Before I hopped on the phone with Thelonious Martin a couple weeks back, I was expecting a talented young producer to speak on his success at such a young age, throwing stories at me about the exciting lives of teenage musicians thriving in the urban metropolis of New Jersey and New York. I was not expecting quite possibly the most grounded young musician I have ever spoken to. Thelonious Martin just graduated high school and is already primed to take the next step in his young career. “Within the first few years of me being in school, I always told myself, I want to go to school… I saw that fact that going to school is more important than anything,” states Thelonious who claims that while he’s at school this coming year at Columbia (Chicago), you will be able to find him in 1 of 3 places: the classroom, his dorm room, or the studio. After releasing countless beat tapes, Martin is ready to move on from that part in his career, wanting to focus more on mixtapes and albums.
His collective, Tastemakers NJ, is a lifestyle brand comprised of artists, musicians and business savvy teenagers that have recently released the compilation Summer Ale, proving they are yet another young collective poised to make their brand known to the larger Hip-Hop Community. “We have people to handle the marketing stuff, people to handle all the photography, artwork, and like in terms of small operating things we don’t need a big corporate head saying ‘oh we gotta do this and that today,’ because if we’re really passionate about making music, we are going to handle our business.”
Equipped with a check-list of goals he’d like to accomplish by the age of 25, this 18-year old musician operates at a much more mature level. Striving to never take a day off, Martin has all the skills, aside from the music itself, that molds a young musician into an internationally acclaimed artist. Oh yeah, you don’t get those skills without a strong passion for the music at a young age (middle school), and when you start that young, the music takes care of itself. Dropping his last beat tape (ever?) Super about a month ago, Martin just wrapped the mixing for fellow Tastemaker Topaz Jones’s debut LP Hello My Name Is. The beats thump and the MC’s always come correct, as Thelonious and Tastermakers NJ both will definitely be around just as long as they please. Read on after the jump.
RubyHornet: You just dropped the beat tape Super, are you happy with the release?
Thelonious Martin: Yeah, I’m definitely happy with the response. I got a lot of blogposts I wasn’t expecting to get, at the same time it’s like, if they don’t post it, it’s cool. I said it the other day, it’s probably my last beat tape. And people look at me weird because that’s what I’ve been doing, but to me that challenge has been accomplished, and now I have to move on to the next challenge for me.
Ruby Hornet: Which is what?
Thelonious Martin: Probably mixtapes and albums. Yeah, Super was pretty much a spur of the moment thing, something that has been shown throughout all of my projects and instrumental LP’s in terms of things like video games, or just little things that inspire me. I was watching adult swim one the time & I played a bunch of super nintendo, but it’s time to close that gap and keep it moving.
Ruby Hornet: Are you working with any other artists who are on the same level as you then at the moment. Artists you see as peers?
Thelonious Martin: I am working on a few other artists at the moment. I’m working with Vic Mensa on an EP, definitely love the stuff he does. We started a few tracks around Christmas, and when I come back home to Chicago we’ll wrap it up and hopefully get that to the people sometime soon, September or October.
Ruby Hornet: Yeah his band is dope, Kids These Days, they’re bout to blow. Have you chilled with them at all?
Thelonious Martin: Yeah I stopped by the trap over Christmas break and got to see them record, got to chop it up with a few of them. It’s amazing, one to have a band like that, then to be my age, because it’s amazing to have an 8-piece band like that, with a horn section, studio, add Vic, and on top that they’re all graduating high school. Greg the drummer, he’s the homie, definitely we were talking about doing some ?uestlove type s**t, where I’ll chop up the sample and he’ll lay down some live drums. So I really can’t wait to come home to Chicago.
Ruby Hornet: With Odd Future, Casey Veggies, Chuuwee, yourself included, what is it about 2011 that has the younger generation taking over the game?
