We chat with Rostrum Records’ newest signee, Baton Rouge rapper Caleb Brown.
Caleb rose to prominence after his last music video ‘W$Gt$’ dropped which premiered on HipHopDX and garnered praise from the likes of XXL and Pigeons & Planes. Caleb’s currently gearing up for the release of his debut project ‘All dogs Go To Heaven 2′ while simultaneously working on growing his label partnership with Rostrum called DO L.I.F.E. Records. “It was very refreshing. He’s very young, he was 17 at the time and I just heard this kind of insightfulness, this kind of maturity, authenticity, which is a word he’s used a few times,” Rostrum Records’ A&R VP Nicole Plantin told The Knockturnal on the partnership.
How long have you been pursuing rap seriously?
I’ve always been into music simply because my surroundings and household were filled with Gospel and Hip Hop. I was really into other things too like playing basketball and I really wanted to be a basketball player, but it wasn’t until freshman year of high school when I didn’t make the basketball team that I started to take rap super seriously and decided it was going to be my thing. That was 201 and ever since then I’ve been going 110% on everything and it’s been nothing but progress.
Has your family always been supportive of your dreams?
Yeah, definitely. Starting out not so much only because they didn’t know if I was taking it seriously or not because one day I want to play basketball and the next day I was trying to rap. Once they figured out I was taking it seriously and I wasn’t going to be doing anything else, they were here.
Who are some of your core musical influences?
Definitely Lil Wayne, Tupac, a lot of Gospel music so Fred Hammond, Yolanada Adams, Mary Mary, Snoop, but Lil Wayne would have to be the biggest one.
Tell me about your debut project ‘All Dawgs Go To Heaven 2’
It’s mostly just my environment and my reality, just a kid trying to make sense of everything being from where I’m from, a southern cat. A lot of people don’t know where Baton Rouge is and that’s my whole thing to shed light on it and there’s a lot of things going on down there that people don’t know about, but they should because we deserve it.
What was the production process like for the project?
On this project I had a producer. I worked with a lot of cats B Wheezy would be one from Atlanta.
Can you tell us about DO L.I.F.E. Records?
It was me and my older brother we came together and – for one L.I.F.E. stands for ‘love infinitely forever exiling’ – our whole movement is about pursuing your dreams and living life and not dwelling on fear. We’re exiling anything negative and that’s what our movement is ‘DO L.I.F.E.’
What’s currently on your playlist?
Kendrick’s on my playlist, Frank Ocean, Nipsey Hussle, D’angelo and Aaliyah. I’ve been playing ‘Voodoo’ heavy.
