Today we’d like to introduce you to GhettoStyles .
Hi GhettoStyles, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I am a music producer and an artist. I started in music very early in life as a saxophonist. All throughout grade school until high school graduation I was a first chair alto saxophone. I took a liking to hip hop very early in the 80s as well taking influence from many of the pioneers of hip hop. Some of my early favorites at the time were the likes of L.L. Cool J, UTFO, Roxanne Shante, Eric B & Rakim, Whodini, and many others. I wrote my first rap in 1988 called “Bus #9” fashioned after “Lyte as a Rock” by MC Lyte who is still at the top of my list of all-time favorite female rappers.
During junior high school, my cousin Shawn Love began producing and recording songs. It was very crude how he was doing it but he was doing it nonetheless and I thought it was dope and wanted to be a part of that. Our first hip-hop group was formed called P.I.M. or Posse In Motion. At the time all I wanted to do was rap. My cousin who went by the name of The Lyrical Artist (L.A.) at the time made all of the beats by sampling using two boom boxes facing each other. One of the boom boxes would have the music to be sampled and the other one had a blank tape. He would press play on one and record on the other at the same time and pause the one that was recording at the end of the loop. He would then rewind the sample tape and repeat the process until we had about a five-minute beat. These beats would skip all over the place but we made it work and it made use better performers as we got use to moving with the beat on the fly to keep up.
Originally going by the stage name Leoje (Lah-Jay) we eventually changed to group name to Leoje-L.A. We began spreading out songs on tapes throughout school and became very popular among out peers during this time. As time progressed, we began to try to get better gear for recording and create music. We advanced to using a very cheap karaoke machine to record songs for a while before Shawn Love got his hands on his first beat machine which was the Roland Boss DR-5. We then acquired a 4-Track analog tape recorder and both our quality and production began to soar.
As we progressed and gained popularity, we also decided to change our name. I became J-Ghetto aka GhettoStyles and my cousin became Shawn Love. We also changed the group name to Ghetto-Love and began building a group of other member which became the foundation of our larger power group Midwest Mophia. We were the first local rap group that were distributing music on CDs during this time. This was very early in the CD life span when it seemed you had to have a record deal to have music on anything other than cassette tapes. We found companies that were charging a very large amount of money to duplicate CDs so we decided to take that money and purchase our own CD duplication equipment. Once our music hit the streets on CDs it seemed that almost every other car that drove by was playing our music. Locally we were KING!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It was never easy. When we were coming up and trying to navigate how to be successful coming from Ohio in the late 80s/early 90s we did not have a road map. There were no record labels in our area and it seemed impossible to get a record deal from our location. Starting out we didn’t have the finances to travel to New York, California, or Texas. These were the only places we knew that had record labels that catered to hip hop.
This is one of the reasons we chose the hardest road possible which was trying to make it as an independent. Being an independent artist during that time took a lot of work and was far harder than doing it today with the age of the internet and DSPs like Tunecore, CD Baby, and DistroKid among others. You could not just upload music to the internet and let the world hear it. We distributed our music out of the trunk. It was literally hand-to-hand sales. We sold our CDs for $10
My strategy for getting our music heard was to go to the heart of the streets. Every time we had new music ready for release, I went to all of the local major drug dealers in the city. This had several purposes. I knew they had money readily available to purchase CDs and they all had the cars that everybody loved and wished they had. I’m talking everything from Cadillacs with the drop tops and gold wire rims to box Chevys with candy paint and four 15″ subwoofers in the trunk and 6×9 tweeters in the doors and back dashboard.
Once I did that, we had free advertising and publicity because the drug dealers would then ride around listening to our music at the highest volumes disturbing the peace and everybody wanted to listen to the same music, they were listening to which brought us a flood of people wanting to buy our albums.
Although we always sold out all of the CDs, we could make we still had no idea how to get a record deal or where to go. It seemed like we were trapped in the local space.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Today I am most known for creating MPC-geared learning videos on YouTube. I began doing this in 2017. I have since grown a following and have several big-hit videos that people praise and love. I am the most proud of my video for MPC Beats beginners that has been praised time and time again as the best video for beginners trying to learn and navigate the software.
I believe what sets me apart in this small niche is my delivery. I like to keep things extremely simple so that people of all ages can understand and duplicate what they have learned.
Although I have gained popularity as a teacher so to speak on YouTube, I will admit that I too am learning as well. I have probably learned just as much from subscribers and commenters or other YouTubers as they have from me if not more. I think it is a very interesting journey and I really enjoy what I do and have experienced there.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I am very passionate about music in general. I have been surrounded by music my whole life and always will be. Music is my happiness and my therapy. When things get hard or stressful instead of going to a therapist to talk out my pain, I just turn on the microphone. The microphone has always been there for me and never let me down. It always listens no matter what and even if I am right or wrong it is never judgmental. All it does is listen and let me get it off my chest.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://BeatTheBlockUp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghettostyles/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealGhettoStyles/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/GhettoStyles
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/GhettoStyles
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ghettostyles
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ghettostyles