Thelonious Martin: I really think that the advancement in technology and how quickly people can access information has really sped up the creative process for everybody in general, artists, musicians, everyday people. Then when you have a kid who is someone passionate about music and they have the internet, you can go to youtube and learn everything you need. Because for me personally, I would watch Adult Swim and hear Dilla, Madlib & Doom in between shows and I’m like, ‘how the hell did they do that?’ So the first thing I did is go to youtube and find the samples, watch the video’s of people making beats and just study and study and study, and took whatever focus I had in anything else and put it all into music, I really think with this youtube generation, I think that when you get some good kids, and put their drive in something good, and study their craft then you get kids like Casey Veggies, Kids These Days, Odd Future, it’s a really beautiful thing, because it’s not like you really have any beef between anybody, just a great young collective of artists creating right now.
Ruby Hornet: Were you born in Chicago?
Thelonious Martin: I was born in Cook County hospital, but moved to NJ at the age of five, but all my family except my mom is in Chicago. So I’m basically coming home and it’s been long overdue.
Ruby Hornet: Word, you obviously love Chicago, did you come back a lot during the summers?
Thelonious Martin: Yeah, I was back all the time, playing baseball, you know stuff like that. It was weird to be in the east coast during the winter months and into the spring and then really get the feel of the east coast, then come back home to Chicago in possibly the hottest time of the year. I totally missed out on the little things in Chicago, but it feels great to finally be coming back home.
Ruby Hornet: From your friend Matt teaching you logic and garage band in like 6-7th grade, and listening to a bunch of Jazz, who and what artists made you want to start producing at such a young age?
Thelonious Martin: Well, when people ask me how I got the nickname Thelonious, my dad would play jazz to make me go to sleep when I was little, playing Miles [Davis] and Thelonious [Monk] and so forth. Then on top of that, my grandmother on my dad’s side was a church woman, so there is a bit of a gospel influence. Then my grand dad on my mom’s side is Jamaican, so there is a reggae influence there, and when I was in Jersey with my mom, whatever she played when we were cleaning the house up or whatever, would go from anywhere from the Miseducation of Lauyrn Hill, Jill Scott’s first couple albums, a bunch of the Soulquarians stuff, like I would be hearing J Dilla stuff before I knew who he was. I was 8 or 9 hearing this, like ‘wow this is the most amazing stuff,’ and later when I watched adult swim, I was like ‘wow!’ It all came full circle, all the influences I had growing up came full circle with what I really got into when I was in middle school. I remember me and my homes would chill and bump Murs first LP, I was in middle school and now people are like oh you’re a hip-hop head, then I was just trying to find music that influenced me growing up, so the major influences like Madlib’s, J Dilla’s, MF Doom, Murs, Pete Rock, just tying everything in i was growing up on into a sound today, that’s pretty much how my influences make up my sound today.
Ruby Hornet: Can you talk about how all of you linked and started Tastemakers NJ? Did it start as a clothing line or musical collective, can you explain that?
Thelonious Martin: My homeboy started a clothing brand around ’09 and when I dropped my project 1up, I hit him up trying to collab and we just clicked well. We did a T-shirt for the album and I always remained cool with him. So about a year later we were seeing a lot of the same people were just working together. So we really just brought it together, had a business meeting to see who was down or not, had to cut some fat and really came together to build a bigger brand than it was the year before. It’s clothing, music, really just a lifestyle brand, not to put it in the same category with Wu-tang cause its completely different, but when Wu was coming out, there was a smaller identity within the larger one. Different artists had different brands and they had Wu-wear and stuff like that, so you really can’t be like this is a clothing brand or a music collective, it’s really just a lifestyle brand.
Ruby Hornet: How many people are involved?
Thelonious Martin: It’s about 10 of us. it’s really a small brand, but we have an office, not like a corporate office, but we have a building with office space where we have actual people working there. Like our teachers are probably amazed, because it’s the things they try to teach us like, ‘start your own business.’ We really got into that. We have people to handle the marketing stuff, people to handle all the photography, artwork and in terms of small operating things, we don’t need a big corporate head saying oh we gotta do this and that today, because if we’re really passionate about we are going to handle our business.
