broader shift in how younger audiences experience media. Entertainment no longer lives on a single platform. It moves between streaming services, social media, podcasts and private conversations, with each platform serving a different purpose in the same experience.

When the Audience Becomes the Marketing Team

Once an episode ends, NBCUniversal no longer controls the pace of the conversation.

Fans immediately begin clipping scenes into short-form edits. Creators record reaction videos before official promotional clips have been published. Memes circulate across X, Instagram and TikTok, while Reddit threads catalogue every interaction inside the villa. By the following evening, the previous episode has generated another day’s worth of attention without requiring another hour of programming.

That kind of audience participation has become one of the franchise’s defining strengths.

In media and advertising, marketers often distinguish between paid, owned and earned media. Paid media is purchased attention. Owned media includes the platforms a company controls. Earned media, however, comes from audiences choosing to share, discuss or recommend content on their own.

Love Island generates earned media at a remarkable scale because the audience has a reason to keep talking. Every elimination invites debate. Every recoupling produces competing interpretations. Every episode creates new material for creators whose own audiences may never have watched the series before.

The conversation, in other words, becomes part of the product.

Participation Is the Product

Reality television has long invited viewers to vote, but Love Island has built participation into nearly every stage of the viewing experience.

The companion app allows audiences to influence outcomes throughout the season, transforming viewers from observers into contributors. Each vote offers immediate insight into audience preferences while reinforcing the idea that returning tomorrow night might change the story.

Participation shaped the finale as well.

All four women who reached the final identified as Black—an outcome that reflected weeks of audience voting rather than a single production decision. Regardless of how individual viewers interpreted that milestone, it underscored a larger point about contemporary television: audiences are no longer simply responding to stories after they’re told. Increasingly, they’re helping determine which stories continue.

That dynamic extends beyond Love Island. In an era where visibility can translate into podcast deals, fashion partnerships and long-term creator careers, audience attention has become a form of currency. The villa awards one cash prize. The internet distributes another.

It starts in communities, moves through conversations, shapes creative expression, and eventually becomes so familiar that its origins are easy to overlook. American music offers one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. Many of the sounds, styles, and traditions that define the country’s cultural identity can be traced back to Black creators and Black communities

.That reality sits at the heart of Black Music Month.

Established in 1979, Black Music Month was created to recognize the contributions of Black artists to American music. More than four decades later, the observance remains relevant because the story of Black music is inseparable from the story of American culture itself.

From Innovation to Institution

The influence of foundational Black American music stretches across generations. Spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, soul, funk, and hip-hop each emerged from distinct moments in history, yet all share a common thread: innovation. These genres introduced new ways of telling stories, expressing emotion, and documenting life. They provided the foundation for countless musical movements that followed.

The impact extended far beyond the recording studio.

Black musicians helped shape the language of popular culture. Fashion, dance, slang, visual aesthetics, and social movements have all been influenced by the sounds emerging from Black communities. Entire industries have been built around ideas that originated long before they became commercially viable or widely recognized.

Following the Thread

Understanding that history requires looking beyond charts and sales figures. Influence is not always measured by visibility. Often, it can be found in the ideas that continue to travel long after their origins have been forgotten. A genre evolves. A sound gets repackaged. A trend reaches a new audience. The influence remains.

Black Music Month creates an opportunity to reconnect those threads.

It encourages listeners to consider not only what they are hearing, but where it came from. It asks broader questions about attribution, cultural memory, and the ways innovation moves through society. Those questions feel especially important in an era when music travels across the globe in seconds and trends emerge faster than many people can trace their origins.

The Legacy of Reinvention

The history of Black music is often told through the lens of legacy. Legacy matters, but it is only part of the story. Black music has endured because each generation has expanded what came before it. New sounds emerged. New technologies were embraced. New artists challenged existing definitions of what music could be.

That pattern of reinvention continues today.

Black Music Month serves as a reminder that influence is not a static force. It is an ongoing process shaped by the people willing to create, experiment, and move culture forward. The sounds may change, but the impact remains.

To understand Black music is to understand one of the driving forces behind American culture—and a legacy that is still unfolding.

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Before the charts, before the trends, before the algorithms—there was us.

Beyond the Beat: Track 6 is a celebration of the icons, the disruptors, the risk-takers, and the communities that continue to push culture forward—one beat at a time.

Black music has always been more than entertainment. It’s rebellion. It’s joy. It’s community. It's what happens when people turn their stories into something the whole world can't stop listening to.

