Bhramabull

Music, Film, and Entrepreneurship. How Hip Hop makath the man.

We delve into the world of music production with the talented Bhramabull, an artist who has left an

indelible mark on the hip-hop scene. Bhramabull's musical journey started at a young age,

surrounded by the artistic influences of his family, experimenting with beats on hand-me-down instruments to becoming a vinyl fiend and artistic entrepreneur. Join us as Bhramabull shares insights into his creative process, his musical inspirations, and the birth of his label, GryndFest Music.

Q: Tell us a little about where you’re from?

Well, I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I moved to the mountains of Pennsylvania called the Poconos, and then went back to Philadelphia after school and everything. Pennsylvania is the heart and soul of the East Coast, I feel like the people are really passionate and they give everything they got. They're really involved in sport, they love trying new things and I love them for it. I don't live there now but I love Philadelphia and I hold on to the sports teams, I talk to people from Philadelphia every day. My family still lives there and I embody the heart and soul of the city and what they're known for I try to keep that close while living in California.

Q: Tell us a little about young Bhrama, how did you get into the world of making music? Are your folks musical?

Well, young Brahma was a button-pressing kind of noisemaker. I kind of found a way to make sounds – knock on your door with a beat, keyboard in the basement. If I didn't know how to use it, I’d figure it out. I’m a do things the hard way kind of person.

I have a musical background. My uncle was an artist/singer/revolutionary type of leader. My dad was a drummer Conga drummer-percussionist. That's why I love the art of making drums in my songs. I think they're very important so that was a big influence on me. My mom was an artist, which created a side of me in love with album covers, the visuals, and the colors.

We always had a keyboard, some kind of beat machine, some kind of drum, or weird African sound-making thing in the house.

I would always try to get a recorder, a tape machine or instruments passed down to me. I would use them and explore sound. It just led to consistently trying to make some sounds out of something, making a sound, and manipulating it. It led to audio engineering school, sound manipulation and sound creation, piano lessons, and taking the way sound is shaped, the art is shaped to another level. I discovered that in vinyl when they were passed down to me. Gathering them and seeing the sounds on them and finding out how they were recorded was fun. Discovering sounds and how they are put together was fire. It’s a heritage thing. With my father being in the music industry and my mother loving certain songs and playing them, I was born into it, I didn't have a choice. It led to DJing and that led into the production side of sound manipulation.

Q: You’re a vinyl fiend. You’ve got a pretty nice collection going on. What do you like to collect?

I am a vinyl fiend. Fiend is a strong word but I what I’m into, that's what I wanted to fill my free time up with - Gathering. I have a heritage of collecting books and art from my mom. I do get the collection of things, gathering from my family. It was just always ingrained in me that you want to try to get a lot of one thing and try to get the rarest one. It's like really fun, it’s something to believe in. It's something to have and to hold and pass on to another passionate person. I love having tangible things that were held by someone in the past.

These records are relics as they’re hard to destroy and have sound coming out of them. It's awesome to play them, everyone loves them and you can never collect them all. I know there's going to be a point where I have to let go of certain things, so I'm starting to be particular with that, the budget and the knowledge. The rarity of them excels, you can never learn everything about them which makes them fire too. It's the hunt will never end, I love that. I love having certain songs that bring up different emotions, and all the different sounds too.

My vinyl love is just growing and changing. I used to just pick the dollar records and try to find samples off the dollar records and that was my way of practicing making beats. But it is way more than that, it's deeper. There are different genres I'm just starting to get into, such as World music. R&B is what my parents had and what was passed down to me. I started to expand my horizons and knowledge of all these records and it's just such a long road. I love the Journey of learning that side of things.

Q: What album spoke to you when you were young?

The album that spoke to me the most is probably the ‘Tribe Called Quest’ with all the faces on it, I forget what that's called because I lost a case for it. (*the album is Midnight Marauders). I was looking at the credits and trying to figure out who was making the beats. It was like I never heard anything like that ever before, it was so different. It was so what I needed at the time. I was blessed to have a parent that was in the industry that could expose me to different records that I otherwise wouldn’t have got. Discovering Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, their sounds were incredible and I went on a digging journey, I wanted to how they were made, what instruments they used and how it was recorded, what they did to record it what they were doing before they recorded it? How their life was for them to make this record?

So Tribe Called Quest, J Dilla, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Ice Cube, Madlib, 9th Wonder, all these people really influenced me throughout the years, from the CD to the tape to the LimeWire kind of downloading, it just all progressed. If I was to have the internet then it probably wouldn't be as fun to discover.

Q: You started off DJ’ing. Tell us about transitioning from being the DJ to becoming a producer?

