 Hey what's up guys we're at a new segment talk of the town today we got a special guest Lou Castro. How you doing? How are you? I'm alright, I'm alright. So tell the people where you from? I'm from the Bronx, by way of DMV. Pretty much yeah. So from the Bronx, how did you get your rap name or is that been your nickname? It was from like, oh man this is a bad thing. I don't want to say because battle rappers haven't angles but I kind of got my name from that. You know how niggas used to get light? Okay. I kind of got my name from that pretty much. That's pretty much where my name came from. Like a long time ago. So you was a dancer? Not really. Not really? I was nice though. They inspired you? I was big nice. So you went from dancing to music? Nah I was always doing music. It was just, you know you live in a Bronx, it's part of the culture. Everybody was dancing. Literally everybody was dancing. Even if you ain't know how to dance you were dancing. So what's your earliest memory of music? What do you remember as it came? How did you get into it? Remember your first time in the studio? My earliest memory of music was when I decided to rap I remember the exact moment I decided to rap. The exact moment I decided to rap was in fifth grade. It was due to my class. He was in the lunch line and he was rapping. He was rapping some raps that I heard from like it was actually song. Like he was rapping some like raps that I knew the song. I'm like and everybody was going crazy like oh you nice. I'm like they made his raps and like I kind of bought everybody started laughing at him. And then he was like man you can't do no better. And I was like yes I can he was like rap song and I ain't rap nothing. So then I was like alright I got you so after I went back to the classroom and I started rapping. And that's how I was like alright I feel got in trouble because I was writing curse words in my book. So um so but like so I guess it was the wanting to do better. That kind of like inspired like wanting to prove yourself. Yeah that's always been a driving factor for me you know like proving people wrong. Do you think that's a good or bad thing to have especially when it comes to music? I think it's I think it's all about how you channel it. Like if you you know if you you could take a negative you know somebody say something bad. You know what I mean like oh you can't do this and you do it out of spite. Like I don't do anything out of spite you know what I mean. I don't harbor hate but I do get a like a kick out of being able to prove people wrong. You know what I'm saying like that's always been a thing of mine. And like that kind of actually kept me motivated to go hard with rapping and music in general. Okay all right so when you was growing up who's some artists you used to listen to? Oh man I ain't gonna lie I listen to them that everything. Like 50 was always my favorite rapper. Okay. I'm G-Unit and don't nobody know. Okay. Now it's playing. 50 was always my favorite rapper. My favorite rapper since high school they always been J Cole. And I say like my music is heavily R&B influenced. Okay like cool. It's heavily it's you know I wouldn't I wouldn't put a specific class yeah a specific class of my music. It's heavily influenced by a lot of different things like Chris Brown my favorite artist of all time. Okay. I think he he the goal. Yeah I agree. Yeah so I would say like Cole 50. Okay. Pretty much. So lyrical people. Yeah pretty much. Okay so um so being that you know it was a pandemic how did that like affect your music or did it? Um I think the pandemic actually helped. It helped me with my brand in general like not just like um as far as music because during the pandemic um I don't know if I mentioned before about battle rap. Yeah. So um yeah like it kind of I kind of got my biggest looks during the pandemic like with like isolated battles you know what I mean. Quarantine battles and that kind of widened my brand which gave my music you know with more eyes on me. It kind of gave me a chance to showcase my music a little bit better. So it kind of actually helped and I mean because we stuck in the house we ain't doing much what I'm going to do right. So cause a lot of people say that they lost like motivation or creativity during the pandemic. You know what I'm saying? That wasn't the case for you. I was prepared for like the future. Like I'm always thinking ahead so I know the way America worked they're not going to let us stay locked up forever. It's like this world like this country will go bankrupt if we're going to stay locked up forever you know what I'm saying. So um I always knew eventually even when I was talking to my late like you know my guys 15 20. I was always letting them know like yo we need to be prepared for next summer when we started. I was like we need to be prepared for next summer because next summer is when things are going to start opening up. Before we even knew when it was going to open up. But I knew he was going to stand there for a year so I was always thinking ahead like when this opened back up we need to be in motion. So it never really you know. So you're prepared for outside. Alright so yeah we've seen that you was featured on our URL team meme. How did that come about? Alright so when I graduated high school I was having a hard time keeping my brand alive without school and stuff like that. So a couple of my homies you know we used to watch battle rap or whatever and we was all still rapping and somehow like we ended up throwing an event. We ended up throwing a battle rap event where like all my homies is just battling each other. And we didn't realize that we was going to bring that big of a crowd. We brought a big crowd and we was like yo this is something we could like get money off of. So I decided to do the battle rap thing just to keep my face and my name out there until like the music started taking off. But next thing