Backside flip, LA, CA.
beau
D
O YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST
time
you saw Thrasher?
My first time seeing Thrasher was probably
hangin' out at a skate shop in AZ. I went to
this mall and there was this shop called
Barecover or something; I don't remember
the exact issue, but I do remember seeing it
and I kept reading it from there. I looked at
magazines back in the day and just tripped
out on them.
What was your first photo?
Damn! My memory is fucked, holmes! Do
you remember it? My first photo in
Thrasher would have to have been with
Bryce Kanights. He was the first person I
hooked up with from Thrasher and I
started doing some stuff with him. In one
of the earlier ones, there were like two
trucks parked the same way and I was
ollieing off from one of them. It's crazy
sometimes, because I come out with mad.
photos and then I can't really remember
them all. But I do know I hooked up with
Bryce and I got some
photos from that.
What's an average day
for you these days?
Everything right
now is all about
chillin', music, skat-
ing, and trying to
keep things tight. I've
been doing mad shoe
business with Circa,
making a lot of
music, skating all day,
chillin' with the
homies. After I skate
I'm up all night mak-
ing beats and laying it
down in the studio,
trying to make it
happen. I'm putting a
lot of effort into the
studio and trying to
balance everything.
Is being in the studio a
seven-day-a-week deal?
I travel a lot with
skateboarding, so
when I'm gone I don't
really make beats. My
studio is immobile,
but when I come home
to LA, all the shit
comes through. I skate during the day and do
music all night long, so when I'm home it's
pretty much a seven-day-a-week thing, at least
for a couple hours a day.
Is there any new equipment you've been
working with?
I work with a sampler, a keyboard, Q-Base,
and a couple of other synthesizers and stuff. I
like collecting old gear and getting sounds from
anywhere possible-old synthesizers, vintage
items and tweaking them out and making a
lot of sounds with them. Then I sequence
everything out into my sampler and Q-Base.
As of today, where can kids hear Muska Beats?
There are only a few joints out in skate
videos, but that's just some old-school shit.
It was fun to make, for its time, but they're
just whatever beats-just fun shit. Now
what I'm gonna put out is gonna be the real
shit. You can't hear it anywhere right now
because I erase songs all the time; I just
keep them on the low in my studio. I'm try-
ing to finish it up right now so that when it
does come out it's gonna be the way I want
it to be.
What kind of responsibilities do you have
with Circa?
I have a lot to do with Circa. I do every-
thing from designing shoes, doing color-
ways, taking care of the demos, setting up.
trips, doing mad clothing designs-just
doing everything to run this company and
keep it straight, you know? I try and bal-
ance it out I'm still skating as much as I
can because that's what I like to do, not just
become a businessman. The way it is, if you
want something to come out tight, you got
to do it yourself. That's something I've
learned from my past.
Will you be doing any Circa tours or videos?
Yeah, we're just trying to get everyone
together and plan when we're going to be able
to do it with everyone. We want to go places
and make it happen and hit up Australia
pretty soon. And I want to go to Europe when
the weather gets better out there. I want to go
hook up with Tom Penny
in France. Yeah, the
Ghetto Child!
I know you've been
working on filming for
the upcoming Shorty's
video. How is it dealing
with the lockdown on
spots and the security at
street spots?
Street skating is get-
ting crazy, man! It's get-
ting so known that peo-
ple know what's going
on now. Back in the day,
not so many people
skated street, so there
weren't that many kids
mobbing up street spots.
But now skateboarding
is all up in people's
faces, on TV and all this
stuff, so they know we're
gonna come in and
wreck their shit. It's
harder to get shit done.
We're always getting
kicked out, you know?
As far as the video goes,
nothing is gonna stop
us. We're gonna skate
and film and make this
"SKATEBOARDING TO ME IS ABOUT HAVING FUN
WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND CHILLIN',
NOT WORRYING ABOUT WHO'S BEST OR
WHO CAN DO THE MOST TRICKS IN A ROW"