RAGE Productions

Rage Productions (a.k.a Hardrock Posse) is the brainchild of Kevin Beacham. It all started in 1986 on a family vacation to Galesburg, IL (my Mom's hometown and my "unofficial" Hometown). My Uncle Chris is a professional Jazz musician and he had just brought a drum machine (Roland TR-505) to use to practice with his guitar playing. I had used a drum machine (Boss DR-110) before back in Fort Riley courtesy of my Mentor, DJ Pill. My Uncle let me check it out so I went in my Uncle Ty's house and hooked it up to his stereo system and just programmed beats for hours (I actually have a tape of those beats somewhere in my apartment). I couldn't stop talking about it so my Mom said that if I was "good" she would get me one. A few months went by and I had my Roland TR-505. From there I became a "beat maker" by default. By that I mean, that I was really more concerned with MCing but the idea of making my own songs with my own music was really intriguing so I just started making beats to lay my raps to. It wasn't long before word got around town that I had a drum machine and eventually crews started asking me for beats. The first to hit me up that I worked with was D.B.I. They had started to make a name for themselves in the city for doing the High School talent shows and rocking their Synsonic Drums and Casio Keyboards. Me and Madd Maxx (of Wildstyle) decided to make them some tracks. It was from there I decided I wanted to build a crew. I came up with Rage Productions. We started to call our home studio (wherever we located it too at the time) the Rage Cage. Eventually I upgraded to the Roland TR-808 with a Tascam 4-track. Then the Alesis HR-16 Drum Machine. The final version of the Rage Cage studio (from '90-'95) had a SP-12, a Tascam 8 Track, Quadraverb, nice mics and even some mic stands...ha. Thru out all this time I worked with many groups as a producer and on some artist development. I started to get more interested in the business side of things. My first step was to start acting as a "manager" of groups involved in Rage. Then in '92 I created Rage Promotions to do street promotions for several key Hip Hop labels and some Major labels also (ex: Nastymix, Wildpitch, Select, A&M, Step Sun, Wu-tang, Hydra, Natural Elements, Raw Shack, Delicious Vinyl, etc...). The more I got involved in the business side of things I strayed more from being an artist. Writing songs was the first thing to suffer and eventually I only freestyled with my groups. I held on to production until '95 then gave that up also (story about that in a blog to come soon). All in all, the existence of Rage Productions is one of the most important decisions I made in life. Thru all the struggles, success, hard work, and good times I learned a lot of life lessons, about the music industry (for better or worse), worked with a lot of very talented individuals and also it got me where I am today. Rage Productions is the key piece of me turning my dreams to reality....