LTRAIN Vote Buggs Tha [email protected]

Getting into the music game isn’t easy and it’s especially not easy in a city like Cincinnati. L-train, an up and coming producer, recently sampled Nina Simone’s “Baltimore” on his track, “The City’s Dying.” The inspiration behind the sample was Nina’s story of Baltimore where she describes “hookers on the corner, drunks lying in the street, ain’t no where to run to, ain’t nothing here for free.” “Damn. Sounds just like Cincinnati,” he says. L-train got into producing when he linked up with Buggs tha Rocka, an aspiring hip hop artist also from Cincinnati, a little under a year ago. While in studio sets for Buggs, L-train started playing around in the studio making beats. Producing came naturally for him and people started taking notice of his potential, telling him he should do something with it. L-train began taking his craft seriously, learning the art of taking random sounds in his mind and transforming them into melody. “My music is influenced by a lot of things, other artists, life experiences etc. I grew up listening to all kinds of music,” he shrugs. “I remember my mother playing vinyls in the house.” He laughs. “Vinyls! That’s when they used to play actual records. My mom was really into soul and R&B….Frankie Beverley and Maze, Teddy Pendergrass, Stevie Wonder. Now my grandma, she got me into jazz. She loved your Coltrane, your Miles Davis. Then my dad was more in rap and hip hop. Fat Boys, Run DMC, NWA, Cool Mo Dee. I got exposed to a lot of the greats growing up and as I got older, I got into my own generation’s style of music, anything from hip hop to rock, whatever. It doesn’t matter, I just like music.” L-train’s production sound fuses the edge of modern hip-hop and the familiar textures of vintage soul, rock and R&B. L-train got his start in producing by ear. “It just came naturally to me. I’m making my way around the studio like I have been doing it my whole life.” He pauses and is quiet for a moment. “And I’m still learning. I don’t even have the resources to learn everything that I want to so I can only imagine how cold I would be if I had everything accessible to me. I don’t even see myself as being a producer because there are so many other people in this game that I respect. I feel that I am disrespecting them by calling myself a producer until I do more and learn more. My skills ain’t perfected yet but I feel that when they are, I’m gonna be a problem.” L-train gives a confident smile. “I’m a problem already.” “It’s like a puzzle,” he says. “I can take a bunch of various pieces and put them together so they make sense. There is a difference between beat makers and producers just like there is difference between hip hop artists and rappers. Hip hop is a craft and a culture. Rappers are just entertainment. Beat makers can come up with a mainstream, commercial sound that everybody wants to hear. But a producer brings something fresh, something new. They take risks because they try to create an audience…a following for themselves. L-train doesn’t attribute his gift in producing as a solo effort. “I couldn’t do what I do without a lot of people. My right-hand man, Buggs tha Rocka, Mango, Beataholic, Monty B, DJ Steven J, Shaun D for his creative eye in photography, my family, the cards that I was dealt, God, Cincinnati, Copasetic, Brother Sam for designing my logo, all my MYSPACE friends and fans,” he chuckles, “they know who they are!” “One of my favorite quotes is by Marianne Williamson," he says. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” That’s how I feel about producing. People say I am too cocky, too confident. But who says L-train can’t become the greatest producer in the world? I say who am I to be anything else but that.” music layout @