Ruby Hornet: So you have….47,000+ tweets?
Thelonious Martin: I’ve had my Twitter and my Tumblr since April 2008. The thing is, I’ve had my twitter for so long, I forget that people see the number of tweets I have, and the thing is I talk to everyone. If you hit me up about music I’ll talk to you… I’m really just a man of the people, my page is not private, you won’t see me going on Tweet rants, except for the other day when I told people I’m going to stop making beat tapes, I had to get that point across.
Ruby Hornet: You’re right man, like you said, you’ve already tackled that beast, time to move on. Which gets me into Topaz Jones’s Hello My Name Is Project. I feel like you and Topaz have a great bond, as far as everyone in Tastemakers. Can you talk about the Summer Ale project, and how it is similar and different from the Hello My Name Is Project?
Thelonious Martin: Whenever I’m a part of something and it drops, afterwards I become a complete fan of it. I take one step away from it and listen to it, only in my point of view when it comes to listening to music. To me, Summer Ale is such a dope collective of music, cause you have your 90’s style and your modern style brought together. People complain about like, ‘Aw this isn’t Hip Hop, or I miss the golden era.’ And there are kids my age that love that vibe, and it shows in their music. There are certain tracks on there, like the first track an instrumental by my homeboy volition but he put a alias up cause he’s crazy, and the first track is completely different vibe like something you’d hear in ’94 in Brooklyn. Then the second track is “Subwoofer” a beat I made in like 10 minutes, just like the slapper of the day, bass heavy and it’s crazy. So I really think it’s a dope collective of music and I think it shows in the tracks… For Topaz’s project, we’ve been working on this since the beginning of the year. For a good six months, I just finished the last mixes this morning.
Ruby Hornet: Are your also the head engineer for Tastemakers?
Thelonious Martin: We have couple people who mix and produce, but when we go to the studio, I get to press the record button and at the same time I get to mix the stuff as well. I love every aspect of making a record. Some producers are just like, I’ll make the beat and leave, hire engineers and stuff like that. But there is a reason I sat under my music teacher and learned everything I could, to have my hands in on all parts of the record, which I really love doing. So for Topaz’s project we we’re working on it since January, and this has been my homeboy since freshman year, that’s my homie. That’s my thing when it comes to music, you really can’t get certain points across with someone you’re not cool with. You can collab on a record with anyone, but if you actually have a bond with people you’re working with and have a friendship, then those will be the best records. There were times when I would get home from school, or pack my drum machine and laptop in my backpack, head to the studio after school and not get home till 11 on a school night. There are only three tracks I didn’t produce on the project, we came together, listened to certain records, got certain vibes and figured this was the sound we’re going for. And not only sat there and made music for six months, but we we’re like this song doesn’t fit we can’t use this. We needed a certain sound.
Ruby Hornet: What is that sound?
Thelonious Martin: We definitely looked at it from a performance standpoint, we wanted it to really mean something that people can vibe too, and want to go see later on. We definitely took a listener’s standpoint, to see what best collection of music would really be dope for them. So we took some of those elements of stadium music or songs we can perform as an interlude, or this is a crowd response, so it’s a sound for the people. That’s what I really like about it, I’ve listened to it al the way through and I could see it being bumped in someone’s convertible down Lake Shore Drive, in California, and even Brooklyn. I’m listening to it and noticing little details, cause like I said after it’s done, I’m a complete fan of it.
Ruby Hornet: How many tracks is it and when do you plan on dropping it?
Thelonious Martin: Let me look at my iTunes. It is a total of 17 tracks. 17 including the intro, so 16 songs. I find that for anyone’s debut to a large group of people that’s a lot. Probably going to release later this summer, start getting the artwork and everything wrapped up, some promotional things wrapped up, and get it out to the people. Don’t want to just drop a link like ‘here’s the mixtape.’ I actually want to approach the people with a plan and get people involved.
