Long before making beats, the L.A. native known as N/A (No Alias) started out as an MC. To make a long story short, he began rapping at age 11, but took a few years hiatus after being discouraged by his peers (and instead wrote poetry that was better received.) At 13, he stumbled upon local underground Hip Hop radio shows such as Friday Night Flavas, The Wake Up Show and We Came From Beyond, which inspired him to rap again. Once he graduated from high school, he decided to seriously pursue a music career.

He linked up with a producer through a mutual friend from high school. They worked together on and off from 1999-2001, until N/A lost contact with the producer. Around this time, his cousin who had an MPC 3000 showed him the basics. In need of beats to rap to, he and 2 high school buddies pitched in on a used MPC 2000 off of ebay. The MPC stayed at one friend’s house, where N/A would spend his weekends putting together tracks from records he’d go crate digging for. In 2005 he would finally get his own MPC 2000XL, which he has been using ever since.

N/A’s influences range from the music he grew up listening to as a child (a lot of 70s soul, R&B, Jazz Fusion and the like) to the producers he looks up to: J Dilla (R.I.P.) Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Madlib, among many others. In the tradition of golden-era Hip Hop, he steadily digs in the crates, regardless of genre, to create whatever appeals to his most important tool: his ears.  

Currently, N/A is affiliated with the “Young Blowedians” of Project Blowed. He’s in the groups Tha Lepht (with Menacin Johnson and The E.M.S.) and The Middle Men (with The E.M.S.) He has released several projects by himself, including a beat CD entitled “N/A’s Baked Goods Volume One: I Knead The Dough”, a compilation of songs he recorded from 2000-2006 called “That Was Now”, and “The Soooul Dirty! Remix Project”, featuring various Hip Hop and R&B tracks he remixed. For the future, an album from Tha Lepht is in the works, as well as more instrumental and remix projects, solo projects, and working with local up and coming artists. But most importantly, N/A will continue to make music that he loves and that reflects his musical tastes.