What I had to go through to make this first mixtape

The cover art for the Queen City Mixtape

Looking back, a lot of this story blurs together because of how much booze I’ve drank coupled with how random and numerous my living situations have been over the years. I was still in a metal band and the only hip hop recordings I had were demos and random songs I had made with friends. The demos were pretty wack honestly. My raps were pretty good on them, but the beats we made sucked. Eventually I got better at writing raps and freestyling, but I didn’t want to waste my new good lyrics by putting them on anymore shitty homemade or jacked beats. So I plotted on finding a way to find a producer to help me make a beat in an actual studio. Then eventually make an album. The idea was simple, but pulling it off was made difficult with my lack of funds, chaotic home life, and bad habits.

At one point I had a roommate named Deon who was also a rapper. We both lived in a shithole of a house off Kennon Street in Charlotte NC before it was gentrified. We’d play instrumental beats off the computer and freestyle over them while we got drunk. That was one of the few fun things to do at that point in my life after breaking up with my then girlfriend and moving out of the apartment we lived in. Rapping also helped me take my mind off how shitty the place we were living in was. Deon and I were living in a roach invested house that had bullet holes in it with 2 other roommates. Right after I moved in it was broken into by someone and our other roommate had to beat the guy in the head with a guitar. The ceiling in the kitchen caved in one day and got asbestos all over everything. Our landlord was a former professional athlete of some kind. He had a back injury and could only walk hunched over. I think he only gave us a $20 discount off our nexts months rent despite the collapsed roof ruining the kitchen and living room.

Then of course there was the Poo-Gloo in the front yard. The septic tank in the front yard busted at some point and nobody came by to fix it. So everything that got flushed down the toilet formed a pile in the front yard. So piss, shit, toilet paper, condoms, you name it. All in one big mound in the front yard. In the winter it froze. So it was like an igloo made of poo. So we called it the poo-gloo. To cope with all this nonsense I just worked, wrote raps, freestyled, and got hella drunk all the time. There was always a revolving door of random people in and out of that house. Partying, crashing on the couch, and leaving more trash everywhere. I wouldn't prefer to live in a slum like that, but I was in a rough spot. My name wasn’t on the lease so I didn’t care. I was only renting a room until I could get back on my feet and get the fuck out. A stripper who's name I don't remember was staying there for a bit and helped clean the place up a little. She was always in and out so it didn’t stay clean for long. I’m getting off topic here, but you get my point about starting this hip hop project from the bottom.

So my first real session with a hip hop producer was with a guy I used to go to school with named Blake. Also known by his stage name Ill-Use. He was one of the two members of a local hip hop duo called Mr. Invisible. He ended up producing the beats for my songs Geeked and Broke. The first track I did with him was a song called Sleep Well that didn’t get put on the Queen City Mixtape, but it was released online. I did a few sessions with him and I learned a lot about recording and writing overall. Blake’s group had performed with groups like Mobb Deep, EPMD, and Del tha Funky Homosapien. So it felt like I was transitioning from a regular guy who wrote raps into an actual rapper now. It also helped I went to school with Blake and my old band played shows with their old hip hop group Dominant 7. So if you’re a young creative I highly recommend getting started on your creative path as soon as possible and banding together with other creatives because you never know how your paths will keep crossing in the future.

I’m pretty sure the next producer I worked with was Justin. Also known by his stage name Aswell. He was the other half of the Mr. Invisible group that Blake was in. Even though I went to school with them and had played shows with their groups I didn’t really get to know them personally until I worked in the studio with them. It was the best way to get the ball rolling with making hip hop music for me because, I learned a lot of stuff from them I still use today. I had a reference point to show myself I could do things I put my mind to. I was also able to overcome shyness when it comes to rapping for other people. Justin produced the beats for the songs One Man Posse Cut, Let Go, and another track I didn’t release on this mixtape called The Art Of Beastin.

