“It’s okay to not see the whole path. Just take the next step”: Lee Ann Roberts has built a music career from nothingSouth Africa is becoming a major player in dance music, and Durban’s own Lee Ann Roberts is holding the flag for her home country all around the world. Currently based in Amsterdam, Roberts has delivered her raging beats at Tomorrowland, Fabric, and Amnesia Ibiza, among many other hotspots, while also running her label and event series, NowNow.
However, representing South Africa on a global scale doesn’t mean Roberts had the same opportunities as someone who was born in London or Los Angeles. Her childhood was fraught with neglect from absent and addicted parents. No one was encouraging her to pursue music.

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“I come from a place where nothing was handed to me, and I learned early on that you either give up or you fight,” Roberts says to MusicTech over email.
Living in a home with an absent father and an alcoholic mother, Roberts sought environments that provided an escape from the isolation she felt growing up. Like so many before her with the same intention, she turned to music. In her younger years, she dated a promoter who was hosting international DJs in Durban, and she was finding her way to Cape Town on the opposite side of the country to attend psytrance raves (which inspired her latest EP, Africa).
“I was part of the South African psytrance community for about 10 years, going almost every weekend,” Roberts says. “Honestly, those were the best times of my life. Psytrance shaped me. The way a set could completely transport you stuck with me, and with my newest EP Africa, I wanted to channel that same energy…my roots…where it all began but through my own lens.”
Image: Press
But before she could release music inspired by her upbringing, she had to learn to produce. After being involved in her local scene for so long, she picked up DJing and started a radio show on MuthaFM in Cape Town. But production was a different beast. She didn’t have access to equipment. There weren’t a lot of other producers to teach her. And there definitely weren’t any production schools.
So, Roberts built a career as a model and used that as a means of travel. In 2014, while modelling full-time, she moved to Los Angeles and started studying production at Garnish Music School. Through the program, she had individual lessons with the UK’s DJ Rap, and she used whatever spare money she had to throw together a barebones studio so she could practice with YouTube videos in her spare time.
“When I started, my ‘studio’ was a laptop with cracked Ableton and a pair of cheap headphones. That’s it. No fancy monitors. No gear,” Robert says. “I scraped and saved to upgrade little by little, but honestly, those early days taught me you don’t need much to start making something meaningful.”
Roberts put out her first release in 2021, entitled I Want You. Totally accustomed to being in charge of her career at this point, she also launched NowNow Records with her debut. The two-track EP featured a spacey techno track from Roberts alongside a hypnotic remix from the UK duo, Dense & Pika.

Since then, she’s dabbled in other styles like her beloved psytrance and released music on celebrated labels like Sian’s Octopus Recordings and Coyu’s Suara, but she shares the bulk of her music independently, and her primary genre has become hard techno.
“It feels like my heartbeat. Relentless, unapologetic, and full of raw emotion,” Roberts says, and when it comes to producing the fast-paced genre, she has a few tips. “Keep the energy alive. This sound needs movement. Layer percussion, add fills, automate filters. Kick and bass are king. Spend time getting them to work perfectly together. Use distortion tastefully. It adds power but can muddy your mix if overdone.”
Roberts’ connection to hard techno goes beyond her musical preferences, though, and deep into her past:
“That drive, that edge, it’s the closest thing I’ve found to translating my inner world into sound. It’s not just about BPM, it’s about the energy that says ‘I survived, I’m here, and I’m not holding back’,” Roberts says. “It matches the intensity of my story. It’s everything I’ve been through, every moment I thought I couldn’t keep going, and then that surge of strength that kept me moving forward. It’s not just music to me, it’s how I tell my story without saying a word.”
Four years ago, Roberts’ story took another harsh turn when her mother committed suicide after a battle with opioid addiction. She acknowledges the traumatic effect this had on her; it’s something she’s dealing with in therapy, but it also served as a motivator. Just like the other difficult experiences in her past that made it seem like she could never earn her place as a professional DJ and producer.
Image: Press
“It’s surreal. Every ‘no’ I’ve been told that I couldn’t DJ, that I’d never produce, that I’m a model not a DJ, just made me more hungry. It’s not about proving people wrong anymore. It’s about proving to myself that I can keep showing up no matter what,” Roberts says, going on to share how music supported her through such a tragedy. “Losing my mom shaped everything. It was trauma that could have swallowed me but music gave me a way to channel all of that darkness into something alive. Something that made me more hungry and persistent than ever.”
When asked about continuing to pursue her musical journey through all these challenges, the piece of advice she would pass on to anyone in a similar situation is to simply start anyway:
“It’s okay to not see the whole path. Just take the next step, and don’t wait for the perfect time. It doesn’t exist. Learn, experiment, fail, try again,” Roberts says. “The only way to become an artist is to be one even when you feel like you’re not ready. You’ll never feel ready. That’s the secret.”
In reflecting on finding so much success despite the challenges, Roberts’ mind drifts back to her mom, and what she would say if she could see her today:
“I think she’d be proud. She was always proud of me, but now even more so. I think she’d see the strength in me that maybe she didn’t get to fully find in herself, even though I always thought she was the strongest person I knew. She’d know that even though I went through hell, I found a way to turn it into something beautiful. And I hope she knows she’s still here in every track I make and in everything I do.”
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