Today we’d like to introduce you to King Yell.
King, before we jump into specific questions about your work, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Music has always been a big part of my life. My mom told me that I would hum the melodies of the songs she played before I could talk. My dad and most my uncles are DJs and MCs so I’ve always been around music from an early age. I got my first real taste of being a musician at nine years old when I started playing trumpet in the 5th grade. I stopped playing after two years because I wanted to learn to make beats and writing songs in musical notation, wasn’t it.
After moving to Texas after Hurricane Katrina, I eventually got back into music by becoming a percussionist in high school. That led me to meet people who saw what I really wanted to learn. Around 15, I got my first taste of working in a studio, learning how to record and making beats using an MPC-2500. I would go on to study music in college but my heart wasn’t really in it at the time. I failed all my classes that had nothing to do with music and wound up on academic probation after 2 semesters. After the birth of my son, I decided to go back to school for audio engineering. I’ve been working as an engineer and producer ever since.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think everybody goes through struggles when they decide to take their passions seriously. Early on, it was hard just finding ways to learn what I was trying to. I would hang with a lot of older dudes that were not on the right side of the law because I knew they were rappers and would bring me along to their studio sessions. Today, it’s more about getting my name out there. I try to work with anybody and will reach out to artists I really like. It hasn’t always paid off but I’ve been able to put myself in places I would have never expected just by speaking up.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
Stolen Royalty was originally a name I came up with that I didn’t know what it was gonna be for. I came up with the name from a Pimp C interview he did when he first got out of jail. When I started making engineering and making beats, it popped back in my head as a name for my brand.
It evolved into a sort of production company as I started releasing music projects from artists I was working with under that name. I just want it to be something that can focus on an artist’s vision. I want people to know any project I helped produce wasn’t made to cater to any trend, it was pure creativity unleashed.
What were you like growing up?
Growing up I was a very unusual child. I was really into video games and anime, still am to this day. I like reading a lot, so most my days would be filled with reading on whatever topic caught my interest at the moment. I was always planning too. I would have notebooks with nothing but doodles and ideas, it would be anything from makeshift logos, random items from the games I played, tracklists for concept albums I would think of to drawings of whatever anime or cartoon I was watching. I remember when Pokemon first hit, I drew all 151 of the original ones.
I went to six different elementary schools, so I didn’t really know how to make friends and my interests were so random and varied, I wouldn’t know who to hang with. It took me until high school to break out of my shell. It was then I realized I could connect with anybody because of all the things I was in to. Music was the biggest ice breaker because I was open to anything being in a band. Plus moving around so much, I never really judged people for how they looked or who they hung with. I felt that if we had something in common, that’s bigger than our differences.
Pricing:
- Mixing starting at $50
- Mastering starting at $75
Contact Info:
- Email: yellthaking@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingyell_sr/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/yellthaking
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/stolen_royalty/
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