They helped me out a lot, but they were busy with their own projects so I figured it would be better to learn how to record myself. This way I’d be able to rehearse in between doing real sessions with them. So I ended up working two jobs to save up and get a laptop with recording software on it. I worked at an HVAC warehouse during the day and a sandwich shop in the evenings. It sucked, but I was able to save up to get a laptop, condenser mic, a mic stand, an M-audio box, and some head phones. It was officially on! I could record myself now. All I had to do was learn the software and find a quiet isolated place to record.

Mr. Invisible. Justin Aswell (left) Blake Ill-Use right

I ended up working with the producer Kato from Atlanta because I met him at a show he was doing with the rapper Jarron Benton in Charlotte. If you don’t know who Kato is he was part of the rapper Hopsin’s crew Funk Volume. He was a producer/DJ for Jarron Benton. He’s worked with 2 Chainz, Gangsta Boo, Vinnie Paz and a bunch of other artists. He made the beat for that TikTok trend where girls would film themselves not wearing makeup then they’d tap the camera to the beat until the beat finally drops revealing their faces all dolled up with makeup. The “I’m so pretty challenge” or some shit. I don’t know. Anyway, I did 4 tracks with Kato on this mixtape. Two I paid for that he sent me and the other two were for his contest “the no sucka MCs contest”. The 2 tracks I paid for ended up being the most expensive. That was also around the time I was the most broke. The tracks that Kato produced that are on this mixtape are No Lie, The Dopeness, Rewind, and Disastrous.

Kato

Before I go into how I got the last few tracks I should first explain that a lot of stuff happened in between getting all these tracks completed. I lost two jobs at once. A lady I worked with at a restaurant had me framed and then fired. Then immediately my car broke down and died permanently so I couldn’t deliver food at my second job. Since I didn’t have income I couldn’t pay rent and had to move out of the house with my roommates and back in with my parents. Then after all that my girlfriend breaks up with me. All in the same month. I remember on the last day of my restaurant job walking a long ass time to the nearest bus stop and using my last two dollars to take the bus home. Then as soon as I got off the bus to walk uphill to my house a thunderstorm broke out and it started to rain on me. I shit you not. The second my foot hit the road to start walking the half mile to my house it began raining on me like I was in a hurricane or something.

While at my parents I was able to use an old shed behind their house as a spot to record. Recording in the shed was rough. It was old, dilapidated, and most of all hot. Really really hot. Over 100 degrees in fact. So I’d have to get in and out with the quickness when it came to recording. The heat wasn’t the only thing I was up against. There were a lot of different bugs in the shed too. Black widows, mosquitos, wasps and hornets. That’s when I learned the difference between a wasp and a hornet. Because I got stung by a hornet once while I was trying to open the door to that shed. So between being attacked by bugs and having a heat stroke I also had to make sure there was no noise going on.

Me sweating my face off recording in that hot dilapidated shed

For those of you who’ve never recorded with a studio mic you may not realize it, but they pick up most of the sound in the room and even outside. If the mic is on with no music playing and a person is chewing gum in the same room you’re in it’s going to sound like they’re chewing right in your ear hole through the headphones. So a lot of times I’d go to record and there’d be kids playing outside at the neighbors house screaming at full volume. Or another neighbor might suddenly start using his weed wacker the second I get everything set up to record. One day I had everything set up in the shed to record. When all of a sudden out of nowhere it started to hail. Seriously? What the fuck!? The weather was fine like 10 minutes ago. Hail? It sounds like I’m making this up, but that’s exactly what happened. Giant golf ball sized hail came beating down in the yard and loud as shit all over the roof of the shed. Isn’t it supposed to hail before a tornado or during a certain time of year or some shit? I don’t know. I’m no meteorologist, but I do know I had to end a recording session because of that.

