EP 13 — FOR REAL
Julian Marsette
Produces records out of his own studio above Main Street in Urbana
SAMPLE PROFILE — FILM SLOT
His story is coming to the series soon.
A Decade of Almost
Julian Marsette started making beats at sixteen on a cracked laptop in his mother's apartment on the West Side of Chicago. Everybody he knew rapped. He was the one who could build the thing underneath.
His twenties were a decade of almost. Placements that fell through, a label meeting that went nowhere, years of engineering other people's sessions for $40 a night. At twenty-eight he was still sleeping on a futon in his studio.
I made beats for eight years before rent got easy. Love it enough to be bad at it first.
Main Street
A rapper he worked with had moved to Champaign for school and kept telling him the rent was a third of Chicago's. In 2016 Julian came down, looked at a second-floor space above Main Street in downtown Urbana, and signed the lease the same week.
The studio's been open nearly a decade now. College kids, church choirs, drill artists, a jazz professor. He produces, engineers, and teaches a few teenagers the console on Saturdays. The futon's gone. He sleeps at home like a person.