Studio Journal

The concept of influence is ingrained in modern society. A scroll through social media will show some of the many people whose images are perfectly curated to feel natural and relatable. Yet, for the most part, the only thing many maintain is an air of inaccessibility. When I first heard of Curtiss King, I assumed he would fit under that umbrella. It took one ForTheRecord interview to realize that I was wrong and only one meeting to understand that he is not an influencer; he is so much more.  Curtiss King is a modern-day Renaissance man with a distinctive ability to inspire new perspectives. He raps, produces, creates beats and social media content, and mentors. Most impressively, he does this and more while prioritizing being a loving husband and father and an invaluable resource to his peers. His latest album, DIY2, comes after a 5-year hiatus and a decade since the release of the first DIY album.  I met Curtiss at KnockHouse Studios in Downtown LA, and despite it being ou...

If you are familiar with the Inland Empire music scene, chances are you have heard the name Cam Archer. Just in time for the spooky season, Cam's latest project, El Guapo III , fuses breathless flows, witty rhymes, and obscure pop culture references with horror-inspired melodies. When I sat down with Cam to talk about the project, he admitted that despite the first two El Guapo projects dropping in August, he planned on dropping the third installment earlier in the year to align with the release of the movie Scream 5. He describes the project as the "scream mode darker side of the El Guapo brothers." For anyone unfamiliar with the popular cult classic, Scream is about a high school girl and her group of friends who are terrorized by a masked serial killer a year after her mother's death. Just as the director, Wes Craven, managed to re-vitalize and re-invent the horror genre by combining humor, horror, and cleverness, Cam uses El Guapo III  to bring new life to the I...