you know. So you haven't been playing on doing it for a long time? Nah no way. No way I was just doing it just as something to keep my face visible online you know what I'm saying. While I was working on the music I was figuring out a way to make the music take off thing. And then next thing you know I'm on smack. I just ended up like that. So you know it's kind of dope though because I really like doing it but you know music has always been top priority for me. Yeah I was going to say which one did you like more on battle rap or traditional rap? Music. Music period. Absolutely. Like not just to traditional rap because I wouldn't just classify myself as a rapper like you know what I mean. Like I like to make good music. So you're an artist. Artist. Definitely. Got it. So what's the difference between writing for battle rap? Is there a difference in writing battle rap style and writing the regular style? Absolutely. Okay. A lot of people may think it's not. I think it is. Because I think that's why a lot of battle rap artists don't really get far in the music scene. Because they don't know how to differentiate. They don't know how to separate the two. And what's crazy is I'm not going to say they don't know how. They're not willing to. I don't think they, I think it's just to not know how. Some people just have, nah some people just have this mind state where they like I'm this kind of rapper. And I refuse to sacrifice my art for. Because even if you think of the lyricalist rappers like Kendrick and things like that. They still make a regular song. But all right you say, all right you, it's different though. Like the, all right well we could be considered lyrical. No I'm saying they got a trans. All right so think about this. What would be considered lyrical in a song? Would not be considered lyrical in a battle. Like I could say something that's like completely smooth and layered in a song. But if I try to battle somebody with it it's going to sound crazy. You know what I mean? Like that was okay. You know what I mean? It's two different worlds. You got to be able to like understand like the guys who are considered lyrical and regular making music. Their kind of punches wouldn't resonate in battle rap. You know what I'm saying? Because it's not, it's not as hard. I'll give you an example. Like Cassidy, Cassidy just had a battle. And Cassidy, he's one of the greatest punchline rappers of all time. Like if you think about battle rap you probably think Cassidy. But like in battle rap he's having a hard time making a transition to figuring out what's the difference between making a punchline rap song and a punchline battle one. So it's a complete and total difference like seriously. No, I get it's a difference. I just see that like some can do it and some can't. I agree. So is that something that you're still learning or do you feel like you got it somehow figured out? No, I think I completely got to figure it out. I feel like when I make a song I'm taking myself out of the battle rap mind state and then putting myself into music mode because also it's like music is a constant change of things. So what was dope 10 years ago probably wouldn't be dope now, you know what I'm saying? So you got to always keep your mind that you know you're always trying to stay amongst what's going on now. You know what I mean? Okay. And how would you describe your sound if you had to describe it? How would you describe it? I can't describe it in one word. I'm gonna be honest with you. Like I'm serious. How many words do you need to describe your sound? I'm trying to think of a word to like really describe it but like it's wide range. A wide range of sounds. Like I feel like my range is like really, really different from most because I can give you, I got two songs. I can give you a song like my day, which is more like, you know, R&B influence, you know what I mean? Or more singy kind of, I guess, you know what I mean? And then I can give you a rap song, you know what I mean? So I think my range is really wide. Okay. You know what I mean? Okay. So how did you feel that your song Flood the City reached 50K views? What are your music videos? The videos, the video, it did numbers because I feel like, well one, shout out to the team, you know what I mean? Great job at marketing it. But definitely it's a very catchy song, very trendy. I think more so is because like I said, a lot of battle rappers don't know how to make like a record. So I feel like the unexpectedness of that actually being a good song is what carried it in like word of mouth too. People will be like, yo, such and such actually make good music. Like no way. Like me telling you I make good music. You can be like, all right dope, I'll check you out. But if you hear five other people tell you, yo, this is actually pretty good. Say word of mouth, you think it's still important in 2021? Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, like if I tell you I'm good, people are like, all right. Because people think Instagram is the end on me or? Nah. People got to be talking about you. If no one's talking about you, it don't really matter. Like I can, I can literally put my Instagram posts or the million people's like feed for the million people not going to click on it. You know what I'm saying? You know how many times you be scrolling on Instagram and you see like these artists that's like being promoted. You're like, who is this? Even if the song might be good, you're like, you know, word of mouth is very important. Okay. So how do you go about picking your beats? Like in the studio, like pick them before you got a set producer. I got a couple of producers I'm dealing with. But the main guy I work with is also my engineer B. Will. Pretty much what we do is like, you know, we get in the studio and he'll throw a beat on and like, depending on how I'm vibing with it, like I'll just be like, like why he, like he'll throw