On a Sunday evening in late November, up-and-coming hip-hop producer and artist Loudy Luna played her music for a room full of the biggest stars in rap.
As she picked through her catalog of beats, rappers like Drake and 21 Savage listened intently. A-list producers like Boi-1da, Cardo, and No I.D. were also in attendance, offering feedback in real-time.
“That shit was crazy, because I had no idea that Drake and Savage were going to be in there,” Luna says now.
It was the kind of moment that every young producer dreams of, but it didn’t happen in the way you might expect. Luna didn’t score an invite to a prestigious rap camp in Los Angeles, and it wasn’t a star-studded studio session for a new Drake album. Like most events in 2020, it all happened virtually.
Loudy Luna was at home, playing beats over her phone on Clubhouse, the new invite-only social media platform that has the entertainment industry buzzing this year. More specifically, she was a contestant on the third edition of a beat battle series started by A-list producers Boi-1da, Cardo, and their manager Simon Gebrelul.
Boi-1da and Cardo, who are both represented by Simon’s ISLA Management company, had been poking around Clubhouse for a couple weeks before settling on the concept. Boi-1da remembers coming across a room where other producers were playing beats for each other, and the sound quality was better than he expected, opening his eyes to the potential of the app. Later in the day, he was texting with Cardo and Simon on a group chat and they collectively came up with the idea to organize a beat battle.
(Continue reading at Complex.com)
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