The backstage lounge is the bastion of the elite: the room where famous artists and their acolytes drink, party, and make new connections. The most secure location at a show, it’s notoriously difficult for members of the public to enter.

But as up-and-coming rap artist K’Valentine found out, good things come to those who are persistent.

An avid poet, K’Valentine—who has chosen not to release her birth name—had her first career-changing experience at a venue in her sister’s Minnesota college. After discovering that literary legend Maya Angelou would be speaking there, K’Valentine bought a ticket, jumped on a bus, and managed to talk her way behind the scenes.

“Our meeting was actually brief, but very memorable,” she tells the Straight, on the line from her Chicago home. “I had brought some of my poems with me, and I told her how much I admired her, and how much of an honour it would be for her to read some of them and give me some feedback. She looked at me and said, ‘No.’ I asked why not, and she replied, ‘Well, if I were to do that, you wouldn’t be showing any respect for me, for yourself, or for your art.’

“She told me to look around the room,” K’Valentine continues, “and there was a lot going on in such a small space. Dr. Angelou said that to read my poetry at that time would be to take away from the actual art. So she handed me a business card, and told me to mail her two of my best poems. She said, ‘I’m gonna help you.’ ”

K’Valentine’s poetry soon fed her love for hip-hop. Deciding that production was the only difference between spoken-word poems and rap, she soon began writing and recording her own tracks, and developing a deep knowledge of the genre. After discovering that hip-hop superstar Talib Kweli would be performing in her home city, K’Valentine jumped at the chance to go—and once more ended up backstage.

“I walked up to Talib and let him know I do music. He asked how he could find it, and I told him to go to my website or he could give me his number and I’d send him the link. He just gave me his number on the spot.”

Taking an immediate liking to K’Valentine’s work, Kweli acted as the executive producer for her first mix tape, Million Dollar Baby. Marrying the rapper’s snappy lyrics to beats incorporating dramatic piano riffs, aggressive trap samples, and key backing tracks like a smooth, live version of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation”, Kweli left his stamp on the young artist’s style.

“When he’d put it all together,” she recalls, “Talib called me, and he said, ‘K, I’m getting ready to send you the final file, and I want you to look at it and tell me how you feel.’ He sounded so excited, and that made me even more excited.

“He told me, ‘This sounds really good, and this is the mix tape. When we start working on your album, you gotta really open up. Everything’s gonna be all original—you won’t be able to use industry beats like you’ve done before.’ And that was the first time we’d spoken about an album. That was a huge moment for me.”

With new singles “She”, “Atlanta”, and “That’s Real” already in the public domain, K’Valentine is looking forward to releasing her completed LP in the coming months—an opportunity that she’s very grateful for.

“I usually don’t use the term lucky,” K’Valentine says. “Instead, I’d say that I feel blessed. People out there have probably been praying for those meetings with Maya Angelou and Talib, and with me, it kind of just happened. I’m just blessed that I ran into them, and now to be able to learn and grow.”

K’Valentine opens for Talib Kweli at Venue on Wednesday (January 25).