Well, I used to DJ at casinos, for college parties, and DJ for myself. I used to go in DJ battles, never won, but I did it, you know? Went through the battle DJ turntable list to the party rocking turntable list to just dropping hits turntable list.

It has been a great journey and I loved it. I left the tangible turntable side to try the digital - Mix-tapes, putting together mixes through Engineering Pro Tools was kinda fun.

So I continue with that and one thing led to another. Learning new techniques and getting the sounds, investing in certain plugins that I couldn't really afford before. My life progressed with the sound of the music, I just worked and worked and worked and worked. And it's really about trading that time of going to the beach and relaxing, going to a party over here, going on a trip over here, hell we're going to hit happy hour, and really just sitting in front of the computer and trying to figure the f****** s*** out.

Q: You’ve been producing hip-hop for around 20 years. What’s your music like today? What styles of Hip Hop do you produce?

Yeah close to twenty years but really going all in for the past 6 or 7. I feel like I'm really starting this year. I released 7 singles and I'm building up my consistency this year. It feels like I can manipulate sound the way I want and I know how to pull back on different sounds.

My sound is a progressive underground hip hop with west coast influence. If anyone looks at my journey, I was born on the east coast, learned on the west coast, grinding on the east coast, and then finished up on the west coast with all those west coast and east coast things hybrid together.

If you listen to any of me and B Knockin's (rapper Brain Knockin) music you can see the influence of the low end and the sample base with the 808s mixed with the snare and kick from a record. Trying to be like my mentors is fun but putting my signatures on each sound by using the plugins and using the different sound manipulation techniques is so much fun to just have my voice and when you hear a beat you know it's me.

Q: What is it about Hip Hop that made you think, yes, this is for me! That’s what I am going to make?

The art of getting a mix tape that was passed down to me in my area where I was raised. I was built on the heritage and there was nothing else that was going to make me feel complete. It’s the art of Hip Hop and where I want to sit in its history, I want to make an impact, to leave a legacy, to have my name around something, based on positivity.

There are goals that come from believing in hip-hop. A lot of hip hop is positive reinforcement — how to work hard to get to your goals. If you look deeper behind some of the records, the Kendrick Lamar’s, the Future’s, they all work really hard to get to where they're going, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of strategy, hard work and trading things in your life to do certain things. So there's a lot of messages and good stuff that come from the art of making Hip Hop, well any type of music really, not just hip hop.

Q: Where did the name Bhramabull come from?

I had a sample from an old NFL film record that had some heritage from Philadelphia - the announcer is John Facenda. He had a really powerful voice that I wanted to use to define me. It’s not that it just came to me, it was meant to be that I picked up that record that day. I was meant to put it on the turntable, it was meant to be in the MPC 2000 XL and it was meant for that time and that sound to pass through my ears and I would hear it. I wasn't built on creating my own drop in the song, I was raised on either you get anointed with a name or you pick something that's from a record, something that you want to label with yourself.

So I was putting it on a pad and I just got hitting the button, hitting the button, hitting the button, hitting the button and it just sounded so fire! I was with my boy and he's like ‘Yo you need to make your name’ and nobody said it was whack so I just ran with it. It has some comparisons to the way I treat my life and the way I go about things, it links to the GryndFest Music group aspect of my career, so I just ran with it. I wasn't going to switch it, I was going to go with ‘Calypso’ but I've always been a bull, DJ Bhrama.

Q: Speaking of Gryndfest, you started your own label called GryndFest Music. Tell us about Gryndfest and what it’s all about?

This is just a culture-type thing. I've always just said like ‘Yo, you and grind time,’ you need to get in the grind and pick it up you know?

It was just a saying that I latched onto, to motivate me to take things to the next level and I just embodied it because through the ups and downs. You have to grind for everything even just waking up and trying to do certain things. Grind is a lifestyle thing and I rolled with it from the beginning, copy wrote it. It was the backbone of everything I did. From live shows to artwork, photography, video, and Djing, I wanted to put the whole thing under that umbrella.

Q: You’ve made some pretty incredible music along the way. You have a knack for creating high-quality tracks. What makes a track sound really good in your opinion?

I think what makes a cool track is if you can paint a picture and visualize what the artist is trying to say. Not just visually but if it takes you on a trip, like a ride at Six Flags theme park, and that ride was fire, you know, no technical things going on no different areas of wackness, it's a good track if it hits every sense that you have. It could have just a hi-hat going through and the rapper takes it to the next level, whatever makes it a complete ride or Journey or experience then it's a good track, it doesn't mean you need to have less, it doesn't mean you need to have more, it just needs to be a complete whole circle of infinity for that time that the track is on.