This is for the women who changed the game without asking permission. The pioneers who built the foundation. The Black and queer innovators who transformed warehouses, clubs, and dance floors into cultural movements and everyone in between.

From soul to funk. Disco to house. Hip-hop to whatever comes next.

The sound evolves, but the influence remains. Stepping into Black Music Month with gratitude, volume turned all the way up, and alllllll these legends on repeat. ✨

Tap in to the full interview playlist on Spotify! 🦋🎧

Oh, young hos—run free.

Unless I’m completely delusional, Beyond the Beat Track 5 is kickstarting a slew of summer anthem playlists that we, the girls, gays, and theys, have been craving—and it’s not even June yet. This playlist moves through more than just sound; it carries cultural memory. From the storytelling woven to the pulse of ballroom dance music, high-energy pop, and campy club beats, every sound is rooted in a desire to exist without apology.

And maybe that’s why it lands so perfectly in May. This is a month about becoming. About blooming into yourself while the world does the same. It’s also a time to honor the ones who made that becoming possible—mothers, in every sense of the word. The ones who created us, raised us, shaped us, and showed us how to take up space. Their influence lives in everything: the way we move, the way we express, the way we sound.

So this is a celebration of that energy—the personalities, aesthetics, and rhythms that come from being brought into the world and choosing to fully be in it.

Feeling like a young ho? Tap into the full playlist on Spotify, we’re just warming up. 🦋

Beyond the Beat: Track Five is coming in hot and the category is.. MOTHERS. This playlist is a celebration of the numerous hats mothers and mother icons wear.

Track Five highlights the artists who carry that spirit — from literal moms balancing life and legacy, to the women who’ve defined generations of sound, to the Muthas who’ve built culture, community, and confidence from the ground up. It’s about influence, care, individuality, and the kind of impact that lasts.

Different genres, different voices — but all rooted in the same thing: creation. Not just of music, but of space, identity, and belonging.

So this one’s for the icons, the nurturers, the trailblazers — and everyone who’s ever stepped into that role, on stage or off (that includes you too).

Press play and give the girlies their flowers while they’re here. 🦋

Full playlist available on Spotify. 🎧

It took seven months of unemployment to find out I was wrong.

Through it all; the uncertainty, the rejection, the mornings that were harder to start than they should have been — people stayed. They showed up without being asked. They didn’t treat me like a problem to solve or a situation to manage. They just kept being there.

And something that had functioned as a survival strategy for years — the isolation, the self-sufficiency, the performance of being fine — started to fall apart in the best possible way.

This is not just one woman’s story. It is, increasingly, the story of a generation.

The Shift Nobody Announced

Women today are living lives their grandmothers could not have imagined and their mothers were still fighting for. According to the Pew Research Center, women ages 25 to 34 now hold bachelor’s degrees at a rate of 47%, compared to 37% of men.

The American Association of University Women reports that women earn nearly twice as many master’s degrees as men and have surpassed them in law school, medical school, dental school, and pharmacy school. As of 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women became the majority of the college-educated labor force.

Financial independence at this scale changes everything downstream — including what women need from their relationships, and which relationships they prioritize.

Marriage rates have dropped roughly 60% over the last fifty years, according to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research. The average age of first marriage is now 28 for women and 30 for men, per U.S. Census Bureau data. A 2023 Pew Research survey found that 85% of millennials and Gen Z say marriage is not necessary for a fulfilling life. This is not a generation that gave up on connection. It is a generation that stopped outsourcing it to a single relationship.

What has grown in its place is something quieter and, the research suggests, more neurologically powerful than most people realize.

The Biology of Belonging

Female friendship is not a soft subject. The science is not soft either.

Genuine social connection triggers the release of dopamine and serotonin — the neurotransmitters responsible for feelings of contentment and stability. It boosts oxytocin, the bonding hormone, which directly counteracts cortisol, the body’s primary stress chemical. Research published in Frontiers in Psychology found that the quality of adult friendships is one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing across the lifespan — more predictive, in many measures, than income or relationship status.

Women have built the infrastructure to access these benefits in ways men, broadly, have not. According to Pew Research, women are twice as likely as men to regularly discuss their mental health with close friends — 31% compared to 15%. Among women under 50, that number rises to 43%. Women communicate with close friends more frequently across every channel: calls, texts, video, in person.

Men are equally likely to have a close friend. They are far less likely to use that friendship as emotional infrastructure. The result is a loneliness epidemic that has no quiet precedent — and a gender gap in social connection that is not accidental. It is the long consequence of a culture that told men vulnerability was weakness. Women were never given that particular miseducation.

