(As written by Gabrielle Banks)
February 15, 2014 marks the one-year anniversary of my acceptance into Berklee’s Global Entertainment and Music Business program. February 21, 2014 will be the six month anniversary of the day I stepped foot in Spain to live and learn. It’s been a wild ride so far, and this is just a fraction of the things I’ve done in a few, short six months:
I don’t like to call myself a rapper. If you know me or seen me around, you probably would never guess that I even have some kind of talent. You probably wouldn’t even think of me as the type that’s into this kind of lifestyle… It’s all right though. My name is Mark Martinez, but you’ll know me as Marcus. Growing up, I always wanted to get up on a stage and do my thing, seeing all the rockers at my school do theirs. But I never really took a shot at it until my sophomore year of college. I never had a day of music training in my life and I never tried rapping in front of anyone before, so when I made the decision at 19 to get this started, I knew I had a long road ahead of me. I finally put out something I can definitely be proud of. So when people back at home hear this, they probably would never believe it.
When I arrived to Valencia, I was 21 and I had very high hopes. I was immediately awestruck by the scenery surrounding our campus, La Reina Sofia. However, it wasn’t until I stepped inside the studios that my jaw dropped and my heart skipped a beat or two. I’ve found my home away from home and all I could express was rapture. Naturally, it wasn’t until after classes started that I really took advantage. Fortunately, the classes offered through the Global Entertainment and Music Business program were just as exciting as being inside the studios. Berklee’s Masters in Music Business has given me years worth of experience and insight into the music industry in one short semester. If anyone is looking to up their business game, this is definitely the place to do it. One of the classes that most directly relate to my desired career is the Record Label Practicum where I along with a group of other students are going to be learning how to build and operate a record label from scratch. On top of that, I had the privilege of using a world-class studio with an extremely experienced staff. Thanks to them, I was able to release my first EP, entirely produced by yours truly.
Long Was The Night is my first serious effort. I’m not going to tell you too much about it, but I want to say that it’s a promise for the future. When you find out what you love in life, you never want to let it go, but sometimes you have to make some sacrifices to keep what’s most important to you. So this EP is exactly about that, a transition from despair to hope, from fear to love, from doubt to certainty. It’s funny how far one event in your life can drive you to do something different and how all decisions you have made since then are because of that. I gave up on a chance at real love to follow my heart and as crazy as that sounds it makes perfect sense to me. This EP is a message to everybody reading this that you can’t ever give up on what you truly want and that along the way, you will have to make some serious sacrifices. It’s dedicated to the dream and to a person that I wronged because of the pursuit. I’ll be glad if she ever gets to hear it.
This is the beginning, but I want to make you love the sound. What I want is for you to grow with me, so I want you to give it a listen to inspire your vision. How you want you life to be. You can have it anyway you want, you just need to take it and own it.
5 tracks, all produced, mixed, and engineered by yours truly. I hope you see the potential I got, cause I got more coming.
Check out this interview about Long Was The Night on YouTube.
Catch me on the internet:
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