The Truth Behind Monster Sessions: Black Jeans
You see these black jeans I’m wearing in all these pictures? Let me tell you a funny story about them.
This was the Monster Sessions Elite Producer Camp in April of 2019. It was one of the best camps I’ve ever hosted.
I want to share the sacrifices I made to put these camps together. My only priority was ensuring that everyone who attended had the experience of their lives. I didn’t care about myself, my well-being, or anything else. That’s why I always wore hats—I didn’t have money to get a haircut, but I made sure the camp, the event, the schedule, and the experiences were unforgettable for the students. I’m proud of that.
Now, let me tell you the story behind it. Funny shit.
Bad Idea
I often got pushback from the industry, my friends, and peers about why I insisted on hosting these producer and songwriter camps in some of the biggest recording studios in Los Angeles. For me, the answer was simple: those studios were my classroom growing up. The experiences I had in those spaces fueled my passion for music and inspired me to strive for more. The conversations, the sessions, and just being in those rooms kept me motivated for months. I’ve always hosted camps in recording studios I would have wanted to work in myself, as an industry producer.
Why Did I Create Monster Sessions?
I grew up buying tapes and CDs just like everyone else, a huge fan of hip-hop. One of the things I was really obsessed with when I would look at the album credits from my favorite artists was where they recorded their songs. For example, I used to get happy whenever I saw that Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem, or Kanye recorded at any of the recording studios in LA: Encore, Record Plant, Larrabee, Record One, Ocean Way, Paramount, etc. I knew these rooms were local, and when I was 19 and bought my first car, I started visiting these studios. Soon after that, I started getting invited to these studios with friends for recording sessions.
I envisioned this same feeling for anyone who attended my camps, regardless of whether they understood that or not. Most music creatives today don’t value the true, in-studio experience. This is why I was so determined NOT to sell my students short by using an empty room, a classroom, or a cheap/convenient recording studio.
Monster Sessions events were not about showing off in cool studios for pics. These events were intended to inspire music creatives to want to work at the highest level, or at least be prepared for industry scenarios, in the event they get a call to a studio session in a similar room.
Over my career, I’ve had so many instances where I was called out of my “little room” by Interscope, Atlantic, and Warner Bros Records to a studio session, and I wasn’t ready for the moment. I wanted to introduce music creatives to this reality, and I did that.
The commitment to this vision came at a huge cost to me, though.
The Owner
The home base recording studio for Monster Sessions and the recording facility that I had used for six years prior to my first producer camp was bought by Post Malone in 2019, so we were no longer able to do our camps at the facility (I’ll come back to this but remember the year—2019). I was really good friends with the owner, and he saw my vision. He was someone that took the time to sit down and listen to my ideas. Bro really listened to my plans, and he worked with me.
My relationship with this guy spans back 7-8 years before I had ever used his recording studio myself, around 2008-2009.
When he first opened the studio, there were times when he would shut it down for major construction projects. At the time, he was hosting clients like Hit-Boy, Wiz Khalifa, and Three 6 Mafia.
Since he was not able to access his Pro Tools rig, he would use the studio where I worked around the corner in Burbank to recall sessions, bounce stems, etc., and I would help him with whatever he needed. I was also working with Def Jam at the time, still new to this side of the industry, but he remembered me helping him, which is why he was so supportive of me years later.
This is why I’ve always taken pride in nurturing my industry relationships.
The 9-5
In 2016, about two months after I started Monster Sessions, I was working a 9-5 and I got fired. Just to cut straight to the chase. I wasn’t focused on this job because I was hell-bent on this vision, I had to do these in-studio classes, so I was doing stupid stuff like printing copies on the corporate copy machine and researching music schools online during conference meetings. They knew I wasn’t all in on the job, so they let me go. I respect it, 100%, because they were right.
I was banking on using this job to fund Monster Sessions, but I got fired 2-3 months after I got the job. They gave me a $4,200 severance check on December 13th, days before Christmas, and I told myself that I was going to put this $4,200 into Monster Sessions.
I said if I was not able to do a producer camp with this money, I would find another job. I ended up doing 4 producer camps between December 2016 and April 2017, and I made enough money to at least cover basic Monster Sessions operating costs. That was the last time I ever had a corporate job. On April 29th, 2017, I completely sold out my first camp, 7 months after I officially started Monster Sessions.
Huge Problem
One week after Christmas, I asked my friend who owned the recording studio where we did all of our camps prior to this for a sit-down meeting. I wanted to talk to him about everything I wanted to do.
We met at a restaurant in Hollywood (pictured above), and we sat there for about 6-7 hours. We just talked about life. We talked about his experiences at his studio, him wanting to get out of the industry. He wanted to know why I was doing what I was doing. He wanted to know my vision, my ideas, and my plans on scaling, and I broke everything down to the best of my ability. He told me that he believed and wanted to help. He said, “I will give you a bro rate until you get on your feet and you’re able to pay the traditional rate.”
Fast forward two years (2019), and just as our camps were thriving, the owner called to tell me that Post Malone had bought the studio where we were hosting our upcoming Elite Producer Camp. I had already been promoting the next camp at this studio for the past three months, and it was sold out, so this threw a wrench into my plans… not gonna lie, I was low-key panicking and stressed now that I’m looking back on it.
People had booked flights and hotels. I had guys flying in from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, so I had to find a new studio in just two weeks, and it had to have a specific layout. This is also why I stopped putting the studio locations on flyers—big labels always pushed us out when they could pay more, but I refused to compromise on the experience for the students.
Apartment or Office?
