At the start of this year, Alonté Cross stood at a crossroads: keep a secure marketing director role that left him spiritually drained, or risk it all to pursue his art.
“It’s me or the job. I’m not good, and I need to be good.”
– Alonté Cross
“I was really caught up in that job and by the end of it, I just wasn’t well,” he shared with I Love Us in an interview. “I didn’t really feel quite like myself in a lot of really core ways, and that was enough for me to say: it’s me or the job. By February, I’m like, okay, I’m just gonna do it because I’m not good. And I need to be good.”
This wasn’t a rash move. For months, Cross had been siphoning PTO hours to record Under the Blue Lights, his first full-length project. For years he had released singles sporadically, pulling them down almost as quickly as he put them up. Nothing felt aligned. But when he finally locked into the studio, the music clicked.
“I blew all my PTO, recorded the album, put the album out, and then nature really took its course,” he explains. “The music was really well received out of the gate… further than I expected for somebody not really having a following.”
It was enough to tip the scales. “Being so fulfilled artistically and creatively in that way and then just being miserable during the day… it bleeds in,” he remembers. “Once the new year hit, I just felt spiritually, mentally, and emotionally taxed and completely vexed. So I sent in my resignation and the rest was history.”
Sustained by Faith — and Friends
Cross knew the leap meant walking by faith. He also knew he couldn’t do it without his people.
“My personal community, like my inner circle, my loved ones, my closest family and friends — I wouldn’t have even made it to the point where I could come up with this whole streaming endeavor, if not for them,” he says.
That community showed up in tangible ways. “For my birthday at the beginning of the summer, my close friend group poured money together and just gave me a big stack of cash at my birthday dinner just to say, here we support your dream,” he recalls. “They made like a fake check, like a big check. ‘We believe in you, we believe in the dream.’ Those are the kind of people that I have.”
That faith proved critical when unexpected challenges came. Contracts tied to federal funding collapsed just as he resigned, stripping away the financial cushion he thought he had. But Cross says he’s been carried by something bigger.
“I learned in a lot of ways, I say like miracles are real,” he reflects. “Because it hasn’t been easy. I’m truly out here walking on just sheer faith. I haven’t lost anything since I left that job. I still have my place, I still have my car, I still have everything I need. It could very easily go the other way.”
“I’m truly out here walking on just sheer faith.”
The Suite Takes Shape
It was in that space — equal parts uncertainty and possibility — that The Neo Soul Suite emerged.
Cross had been experimenting with TikTok livestreams when one themed session exploded with energy. “It went so wild that I’m like, this is what I should be doing every time,” he says. “I just pivoted. I got the domain, I got all the stuff, and on everything up that night. How you see it now is how it was.”
Now, every weekday from 8 a.m. to noon ET, his TikTok transforms into something like a digital lounge. Jill Scott, D’Angelo, and Lauryn Hill anchor the playlists. Viewers greet one another like neighbors. Every so often, Cross’s own falsetto and original songs slip into rotation — never forced, always organic.
“I definitely try not to [self-promote], and honestly, I do it because I know I should,” he says. “Even if I didn’t play it — which would be stupid for me not to — just putting myself out there and connecting the way I do, they’re gonna go to it.”
The Suite’s intention is clear: relief. “I just want folks to feel… I do like the idea of a little bit of escapism,” he explains. “I know folks are at work and they in their stuff, but if I can lessen the blow of whatever work might feel like… then I feel good about that.”
He didn’t anticipate how immediate the impact would be. “That first day, a bunch of people DM’d me afterwards saying things like, ‘I really needed this because I was feeling a certain type of way. I might have woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but this set me right.’ I wasn’t even expecting that type of thing when I started doing it.”
A Legacy of Soul
Cross’s curation isn’t random. It’s rooted in a lineage of Black music that shaped him from childhood.
“I grew up on folks like Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Maxwell… especially just from my introduction to music really being my mom. She played all that stuff,” he says. “We just adopt this stuff that we heard growing up.”
The names roll out like a syllabus: Jill Scott, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Ledisi. “I was introduced to Ledisi in middle school and fell in love,” he remembers.
For Cross, carrying that torch means respecting the craft. “Songs are not even more than 2.5 minutes a lot of times these days, so there’s not a whole lot of space for really thoughtful lyrics,” he says. “When I write songs, I don’t like to be too on the nose. For example, more sensual or romantic songs — it’s obvious what it is, but I’m not cursing, I’m not being vulgar. I’m using vocabulary to paint a picture… a more creative route, not so dead on. That’s the kind of intentional, tactical songwriting that I do think comes from the genre for sure, and that I pride myself on doing.”
From Online to In-Person
Cross has built community online before. In 2021, a casual Animal Crossing video unexpectedly went viral on YouTube, leading to a Discord with nearly 200 members. It wasn’t the right audience, but it showed him he could create digital belonging.
Now, he sees the Suite evolving beyond the screen. “I definitely plan to create in-person spaces to have this translate,” he says. “I have a venue right by me that I’m running some events for in October. It’s a nice two-level space. We could create a really, really good vibe there.”
The vision stretches even further. “I see concerts, strategic link-ups, even a festival,” he says. “I used to be the operations and marketing manager for an event production company. We put on a wine festival. I could take what I learned from that and do some really good stuff with this.”
He also wants to expand the Suite’s format itself. “I see it turning into a real program with actual content baked in,” he says. “Artist interviews, music spotlights, conversations — I see it really evolving into a real program.”
The Leap, Still in Motion
Every morning, Alonté Cross wakes up and recommits to the choice he made back in February. The decision was to trust that his art could hold him — and hold others, too.
“I’m truly out here walking on just sheer faith,” he says. That faith is what powers the four hours he spends each weekday curating sound and conversation, what steadies him when the future is uncertain, and what draws people back into The Neo Soul Suite day after day.
Before the festivals, before the press campaigns, before the industry machinery comes calling, there is this: a multi-faceted artist sitting in front of his screen, sharing some of his favorite songs, and opening space for strangers to breathe easier. There is a chat full of people reminding him, and each other, that the leap was worth it.
How to Tap In
TikTok: @AlonteCross
The Neo Soul Suite with Alonté Cross
Weekdays, 8 a.m.–12 p.m. ET
Cover photo: How Alonté Cross Bet on Himself and Built a Budding Community / Credit: AlonteCross.com
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