Q: What's the creative process like? Do beats come first? Or the rap?

I think it just matters what kind of setting you are in while making the song, like B Knockin could be like ‘Yo I got to track and this is the hook’, like we did the 49ers song like, Let's make a 49ers anthem, always wanted to be a 49er. He came with that then I'll look for the beat or maybe I make the beat and then he raps over it but usually it starts with a beat.

I've had some experiences where you put together things while you're in the studio and the microphone is on and you just piece it together on some ludicrous s***. Some artists go four bars pause, four bars pause, listen to the eight bars, and then four more bars. Some people go every two lines just so it hits right and they piece it together like a puzzle but whatever it takes you just get that circular motion on the whole thing sounded right and if they bring me the idea first and I'll go through the beats to find it, or we go through the beats and we figure out what the sound can target a certain message. Whatever it takes I'm down to do it.

Q: What's the creative process like? Do beats come first? Or the rap?

I think it just matters what kind of setting you are in while making the song, like B Knockin could be like ‘Yo I got to track and this is the hook’, like we did the 49ers song like Let's make a 49ers anthem, always wanted to be a 49er. He came with that then I'll look for the beat or maybe I make the beat and then he raps over it but usually it starts with a beat.

I've had some experiences where you put together things while you're in the studio and the microphone is on and you just piece it together on some ludicrous s***. Some artists go four bars pause, four bars pause, listen to the eight bars, and then four more bars. Some people go every two lines just so it hits right and they piece it together like a puzzle but whatever it takes you just get that circular motion on the whole thing sounded right and if they bring me the idea first and I'll go through the beats to find it, or we go through the beats and we figure out what the sound can target a certain message. Whatever it takes I'm down to do it.

Q: Aside from music, you get involved in making music videos, which is an art in itself. Do you direct and edit the video?

Yes, I direct and edit videos as well. I just got off a tour making a video a day for a DJ. it's a skill that can help me to survive, grow, learn more things in the visual aspect, and know what's good and what's bad. I'm mostly self-taught on the video thing, I went to a community college for a while being on unemployment. I took a couple of classes and it was just so much fun to do photography and videography. I used to take the bus to New York by myself and just take pictures of graffiti and people and that aspect of catching moments on my camera. The camera took me to another level as far as creating visual creations and leading into the Adobe side of things. Editing and transitions kept me motivated for creating visually and musically. While doing all this I was making beats, still in the lab.

I've done major videos, and around fifteen of those videos were over a $40,000 budget. I'm directed, I've shot, I've booked girls, I've done the budgets and scanning IDs. These are not like BS videos either, I did the Lil Yachty and Kyle, and I did the Chef Sean and Jeremiah videos.

Living in Hollywood now, I have a lot of opportunities to be a part of bigger projects that Philadelphia just doesn't have. I've interned my way up just like the studio thing. I went to school for audio engineering, but this video stuff I didn’t go to school for. I interned and I’ve made mistakes but I've done everything to earn my spot to be able to do that. To the point where I was trusted with a Warner Bros budget and Indie label budgets that were 50K. I got those videos done on the standard of a real record label type.

It all adds to my entrepreneurial resume. I do cover art as well. A lot of the cover art for the singles that are on my page, I made them. I had no money. So I'm not going to let having no money stop me, I'm going to learn because with the Internet you can just learn it. A lot of people don't want to trade the lifestyle that they think they need to survive, or that they're used to, to try and risk something that doesn't pay them back instantly. But you only have one life to live, you're not here forever and your day could end right now. So it's a lot of risk even trying to learn and trying to push to learn new things you just don't know so I risked it.

Q: Of all your tracks, which tracks would you recommend for a first-time listener?

Well, it has to be the ‘1992 Dr. Dre’ track because it's just so well put together.

B Knockin found a pocket in there, it's a great track. There's another track that we had together called ‘Over Consumption’ and that's another heavy hitter that just was so well put down by Knocking. The way he rode the beat, the way he was talking about the weed that he smokes, you know, it was just perfectly put together.

I'm going to say a lot of B Knockin’s tracks because it's just that was the essence of the purity of what we were doing I didn't feel pressure to put out a record this month I didn't have a strategy we have no money, it was just ‘yeah we going to put this out,’ we going to try to get it to as many people with what we have let's try to figure out certain ways to get it to the new people it was just whatever we could do to get the s*** cracking. That's what I like about working with certain people and working with different creatives they just try to find a way, use a hook up here, everything that they could do they're just trying to get more ears to their work.

You can listen to Bhramabull here

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