So the pictures of this camp were in a new recording studio in Hollywood. It was a new relationship that I had to work on with the current studio manager at this facility—a good guy, but he was new. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me, so the studio was really expensive. This was our second time doing a producer camp at this studio, and the second time was a lot better than the first because I was able to establish a relationship and let him know what the vision was, and he was supportive as much as he could be. But since he didn’t own the studio, there wasn’t a lot he could do versus my last guy.
In February 2019, I lost my apartment because I wasn’t making enough money to pay my rent, my car, an office space in Irvine, run the operations of the company, and be able to keep Monster Sessions going, so I had to make a sacrifice—keep the office or my apartment.
This was a no-brainer for me because I was able to legally hire employees and interns in my office. At home, I barely slept. Shoutout to my landlord Roger, though. He really tried working with me, allowing me to make smaller payments towards my rent, but my monthly expenses with Monster Sessions were just too much for me to be able to keep the dream alive and have a place to crash. So, I put all of my stuff in storage, and I would just stay in the office until 4-5 a.m. every morning, then sleep in my car in the parking garage or somewhere else—it was against the rules to sleep in the office space, so I never did. I was too afraid to lose that place, too.
Hell-Bent On The Vision…
That’s why I always looked like a bum in pictures because I was so hell-bent on making sure that when these guys flew into Los Angeles from these different states and counties, when guys got these hotels, when they came to the studios, I just wanted to make sure that they left with an experience. I wanted to make sure they left better than they came. From the curriculum, the registration process, being hell-bent on the social media marketing campaign... I was hell-bent on the website not having any grammatical errors or typos. I was hell-bent on making sure that people knew that this was a legit music education platform that cared about the students. I was hell-bent on that experience for anyone who attended. I didn’t care about myself. I didn’t care about my health. I didn’t care about where I slept. I didn’t care about how much money I took home as profit as long as I made enough money to pay for the experience, that’s all I cared about.
So, these black jeans that you see me wearing in this picture, this is the funny part of the story to me.
At this time, I’m about 2 1/2 months sleeping in my car and taking showers at the gym down the street. One day before the April 27, 2019, Elite Producer Camp, I needed to make copies and badges for the students. I would also make specialized short workbooks for the camp attendees that would cover the entire weekend. A lot of various expenses that I didn’t have money for… I realized that with all this planning and preparation for the camp, I forgot to do laundry, and I forgot to schedule an appointment with my barber… he usually needed 4-5 days in advance to get a haircut. But I was like, all right, cool, I’ll just wear a hat… but you don’t realize how bad you look until you see the pictures afterward. LOL. The morning of the camp, I literally had nothing to wear, and I had no money to buy anything. The camp starts at 10 a.m., and all the clothing stores in the area opened at 10 a.m. I had to borrow $20 from one of the students who was helping me with the camp for a pair of pants…
Luckily, there was an H&M on Sunset that opened 30 minutes before the camp started. I was standing outside waiting for this place to open. I go inside, I look through all the pants that they have under $20. They don’t have my size. I go to the clearance rack; they got one pair of jeans for about $26. I told the lady at the front I didn’t have enough money, and she gave me a discount, selling me the pants for exactly $20. I threw those pants on in the car and went to the camp. Meanwhile, there were already students there waiting outside the studio. (Black Jean pics below, lol) - Might as well call this the Black Jeans Camp from now on. Ha.
The Whole Team Quit, Right Before The Prize.
That was the kind of stress I was always under. I even got into a fight the night of the camp, and though I tried to cover it up, I think some of the students noticed this stress on me. Looking back, I wonder what I could have accomplished if I hadn’t put myself under so much pressure… most likely self-inflicted pressure.
But I don’t regret any of it because I know that everyone who attended those camps will always remember and cherish those moments. It wasn’t about me or how I looked; it was about the experience I provided. Unfortunately, the stress took its toll. Some team members who knew about the situation lost respect for me, and eventually, everyone left.
The Wildest Part
My first investment came two months after everybody left. This was a guy who saw everything we were doing. He saw a vision; he had been watching for a while and wanted to be a part of it. It’s trippy because I always said that if the moment ever came for me to have Monster Sessions funded, the first thing I was going to do was hand checks to all the guys who helped me get here before I paid myself… Literally months after everyone left, I got paid. This is why you never give up. This is why I’m so proud of myself.
I received my first installment from the investment partnership in February 2020—everything shut down in March 2020, so we used this investment money to fund various music recording projects that I looked to eventually tie back into Monster Sessions, but it took about two years for everything to open back up. The recording studio industry never fully recovered. All the recording facilities that I had used for all Monster Sessions producer and songwriter camps had shut down—literally all of them are gone now.
I couldn’t host any camps after that, and the primary responsibility of Monster Sessions was no longer mine. Selling the company was never a part of the plan, but I knew at this point that I mentally and physically was not able or willing to keep making sacrifices for music creatives who may have not deserved my care and intention over them.
It was sad and hurtful for the guys I gave my life to dip out when they saw me at my lowest and thought the company was going to shut down. I also believed it when they left, which is why God showed me immediately that my work was not in vain.
I never shared these stories because I never wanted it to be about me. I never wanted sympathy. I never cared about myself. It was all about the brand and the students that gave Monster Sessions a chance—suffering in silence but putting on a brave face for the world… that’s always been my style, and I realized that I am no longer able to pay that cost for any amount of money.
Those black jeans, though? They’re a reminder of the struggles I faced, the sacrifices I made, and the determination that got me through it all.
Much love to the small number of people who really cared, supported, and stayed true.
Special Thank to: Franco, AR, Kayo, Devon, D. Liv, Marion, Artie, Ma’at, Lesley, Tip, Koen, Reggie & Ruby.
