Automotive Avenues’ Rising Music Star Signs with Portland, OR Record Label

By Maureen Condon

Courtland Urbano - Rising Star in Hip Hop Music Industry

Courtland Urbano will be leaving Automotive Avenues this Friday to pursue his dream in the music industry in Portland, Oregon.

The Humble Beast record label, based in Portland, recently signed Courtland on as a recording artist. In fact, Humble Beast is featuring Courtland right now in the scroll of artists at the top of its Home Page on its web site: http://humblebeast.com/

For the past three years, Courtland has worked in Automotive Avenues Service Department, as a Customer Service Representative, setting up appointments for customers, answering phone calls and performing cashier duties.

“I’m going to miss everyone here. Automotive Avenues is like a big family. It’s awesome. Everyone here has been so supportive of me. Automotive Avenues has given me the ability to make money and stay financially stable, and at the same time, after hours, pursue what I ultimately want to do in the music business,” says Courtland.

Once he’s in Portland, in October, he’ll be going on tour for the record label. Courtland’s specialty is Hip Hop music production.

At age 21, Courtland, known as Xperiment, in the music industry, is a rising star. He is one of two Denver producers who will be heading to the Red Bull Big Tune Beat Battle finals in Chicago later this year.

The Red Bull Big Tune Beat Battle is the biggest producer battle in the country. It’s a head-to-head competition where the winner is chosen based on crowd reaction.

In 9 major cities nationwide – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, and Denver - local competitions are being held where 12 producers play their music before live audiences. The top 2 producers in each city move on to the national finals in Chicago.

Denver’s Red Bull Big Tune Beat Battle competition was held recently at The Church Nightclub downtown. More than 1,100 people attended, and selected Courtland as one of the two producers to go to the finals.
To hear some of Courtland’s productions, visit his web site: http://www.xperimentbeats.com/ and this site: http://soundcloud.com/xperimentbeats

Courtland got his start in music at a very early age through his interest in snowboarding!

“I was born and raised in San Antonio Texas, but in 2000, my parents had a change in business plans and came to Ouray, CO, a resort town of 800 people, about 7 hours south of Denver. We lived there for 3 years. Snowboarding is the big scene there. Telluride is about an hour away from Ouray and we’d get season passes to the slopes there, through our school, for $100. So we’d go snowboarding all the time. I started watching snowboarding videos and Hip Hop music was being played on these videos.”

“Hip Hop was different than anything I heard on the radio. I would research the Hip Hop artists’ names online. I started buying their albums. At age 12, I started writing lyrics. I got my first DJ turntable for my 13th birthday, and at 14 began experimenting with free music software downloads from the Internet.”

“With the demo software, I couldn’t save anything. So I would sit there all day and make a production and I’d bounce it out to an .mp3 file and then once I closed the session, I’d never be able to get back into it again. It was a pretty interesting process for sure. It was frustrating, yes. But, I was still learning everything. So, I just had to utilize what I had and figure things out as I went.” (Hence the name Xperiment!)

“Once I actually got a real software program that I could have on my computer forever, that’s when I really dove into what it means to format music and make it the way it should be. I was 15 when I first got my own software and by the time I was 16, I put out my first album. I was in a Hip Hop group, called ‘Educated Figures,’ and it was a self-titled album.”

“That came out in 2006, and we put together a promo package and started giving that to different venues around town. Soon enough we started getting booked for shows with artists that I looked up to as a kid. That was really cool! It wasn’t until the beginning of this year, that I broke away from the group and got into my own thing, in terms of production.”

Before he heads out to Portland, in October, Courtland will be spending a month in Europe on vacation with his family. Incidentally, Courtland’s brother Calvin has been an Automotive Avenues employee as well. Calvin was a lube tech here before getting his degree in accounting and he now works as an assistant accountant for a massage chair company.

“AutoAves has been very good to my brother and to me, and I’m going to miss everyone here!”

BEST WISHES COURTLAND, AND KEEP US POSTED ON YOUR MUSIC CAREER!