Fullness as Prevention

There is a version of mental health that looks like crisis management — therapy, medication, intervention. All of it matters. None of it is the whole picture.

There is another version that looks like a life so full there is no room for the spiral to start. Not avoidance. Not distraction. Fullness. The kind that comes from having enough people, enough community, enough belonging that solitude becomes a choice rather than a default — that when the hard thing happens, there is somewhere to put it.

This is what shifts when women find their people. Not the absence of difficulty, but the presence of enough that difficulty doesn’t hollow you out. The group chat that actually goes somewhere. The friend who knows what you mean before you finish the sentence. The community that stays when your situation is not at its best.

It doesn’t require a best friend in every direction. It requires enough. Enough that you are never truly alone with the worst version of your thoughts.

What Gets Built When Women Gather

Beyond the Myc has always understood something the wellness industry is still working to articulate: that culture and mental health are not separate concerns. To be seen in your creativity, your history, your ambition — to exist in a space where your full self is the starting point and not the negotiation — is itself a form of care.

Muse Circle, Beyond the Myc’s community arm, exists at exactly this intersection. It is a space for creatives, thinkers, and culture-shapers — centering Black women — to gather not just around content but around the kind of learning and connection that does not happen in traditional spaces. Strategy alongside story. Creative identity alongside cultural literacy. The media ecosystem, demystified, held together by people who are building similar futures.

It is not a program. It is not a platform. It is, in the truest sense of the research, an architecture of connection — one where the growth is collective and the belonging is real. Where showing up and actually arriving are the same thing.

The data makes the case. But the case was already being made, quietly, in the lives of women who stopped waiting for the right moment to need people and started building community before the crisis came.

Every girl needs her girls — not because she cannot stand alone, but because the ground is more solid when you are not the only one standing on it.

The question is not whether community matters for your mental health. The research settled that.

The question is whether you have built one yet.

Muse Circle ATL is on the clock.

Shamya Jones is a finalist for Entrepreneur of Impact, and $25,000 on the line for her business.

It’s the finalist round, and tonight until 8pm, every vote counts as doubled.

Support our muse & vote for Shamya: https://entrepreneurofimpact.org/2026/shamya-jones

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Hey, Muse!

Wow! Last night was so surreal. Thank you to everyone who came to our very first Beyond the Myc event.

Hopefully, you walked away with a new appreciation for the unspoken grind before it all clicks and the underlying faith that the effort you put forward will turn into something beautiful.

Again, a huge thank you to Kira J., owner of Golden Hibiscus Botanica, for partnering with us on this event. Even if you didn’t win, make sure you guys support her Black-owned business! She just dropped some new tea blends, so def check that out.

Sending a special congratulations to our muses, Zania and Karleh for being our two giveaway winners! We hope you enjoy your wellness in a cup.

If you missed it? No problem!

The full video will be available for our paid subscribers on May 1st.

We have so much more planned for this year, and we’re so excited for you to be on this journey with us.

Until next time, Muse!

— BtM

If you need the link, here it is one last time: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a5ac65e1-d399-4477-8bd9-17b53d783675@9a0b64ff-f524-475c-8426-a4db15a9162a

See you soon!

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Hey, Muse!

By now, you’ve seen Starting Without a Manual.

You’ve met our muses. And now it’s time to hear their stories.

See you at 7!

RSVP HERE!

In partnership with Golden Hibiscus Botanica.

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Everyone talks about networking — and for creatives, it’s one of the best ways to advance in your career.

But who you’re networking with matters.

Not just the people who’ve been there before, but the ones building it right now, while you are too.

People talk a lot about networking up, but building with your peers is just as important.

Today, we’re hosting Starting Without a Manual.

@beyondthemycheavy on “it could be!” this is for all the creative girlies in media, marketing, entrepreneurship & every muse in between 💖 April 22 @ 7pm RSVP at beyondthemyc.com #beyondthemyc #ghbotanica #musecircle #creativecareers #mediacareers

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It’s a chance to hear from our peers — our muses — as they share their experiences in real time, while they’re still growing themselves.

Creative journeys — whether through corporate careers, entrepreneurship, or content creation — can feel lonely. Having a network of people who understand that makes a difference.

If you’ve been thinking about joining us, there’s still time.

RSVP: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a5ac65e1-d399-4477-8bd9-17b53d783675@9a0b64ff-f524-475c-8426-a4db15a9162a

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