Who Needs Record Stores?

On a chilly night last week, just outside of L.A. Pizza, I ran into two guys on bikes, selling their self-produced hip-hop CDs out of a tote bag.

Can you tell me your name?

My name's Andrew, a/k/a Makdro, and that's my right hand man Zaybo. You gotta put Boogie Man too, because Boogie Man's been helping me since day one.

And what's the name of your project?
It's My Destiny To Make It.

Do you live in Granada Hills? Do you always sell your stuff here?

We I live in Sylmar, and I go where the wind takes me. I've been doing it for about maybe 6 years, I have maybe 80 songs floating around, and this is my fifth volume.

What do you mean floating around? On the Internet?

We've sold actually seven volumes of this type of music; we do two different types of music. We do kind of a Christian hip-hop, and hip-hop for the kids.

So what inspires the music?

I just wanna do something that nobody could have done. And what really inspires my music is me losing my mom back in 2000 -- she had myeloma -- she raised me and all my sisters by herself, with no man, and that gave me courage to do what I want, because she told me never to give up. She didn't give up until her last days and that kinda inspired me believe I can do anything I want to do in life.

Did you bike over here from Sylmar?

Yeah, we bike about five or six miles a day, all around the city, sometimes we even go as far as Hollywood and back, and it's no problem, our cardio is perfect, we're in perfect shape, perfect condition, and we do this in case we have a big show -- we can run laps around these guys that have been putting in all this work.

Where have you played at?

B.B. King's in Citywalk when it was open, Club Gabba on Melrose, Club Minx in Pasadena, a place in Glendale, a hall out there on 90th street -- sorry for not knowing the exact name, but we played there a couple of times. We've already sold 25,000 CDs since 2005, just on the street. I've been keeping track myself -- I don't have barcodes or soundscan, like a company keeping track, but we're for the people, so we don't really need it. When it's our time, God's going to put us in the light.

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 14, 2009 at 10:36 AM

    So awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  2. HunnybeeDecember 15, 2009 at 12:30 PM

    Did you buy their CD? If so, how was the music?

    ReplyDelete
  3. JakeDecember 15, 2009 at 1:52 PM

    Makdro!!!

    i always see him around the valley,

    he's a true artist always out there sellin his cd's trying to make a name for himself.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kat in BoiseJanuary 7, 2010 at 7:38 AM

    Mmmhmm...Inspiring story, made me want to go look for some of his "Christian Rap" for my daughter. I'm still trying to figure out how the songs, "Money Over Bitches," or "I Make That P***y Go(when I F**k it from behind...)" and other similar songs qualify as "Christian." I'm thinking maybe the reason he hasn't been signed by any labels yet may be b/c any of the Christian labels I know of might be a little wary of taking him on. (Ya think???)

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousAugust 30, 2010 at 11:53 AM

    to the poster above...Elvis sang gospel and they also wouldnt let him be televised from his waist up !!! you found two songs from this guy and you think you know what this dude is about ? his music is good... maybe you should of listen to missin you

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMarch 23, 2011 at 2:31 PM

    I I enjoyed MAKDRO's CD and would recommend the mainstream hip-hop to anyone who enjoys that genre of music. He also had christian Cd's that I was not interested in.

    ReplyDelete

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