Living at my parent’s house isn’t exactly the best environment for me so I ended up moving out and into my car for a while. I also crashed at some of my friend’s houses and recorded at their place when they were gone. I recorded some tracks in a strippers room in a trap house that later got raided by cops when I wasn’t there. Another shithole, a different stripper, and different roaches (hopefully). I recorded some of the grind mode tracks in my friend Kristi’s closet. The beat for the song scrap shit was made by me. I took the audio from the video of a Dad and his daughter having a beatbox battle. It’s a dope video if you get a chance look it up on YouTube. The song Brainwave was a random addition by a long time friend of mine named Cody. I think it was one of his first times making a beat we wrote and recorded that track in one day. The idea was to make a minute long song on the spot. Hence the lyric in the song where I mention that. He also mixed it. Not too shabby for a first shot considering the track made it on the mixtape and I play this song live all the time.

A screenshot from the father vs daughter beatbox battle I sampled for the track Scrap shit.

The first two tracks on this mixtape ended up being the last two to get written, recorded, and mixed. They were produced by Phillie Phresh. I first heard Phillie when I was hanging out with the rappers Stitchy-C and Kyng Rash. We were listening to Stitchy’s new stuff at the time and I was blown away. Then Phillie ended up Djing a show I did with them and he liked my style and we discussed collaberating. I’ve done a few more tracks with him since then. He’s the main DJ for another local MC named Ed E Ruger who is also a dope MC that you should check out. I was waiting for these last two tracks to be mixed by Justin Aswell and for some reason he was MIA. He’s  a professional guy so it was weird that he wasn’t really responding to my messages. I really needed to get these last two tracks mixed to finish the track list and finally release this mixtape. After all this I wasn’t going to wait to put these two bangers on my next release. Not after going through all this. Then he randomly messaged me. He said he was in rehab. Oh shit. That sucks. First of all I didn’t know that so that sucks. Plus it sucks that he was going through tough times. He mentioned that they were going to let him bring his gear into rehab with him and he’d mix my tracks IN REHAB. What a trooper. That’s some hardcore shit. So the last two tracks with the newest producer ended up being the first two tracks on the album and were mixed in rehab. Those tracks are Get Down and Outta My Way. The album artwork is a pic of me on my friend Kristi’s couch with an effect I put on it with a program called gimp. I’m wearing a hat in the pic with long hair in a man bun under the hat.

Stitchy C (Left) Kyng Rash (Center) Ed E Ruger (Right)

DJ Phillie Phresh

After sometime I got all the tracks done then I found a place online that would press them in CD format. So I saved up the money to have them pressed. My goal was to go everywhere and pass them out. I was gonna play so many shows. I figured for every 1,000 I passed out I’d get about 100 new fans right Something like that. I guess we’ll see. So after years of working two jobs, writing, saving money, moving, living in a car, break ups, getting fired, car problems, hail storms, hornets, hangovers, recording problems, learning all the software, and gathering the resources to turn this into a physical CD. It was ready and as far as I was concerned nothing was going to stop me after all that. Then almost simultaneously after I got the mixtapes pressed and delivered to my home to sell the entire country went into lockdown because of something called covid 19. What in the apocalyptic fuck?! I wouldn’t be playing any live shows or going to any to promote myself for quite some time. So I did the only thing that I could at the time and I posted about the release of my mixtape on social media. Believe it or not I sold a good bit of these Queen City Mixtapes to a lot of my friends and new fans online. I ended up making friends with some really cool new people by doing this. If you were one of the people who messaged me online and bought one just know I really appreciate you. I’m also glad I was able to provide some music for you while we all went through that crazy couple of years together. The Queen City mixtape is actually available to stream on band camp. The link for that is below. Thanks a lot for checking it out. Also thanks for reading this and giving my content the time of day. If you’re interested in more content you should consider getting on my SMS list. That's also listed below. I’ll text and email you my new videos, songs, and newsletters as they come out. You can also opt out whenever. Until next time my friends

Cheers

-B

The final pressed copies of the Queen City mixtape in CD format

You can listen to the entire Queen City mixtape by clicking right HERE

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