Making mad beats

Teenagers live and breathe for their music. The excitement of when we hear the first few seconds of our favorite song, recognizing it by just the beat is ecstatic.

We sing along to our favorite lyrics but let us not forget as our hand taps away at our thighs in sync with the beat. That beat is what sets the entire mood, it’s what begins our excitement and follows through for the rest of the song.

All of his life senior Anthony Guerrero has been exposed to a wide variety of music genres. His entire family listened to completely different things, such as rap with artists like Snoop Dogg, Tupac, or Dr. Dre, opening him to a whole new world of music and ideas.

At 13, Guerrero decided to make something out of his unique ideas for music with just an app.

A year later his app turned into an old laptop with a broken screen that needed a monitor connected to it to work.

“It’s like rapping,” Guerrero said. “If you’re really good at it you’ll be good regardless of your equipment.”

One day, out of boredom, Guerrero asked to borrow a program from his friend that allowed him to create beats.

Now Guerrero has released three albums and is currently working on a fourth.

“When I listen to Anthony’s beats I’m suddenly in space,” senior Braulio Magana said. “Somewhere deep in the dark nebula.”

Guerrero is inspired by average and overlooked things. As his second album, “Nostalgia 2,” portrays, he used the sound of a VHS in one of his beats which gave off an old distorted sound that suited the entire feel of the album.

“Music production is just an emotional output,” Magana said. “If you’re sad, then you produce sad stuff. It’s like making an untold story waiting for someone to read it. You would think it’s just a beat out of boredom but it’s actually something you put yourself into, it’s a part of you.”

In March Guerrero was contacted by rapper A$AP Rocky’s manager, who found Guerrero through his first album and wants him to help produce a mixtape.

“It’s a really fast life,” Guerrero said. “Not now when everything’s just starting but once it all blows up you’ll never be home and everything just goes by really fast.”

Including friends.

With his mind set on music Guerrero says he lacks time for people in his life, except family.
“With the money I make off my beats I help my mom with the bills,” Guerrero said. “I can make about $6,000 a month, even though I undersell my beats considering they can go from $100 to $1,000 each.”

As a 17 year old Guerrero is not always taken seriously by his peers.

“That doesn’t bother me, though,” Guerrero said. “I’ve met older producers who say my beats are better than people that they know who have been doing this for a long time. Regardless of what you do you’re going to get feedback, positive and negative. You just have to take it and build off of it, make it better.”

Guerrero is determined to make it in producing music, to go big, but to always leave his mark where he comes from.
“I want people to know that I came from Stockton,” Guerrero said.

“To know that you can have nothing and still go far, because it doesn’t matter where you come from, it only matters where you’re going. All you can do is work hard, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.”