We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gaitán. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gaitán below.
Gaitán, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
Growing up I was constantly around music. My pops’ family was in and around the LA rock scene in the 80s and he himself was a singer along with my uncle being a drummer in a punk band that used to tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in they early days.
Thus when I was young young, we would be singing all the time together; me, my pops and my sister. That was where the passion started. By the time I was 8/9, I started skateboarding and immersing myself in the culture and through that, I started finding my own taste in music.
I was listening to a lot of pop punk/alternative type shit and hip hop and crossovers between the two, like the Linkin Park/Jay-Z collab project. I owned the CD/DVD of that, I remember that being one of my favorites as a kid.
It was through all that discovery, that I eventually decided I wanted to play drums. Shit just seemed cool to me. Watching a select handful of people do they thing made me be like I feel like I could do that shit.
So one day came when I was almost 12 and I was in the music class at school. Our teacher would do individual lessons with certain instruments, and she was doing guitar and trombone at the time (random mixture, idk why lol), but I was playing trombone at the time. Rare lol shit was something I did for a couple years. My pops played it when he was young too so that was definitely the influence on that. The teacher was a guitarist however, so she always favored the time to the guitarists. Her and the students started playing some shit together that day and I ain’t really see how I fit in, playing the trombone. So I took the opportunity to go sit on the drum set and take a stab at playing along with them, even though I’d never done that before.
I remember that feeling of being able to do it first try and the shit sounding good. Creating that collective sound with them, jamming together… pfewww. Shit gave me such a high. I ain’t ever feel anything like it. I knew from then on that music was what I was meant to do. I took it upon myself to ask my pops for a drum set for my birthday coming up and soon after that, I started a band who won the school battle of the bands the next year.
I ended up playing in bands all through my teens as the singer/drummer (some I played guitar in too) leading me up to later on when I eventually took things solo and learned to produce (from an engineering aspect) myself.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Well after starting my first bands, as I started playing a bunch of gigs at clubs around the bay when I was 13. It was funny, me and my bands would always be the youngest people there and in some instances, we’d get kicked out the clubs after performing cause we wasn’t old enough to be in there 😹😭 Those shows was really my true entrance into the industry.
Now as a solo Hip-Hop Artist, all the singing and rapping I did as a kid influenced the style of music I create today. It’s got tastes of so much of the music I was into as a kid, helping me eventually find and define my own sound. If you wanna hear what that sound like, I recently dropped a song called “Bottom of My Heart”. You can listen to it here:
https://gaitan.fanlink.tv/bottomofmyheart
I been filling up the vault with A LOT of music these past few years, but this year I’m outside. Stay tapped in, it’s a lot more on the way.
I have my own recording studio in the valley that me and my homie built back in Nov/Dec 2020. That’s the home base I’ve had since then, after saving up and making the move to get my studio out the crib.
In addition to making my shit there, I also work with other artists whether we collaborate on an artist level or with myself as an additional writer, producer &/or engineer. I engineer all my own shit so that’s helped me create my own sonic signature that people come to me for. Plus I love helping others bring they visions to life. I know well how good it feels when I do that with my own shit, so it’s a dope experience to do that with other artists I align with.
In that regard, sitting more in that producer role, I like to think of myself as a song crafter. I’m the one that helps put ideas together into a complete song. I’m another driver getting shit to its final form. Sometimes I make the beat, sometimes I don’t 🤷🏻♂️ But I always got a hand in gluing it together. I work with other artists on an artist level, even in the producer role. What that means is I level with them on the mental & emotional plane as an artist, ’cause I know what it’s like to be one. ‘Cause I know what I’m looking for as an artist.
What this manifests into a lot of the time is talking with each other, picking they brains and getting to know one another. Understanding them and what emotions they may be feeling. Understanding the place they in at the moment. We take those conversations, emotions, experiences, etc and turn them into melody and/or cadence.
Bringing a song to life and making a full idea is what I really enjoy. Just making a beat can be fun, but it’s not enough for me. And in this business, at least in the hip hop world, that climate can also feel like factory work. I’m not interested in just making loops for example and maybe getting a shot at a placement with people whom I don’t have any sort of personal relationships with. I enjoy working with <i>people.</i> I enjoy having <i>actual relationships.</i>
I’m most proud of my personal catalog, in both what’s already out and especially in what I’m getting ready to put out. I got some of the best music I’ve ever made on the way and I’m hella excited to see where it takes me. I got visions for it, but I know the universe/God/Mother Nature/whatever you wanna call it got even bigger plans for me.
I’m also proud of collaborating with certain bigger names such as Kodak Black & Too $hort. It was with Kodak that I got my first major placement as a producer, with our record going Platinum and #1 on Billboard. I also have done a bunch of records with Mackned of GothBoiClique (the emo rap collective that used to home Lil Peep). I worked on a bunch of his shit and shit he did with other members of GBC.
My story is ultimately mine and mine only, and because that’s where I draw my inspiration from, my music sounds like my own and no one else’s. Subconsciously, I think I’ve always wanted to be one of those artists where people listen to other people’s shit and they say, “yo that sound like Gaitán” as opposed to “Gaitán sounds like so and so”. Artists like Kendrick & Blink-182 are artists like that to me.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Not too long ago, I got into a super super toxic relationship that ultimately resulted in me fully crashing out. Literally and figuratively. I got hysterical one night and crashed my car, wound up in jail, couldn’t get a car back for a long while, which then led to me losing my apartment, all my money and most of all, damn near lost myself. My confidence and sense of self dwindled into such a low place that was immensely tough to bounce back from. Not to mention I ended up tearing my achilles in the midst of that too. I made it through though. With a lot of therapy (mental and physical) help from my family and friends, and a commitment to myself to really doing the work. I’ve seen people lose themselves after reaching such a low place and falling victim to addiction, their demons taking them down the wrong path or ultimately just giving up on they dreams. I realized I reached a turning point like they had, but I chose to not give up. And now I feel like the best version of myself that I ever been. And I continue to work at being the best best version of myself everyday. I believe I’m the most equipped now to have the career and legacy I always imagined.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Through that story I just went into briefly, I had to unlearn giving too much to people. One of the things that made it so tough was that I felt like I had already learned that from going through experiences in the industry where close friendships fell out, different degrees of betrayal and other people trying to take advantage of me also occurred.
However through, that relationship, I realized that I was still giving an extended leash to certain people because of who they were in my life, whether it be a significant other or a family member. Through that, I learned that no matter who it is, no disrespect or mistreatment can be tolerated or excused. What’s it Kendrick said on “tv off”… “Bitch I’ll cut my granny off if she don’t see it how I see it”. That’s the energy I’m on now.
I’m also learning how to not absorb those negativities myself even if it is from someone close to me. All this stuff distracted me from my goals and more importantly, my power and true self. My true nature. My purpose.
Contact Info:
- Website: gaitanmusic.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/gaitanmusic
- Twitter: x.com/gaitanmusic
- Youtube: youtube.com/@gaitanmusic
- SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/gaitanmusic
- Other: Tiktok: tiktok.com/@gaitanmusic My studio on Yelp: https://yelp.to/93VVjccA7z