I have always had a passion for music, growing up with spanish speaking parents I actually had no idea there was music in English until I heard it on the radio for the first time in third grade. I remember the moment vividly but not the specific song, I just remember it was some sort of pop music. As I grew older I began to branch out my listening to other genres, pop just wasnt doing it for me and like most I went through my emo music phase in the mid 2000s. A pivotal moment for me came when I was in Highschool, I went to an innercity school where most people listened to hip hop and rap and I quickly became enamorated with the genre. Hip Hop and rap are very broad genres but I found what I enjoyed the most was music that was lyrical and had meaning behind it.
I remember walking home from basketball practice one day with my pre-paid phone I bought at 7/11 with my first paycheck, listening to Kendrick Lamars section 80 mix tape that I had spent the whole day ripping off youtube using a youtube to mp3 app I downloaded. It was great and a core memory for me, from that day forward I mostly listened to only lyrical rap and hip hop. Flash forward 8 years, I was reintegrating to civilian life after my time in the military, I was struggling to reintegrate, all my friends I left behind had moved on with life while I was back where I was when I left. I had a lot of time on my hands and not a lot to do, so I began to search for creative outlets. I tried a multitude of things but nothing really stuck, then I decided to try music production, I went to the nearest Guitar Center and picked up a midi controller, the little keyboards that hook up to your computer and the music production softwares that came with it. I loved music, it had always been by my side and I often spent thousands of hours listening to music a year, I think my record was 82,000 minutes according to spotify, and now I had figured out how to make my own music.
I'll be the first to admit I am not the next Kanye west or some sort of music savant but I was having fun and making music I could thoroughly enjoy listening to, even if no one else did. I continued on producing music from that day but have taken several multi-month breaks due to burnout. I started posting to Soundcloud and eventually racked up over 300 tracks posted, and 78 followers without much promotion. My best year was when I was posting consistently in 2023 and got a total of 20k streams on Soundcloud, people were listening and actually enjoying my music with me I actually made $25 that year off my music which was pretty neat and bought me lunch. Since then I started posting on Spotify, Apple Music and Youtube but havent found much success and am currently on a break from producing music for the time being as other obligations have taken up my time.
