For Austin Rapbaum, consistency is key. It’s his brand: If there’s something you enjoy doing, figure out a way to just show up daily, he says.
So in late 2018, the New Orleans-based rapper and producer, who performs as Rapbaum, gave himself a challenge. He was going to make time every day to create and post to Soundcloud a new instrumental song.
He hasn’t missed a beat, and Rapbaum’s catalogue of daily tracks now sits at 2,036 as of May 30. He believes it’s a world record for longest streak of daily music releases and has an application in to Guinness World Records for verification.
“I think every person should, whatever you love to do, find your level of consistency that you can maintain,” Rapbaum says.
He works with a lot of different artists as a producer and DJ, Rapbaum adds, “and the biggest way I see people fall short is they try to do too much and they do a great job for four to six weeks, but then they get exhausted and they fall off and they lose a lot of their progress.”
On Saturday, June 1, Rapbaum will commemorate passing the 2,000th daily track mark as well as celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with “Four Pillars,” a multi-discipline show at Café Istanbul. The show will highlight the four pillars of hip-hop, he says — DJing, emceeing, graffiti and breakdancing — with collaborations with other New Orleans artists.
Rapbaum will perform along with $leazy EZ, Kr3wcial, Nuddie Piper and Luke Julien. DJ PJ will spin during the show and will give a demonstration on how hip-hop began with DJs and turntables. Sophamish and a crew will dance, and there will be a group of graffiti artists working on a tagging wall throughout the night. Rapper and Draw Fo’ Radio co-host Slangston Hughes will host the event.
Hip-hop has a deep, diverse history, Rapbaum says, with many different points of view and memories. “It’s an amalgam of this culture and this sound that has developed over time,” he adds. “I’m hoping this show will shine a light on that in a different way and make some people respect the art form in the way I did.”
Rapbaum grew up in Philadelphia and started to learn to dance in different styles when he was 5 years old. He became a serious dancer and as a teenager was hired by a DJ company as a professional breakdancer. He was accepted into the Philadelphia High School for Creative & Performing Arts when he was 14 and around that time started writing poetry.
A couple of years later, a teen being fostered by Rapbaum’s family introduced Rapbaum to slam poetry. That led Rapbaum into learning to rap.
“I just got really hooked into it and started working with anybody that would produce music for me,” he says.
Rapbaum moved to New Orleans as an 18 year old to study music at Loyola University and met an upperclassman who taught him how to produce. He started making his own beats as well as producing for other artists, and today, there’s a hefty number of Rapbaum singles and EPs on streaming platforms.
Along with his daily instrumentals, Rapbaum’s latest release is the four-track EP, “Reflections,” released in April. True to its name, it’s full of introspective, unhurried, head-bobbing hip-hop, with a feature by Kr3wcial.
Rapbaum’s daily instrumentals can be found on Soundcloud and linked in a thread on his Twitter. As can be expected from more than 2,000 releases, there’s a variety of sounds in the instrumentals, from old-school hip-hop to songs sampling Latin horns and a laidback beat using slowly strummed electric guitar for a meditative effect.
“At this point, I don’t really see it ending,” Rapbaum says. “It’s a habitual practice now, and I think it’s healthy for me. … If you’re an athlete, you can’t control necessarily if you have a good day in the gym or a bad day, but you can control if you show up. And there’s always something you can do to improve your game. It’s the same thing with this.”
“Four Pillars” starts at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 1, at Café Istanbul. Tickets are $10 via eventbrite.com. Find more about Rapbaum on Instagram, @rapbaum.
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