Ruby Hornet: Yeah, and that’s what I hate about the Internet age, is that nobody takes that into account, I mean people do obviously, but at the same time people don’t. You lose so much substance there, cause it just comes out.
Thelonious Martin: I took marketing and finance classes for a reason. My dad is a business major so there are things that I get, in terms of business 101, some people don’t know the first day of economics, supply & demand, for me it’s like I try to operate from a business standpoint, and an internet savvy standpoint because other artists will gas it for a month or so, and it will drop and only be on the blogs for a day. And they don’t realize they can do marketing and viral videos to stay constant.
Ruby Hornet: Can you throw out the name of some MC’s you’d like to work with?
Thelonious Martin: I’ve been a fan of Cyhi since the Toca Tuesday freestyle, and I actually have a list in my wallet of goals I’d like to accomplish by the time I”m 25.
Ruby Hornet: What are the top 2 things on that list?
Thelonious Martin: Win a grammy and live comfortably. But for the artists, Blu, Curren$y, Dom Kennedy, and people look at me weird but I want to work with Elzhi. But I also just want to be in the studio with The Alchemist and Black Milk, just to see their actual methods of production and how they approach something. But also, Asher Roth, Kendrick Lamar, Section80 is so crazy. The thing about music today is it’s very competitive, but at the same time if you’re an artist producing and rapping wise, I would want to drop something better in the next few weeks, I would really want to push myself. Cause if my homes drop something ill, I’m like ‘I got to top that.’ I think some people lose that competitive edge. I don’t want to be another underground producer making beat tapes. I want a grammy, I want to DJ stadiums, I really believe in doing what you love, and working harder than the next man to really accomplish these goals, cause it’s not guaranteed.
Ruby Hornet: My boy Steve Jones of Introspective Minds said the same thing around the time Kanye dropped last year, and he will confidently say he and Kanye are the best producers out.
Thelonious Martin: Yeah, I will say I am the best producer under the age of 21, and I will stand by that firmly. I have some producer friends, and some that no one will ever know, one of the local homies who doesn’t really do it like for the blogs or stuff like that, we call him Madlib’s white stepson, and then there is Marly Marl’s son, and Michael Uzowuru from LA. Those are the three cats that are my age, that if I hear anything from them I’m like ‘Ok, I’m on it.’ And that’s the thing, we have really different sounds, but if you want to be the best in your sound, you have to cover all the other realms of production. People can try to put me in a box and say I’m a sample producer, but within me being a sample producer you can get a variation of sounds. I’ll make it sound like I have a live band behind me.
Ruby Hornet: So when are you coming home to the Chi?
Thelonious Martin: My orientation is August 3rd, So I’ll probably be home first week of August or late July. First, I have this mini-tour in LA, Me, Moruf, MoShadee, Nemo Achida and $port.
Ruby Hornet: Finally, I wanted to ask you and this became more apparent after the interview, but why are you going to college? You are obviously very passionate about making music, why not concentrate 100% on making music?
Thelonious Martin: Within the first few years of me being in school, I always told myself, I want to go to school. As I was growing up, throughout middle school and as I became more passionate about making music, I thought, ‘ok, what can I got to school for in terms of a major that will be music related?’ I took a class at NYU my junior year (of HS) “Future Music Moguls” one of my teachers was Illmind, great great great producer, and learning from that program seeing I could go to school, do what I love and educate myself, do all three. I saw that fact that going to school is more important than anything. I’m very passionate about doing music, I could do this everyday of my life no question, I’m getting paid or not. But at the same time, I have a little brother and a little sister and I need to get a college degree, and my degree is music management. I’m learning how to cut all my own deals, learning the ins & out of business, and I want to educate myself fully, to be on top of my game even more. I always say to myself, ‘there is no days off.’ If I’m not making music, I’m in my head thinking of my next business plan, video treatment, things like that. I’m going to be in my classes, my dorm and the studio, or something at Reggie’s you know. But other than that I will be in three places.
