Simone Nikkole is a poet, spoken word artist, author, songwriter, musician and child advocate who currently resides in New Jersey. In her music and poetry, she draws inspiration from her personal experiences and life situations but also finds herself inspired by her friends’ struggles and triumphs.

As A Poet and Spoken Word Artist:

Simone Nikkole , aka Azúcar and formerly Azúcar Morena, has written over 300 poems. In 2000, she wrote her first poem, “emotions”. Two years later, she wrote her first song. She was featured in two poetry chapbooks by Poetry.com, Clouds Across the Sky with her poem, ”Broken Angel”, and The Theatre of the Mind with her poem, “Me”, in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In 2011, she is also featured in Enhance Magazine with her poems, ”Infection” and ”Evaporate” . Her poem topics vary greatly, covering all emotions. Her main subjects include familial, personal and spiritual relationships, music, and nature. However, she is not afraid to write about political events and the social issues of the world. In her poetry, Simone Nikkole rarely uses punctuation and experiments with spelling and structure as an effort to show the freedom of the genre. Her style is influenced by Nikki Giovanni, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. Poetry often gives her peace as it acts as a means of catharsis and therapy.

Growing up, she was disturbed about how much children were misunderstood, underestimated and disrespected. She takes time to volunteer in her church and many organizations to make sure their voices are heard, valued and respected. In her first poetry book, My Journey through Poetry, she takes her child advocacy to print, writing in the frame of mind of a teenager struggling to find herself, to expose and correct indiscretions, to discover her spirituality, and to shape herself in her family and the world.

Simone Nikkole does many readings and performances at her church, college, and different cultural events. Her spoken word style is influenced by young artists such as Lemon, Gina Loring, Wise O and Zora Howard. In the future, she hopes to share her message—in person— all over the world. She is currently working on a few other collections and experimenting with the use of Spanish and different poetic forms as she reads more of Pablo Neruba.

As a musician and songwriter:

Simone Nikkole has been interested in music for as long as she could remember. She started playing piano at the age of 7. As she piano training increased, she realized that music gave her an indescribable peace. As a child, her parents exposed her to Reggae and R&B. As she got older, her musical tastes expanded to Gospel, Reggaeton, Salsa, Merengue and Bachata.

Simone Nikkole relished in the journey the interpretation of music would take her. Her musical role model became Alicia Keys, after she heard her first song, “Fallin”, and saw her first concert. She saw herself in Alicia because her [Alicia] heart speaks through her music and she [Simone Nikkole] relates to her struggle. Having a role model like Alicia has proven to be beneficial to her, since her journey into entertainment also includes poetry and music. She became moved by Alicia’s progress and wrote her first song at age 14. Since then, Simone Nikkole has written over 40 songs.

Her musical inspirations include artists like Bob Marley, Mary Mary, Aventura, Kirk Franklin, Byron Cage, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, India.Arie, Maxwell, Ne-Yo, and Kanye West. Their music and their message speak to her more than many people understand. She thrives on hearing their “message music”, as she affectionately calls it, and hopes that their raw talent can inspire her to create timeless and meaningful art.

Right now, she is taking a musical break to focus on her first poetry book, My Journey through Poetry but plans to continue writing songs for her future album, Aggressions.