on a beat that he's been working on. And if I'm vibing with it, I'll like start, you know, coming up with melodies. So vibe is what you look for? I don't ever really have a specific vibe because he'll put on like so many different types of beats. And I think like from us working together, I know him since the fifth grade. So from us working together for so long, you know what I mean? Like me, he kind of know what fits me. My sound, you know, he know what kind of songs I would, I would record something to. So from us working together so long, I think like he just come in and play something. If I think it's dope, I'll start working on melodies in my head and stuff like that. And then we'll bounce ideas off. I bounce ideas off the guys from the label and stuff like that. And then we just go from there. Okay. So we see that you got the skit with Capri. Is that something you want to get into more? Like more skits and comedians? Absolutely. Is that some comedians looking at right now? Absolutely. Who's making you laugh right now? Yo, it's this dude from, I don't know if he from Houston, but he does funny skits in Walmart where he'd be like going up to people. Funny Marco? Funny Mike. Yo, is that his name? Funny Marco? No, it's Marco. Funny Marco. Cause Mike is the usual, yeah. Yeah, the other dude, yeah. Funny Mark, he is hilarious, yo. Like he's bugged out. Bugged out. But I would love to do some skits with him. But nah, I'm really looking to get into doing that. I feel like, I feel like with gravitated people more towards me and battle rap is my personality. Okay. So I definitely, I'm looking to expand on that this year. Okay. Definitely. Alright, so being at you, you know, upcoming artists, you're independent still, correct? Yes, ma'am. Is there any worries that you have about the music industry or like anything you're like worried about? Not really. I'm serious. Not really more so because I feel like, I feel like I've been doing this for so long and now that it's actually moving, I feel like God got a plan for everything. And I think when I felt like I was ready, I probably made a lot of silly decisions. Okay, so you definitely feel ready now? I feel mentally like I'm a little bit more stable, mentally like, you know, and prepared for what kind of silly stuff can come. You know what I mean? So I think I'm not really worried too much. You know, I got a solid team around me, you know, some good guys around me. And you know, I think we got a good shot at doing this for real, for real. Okay. And what song do you feel like best describes you? So I must add that people know to listen to... Right now, Flood of Cities? That's best describes you? Flood of Cities, definitely. That's what you're about to do? Nah, yeah, definitely. Flood, yo, both of them kind of describe me like they're two different moods for real because my day is more so about like where I am mentally right now. You know what I'm saying? My day is like, you can't mess my day up. So like, pretty much where I'm at mentally is like, I'm not going to allow outside entities to disrupt what we got going on here. But Flood of Cities is more of a feel good vibe. Like, I'm letting you know like this is about to be that. Like... Yeah, speak one of that. Like, so with the battle rap and I'm sure people will be angry after a battle. Do you ever worry that that will transpire into like real life? But you're not really doing battle rap and still are you? Yeah. You're going to still do something? Yeah, I mean, pay good. Oh. Pay good. Yeah, pay good. You know what I mean? Well, the music pay good too. But like, until it pay better, like 10 times better than battle rap, that's still a thing on the table. You know what I mean? Plus, I'm in the NBA of it. Yeah. So why not? It's still good marketing, you know what I mean? Yeah. So do you have any upcoming features and any collabs on the way? I'm actually looking into some collabs right now. Okay. I don't want to say because if I say, you know what I mean? It kind of takes away from the impact of announcing it might be. So I'm actually, we actually looking into some dope collabs. Okay. I really want to work with some guys from the city for real, for real. Like, you know, I feel like... From New York? Yeah, from New York. From New York. Period. Like, just in New York in general, you know what I mean? I really want to work with some people from the city. So I think we got some dope collabs coming. Okay, okay, okay. So do you have, like, estimation of when you want to drop a project? We drop it in August. August for sure? Yes, for sure. We drop it in August. Title already? Yeah, we got a title. To make a long story short. Okay. Because it's not going to be that many songs. Because I'm like EP? Yeah, it's an EP. It's an EP. It's not that many songs. So I'm trying to, like, like I said, I feel like I got a lot of different vibes. Okay. So I want to, like, we were really going through it trying to, like, because we got a good amount of songs. So we were going through it trying to combine, you know, get across the different vibes in the right way so, like, the songs kind of blend. Okay. So the whole point of me coming up with the title was, like, all right, we're going to take all the different vibes and the stories that I'm trying to tell and make them shorter into an EP. So to make a long story short. Okay, okay. And so what's next? We said the project. Say you're working on some collabs. Yeah, we got... Anything else fans should be expecting? Right now, I would just say, you know, check out the videos. The project's coming. The project should be out in August. We're shooting a bunch of videos. We got a bunch of videos coming out. I'm still doing the battle, so make sure you check out them battles. It's lit. Okay. So tell people where to find you, where to find your music, all that stuff. You can just go on our streaming platform, search Lucastro, that's L-U-C-A-S-T-R-O.