The University of Kansas is full of talented people, whether they’re athletes, artists, dancers or singers, talent is not hard to come by in Lawrence. One of those people is senior Matt Easton, a double major in sociology and business who makes and produces his own music.
Easton started dabbling around with making hip-hop songs in high school with a group of friends just for fun, but didn’t take it seriously until his freshman year at KU. “In the dorms at Oliver I got into producing, beat-making, and also playing piano. Then sophomore year I started rapping over my own beats and realized there was a lot of potential with what I was doing, then just started making mixtapes from there,” Easton said.
With over 2 million views on his YouTube page and over 7,000 subscribers, the world seems to agree with Easton’s potential and yearns for more. Mainly focusing on hip-hop music, Easton has begun to incorporate more instruments and different sounds to create what Easton and his management team call “alternative hip-hop”. Easton has opened for popular artists such as Asher Roth, Timeflies, G-Eazy, Chuck Inglish, and more. His biggest musical influence is Kanye West because he is a self-producer like Easton. Some of Easton’s favorite artists include Slightly Stoopid, Rage Against The Machine, Eminem, Bill Withers and Ray Charles.
As you can imagine, being an artist and your own producer can be a large time commitment, but Easton is handling everything the best he can.
“So far I’ve just been recording in my room myself, recording my guitar player myself, and doing all the audio engineering myself,” he said. “It gets very exhausting listening to every sound to make sure everything is perfect.”
Easton’s process includes listening to the beat repeatedly to find out if the instruments go together well. After that, recording lyrics and listening to recordings takes a large amount of time and patience, “There’s an expression, ‘the last 20% takes 80% of the time’, and I’m starting to understand it. However, there is a reason I like to do both, and that is to have total control of the final product.” Easton said.
One of Easton’s favorite moments in his music career was being contacted by the popular television show, The X-Factor. He was asked to audition in front of thousands of people, including the famous judging panel— Simon Cowell, Britney Spears, LA Reid, and Demi Lovato.
Easton says his favorite part about making music is the creation.
“Starting a fresh new project is the best feeling because I’m free to just mess around with sounds in my room, see what clicks, what doesn’t,” Easton said. “I enjoy expressing my emotions through a form of some sort. I like applying my creativity to something productive.”
After graduation, Easton hopes to leave a mark at the University as students become more familiar with Easton’s music. He plans on continuing his music career and hopes to spend the majority of his time focusing on music.
“I would say I’ve only been able to dedicate 30% of myself [to music] because of school, so I’m excited to see what I can do when it’s my number one priority,” he said.
Easton also hopes to become successful enough with his music career in order to give back to the KU community.
“It is such an incredible university and I want to be able to give back as much as possible,” Easton said.
All of Easton’s lyrics are co-written with one of his managers, Brian Francis Taylor. Along with Brian, Andrew Rabin also helps manage. Easton’s band members include Joel Hodgdon, Wes Powell, Dustyn Bebermeyer and Andrew Rabin as the DJ.