Certified Fresh: When Marcellus Juvann Talks To Himself, You Should Listen

Big Boi once rapped, “I heard it’s not where you’re from but where you pay rent.” Marcellus Juvann is paying rent in Orlando, Fla. But the music he makes is a combination of everywhere he’s lived.

When Marcellus Juvann raps, “90’s baby, grew up listening to ‘Pac, so you I’m crazy/But when he got shot, it really ain’t phase, because I was only three, still Tina’s baby,” on his song “Make My Way” it shouldn’t be taken as a slight on the slain legends name. It should be seen as a young artist knowing exactly who he is in this world.

When Juvann graduated high school, he already knew he wanted to rap for a living, he just didn’t know how. No, let’s clear that up, Juvaan definitely knows how to rap, he just didn’t know how he was going to make a career out of it. Naively, he thought he could actually go to school in Florida and learn how. But he quickly found out that the only school that he could really learn from was the School of Hard Knocks.

While he wound up leaving school and working a job for some years, his sacrifices are finally starting to pay off. His debut project The Fall has been making the rounds online and his new fans are not stingy with it. The introspective project has been getting shared all over Soundcloud and his profile is boosting daily.

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Who: Marcellus Juvann was born in Cleveland, raised in Houston and made in Orlando.

Credentials: Recently featured on TIDAL’s Discovery page. Has worked with Ayo The Producer [Bryson Tiller, Drake, Lil Wayne]

Fun Fact: While growing up in Cleveland, Marcellus Juvann used to watch LeBron James’ high school games.

Photo: Marcellus Juvann

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HipHopWired.com: Tell us where you’re from originally.

Marcellus Juvann: I was born in Cleveland, and moved to Texas when I was 13 or 14-years old. I lived close to the Beltway 8. I went to high school out in Cyrpress. I moved to Orlando to attend Full Sail and I’ve been here ever since. The people I’ve met here have been very beneficial to my music career. I’m building my team out here, but I still go back and forth between here and Houston.

HHW: We’ve heard a lot of different styles out of Cleveland, from Bone to Kid Cudi to King Chip [Chip Tha Ripper]. What was your experience like there? What did you find yourself gravitating to?

MJ: Cleveland was like, it was slower compared to living in the South. It’s a big city, but it has more of a small town feel, especially compared to Texas. The weather and music was different. Musically, we were more into the New York stuff like Dipset. We listened to Bone obviously. But there was actually big Houston influence in Cleveland. I grew up listening to Chip Tha Ripper and he would come back talking about Slabs and H-Town stuff.

HHW: How was Houston when you got there?

MJ: Man, the women were 10 times badder {laughs}. Weather is nice year round. I remember starting high school and it was a culture shock. There were 900 people in my school in Cleveland, but in Houston I had 3,000-4,000 people at school. Plus there were all these different cultures. In Cleveland it was just black and white people. I go there after the big H-Town music explosion though. When I got there the only thing popping there was Lil Wayne when he was just introducing Drake and Nicki Minaj.

HHW: How did you wind up getting into music?

MJ: I always loved music. I grew up in a family of music lovers. None of them did music, but they loved music. My family was more on the hustling side though. They knew how to get money a lot of different ways. But when I told them I was going to start making music, they thought I was crazy. Especially my mother. She was actually more supportive of me playing basketball and trying to go to college off of that. But I think I was around 14 when I started taking it serious beyond just freestyling. I wanted to learn how to write and structure songs.

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HHW: How did your first recordings sound, who were some of your influences?

MJ: To keep it a buck, I was writing some bullsh*t. I was rapping like Lil Wayne. He’s tripping now, but he was my favorite rapper back then. I remember the first time I recorded something on my computer, I took all the instrumentals on The Carter III and redid them all and made my own songs. The only people I let hear it were my little brother and my mom. I didn’t let anyone else hear that shit. But my family gave me the confidence to keep going. So I started finding more instrumentals to rap over. When I got to 10th grade, I started listening to what my older cousins were into, so I got into the underground. Before that I was just into whatever was playing on the radio. I didn’t know about Curren$y and Wiz Khalifa, all I knew was Wayne, Drake, Bone, Jay Z and 2 Pac. But when I saw people were making mixtapes, I got into that. I started burning my own CDs and writing my name on them with a Sharpie marker and selling them at school. I was selling like 30 of them a day, I was booming!

HHW: What were you doing between high school and releasing The Fall? That almost three years right there.

MJ: I was just dropping songs here and there, but not really doing anything. That’s why I came out to Florida. I was going to go to a regular college in Texas, but someone put me onto Full Sail University. They said I would always be in the studio. Plus I was going to be in Florida? Sign me up! I’m out! I wanted to get into music, be professional and polish my talent. I did drop a mixtape with some friends I made in Orlando in 2012 that circulated around the school. But between high school and The Fall? Nothing really. I dropped out of Full Sail in 2012 when I realized I didn’t really like it. I didn’t want to be an engineer, I just wanted to make music. I was still trying to find what i wanted to do. I wound up staying here in Orlando, don’t ask my why though. To this day, I still don’t know why I haven’t gone back home. But being in Orlando has been a blessing, I’ve met and worked with some dope producers, like Ayo the Producer. I met my manager here too. I I’ve stayed in Orlando because I didn’t want to come back to Houston empty handed. Orlando is melting pot though. A lot of the music made here gets overlooked because of Disney. It’s hard to get out of that Walt Disney shadow. But there is a lot of talent brewing here.

HHW: When did you start working on The Fall?

MJ: I started working on it late 2012, early 2013. I started making it when I dropped out of Full Sail. The project is based around the whole idea of my mom being disappointed in me dropping out of school and not coming back home. I was giving a brief description of what I was going through. In school I had financial aid, but when I dropped out, I had to get a job and music had to take a backseat. I was working just to live in a place I’m not even from. No family, no connections. So writing for The Fall, it was like therapy for me. I was basically talking to myself, saying everything was cool. When people said they f*cked with it, I wasn’t expecting people to go crazy over it.  I was just trying to make a name for myself. People were telling me that I couldn’t do it, but I like proving people wrong. Even if I don’t know how to do something, I’ll learn it just to prove you wrong. I basically rapped about my life at that time. I rapped about my car and keeping my H-town roots, but I didn’t want to over do it by screwing every song or saying “trill” every other word. That’s not what Houston is all about. A$AP Rocky kinda got people f*cked up thinking it’s just about slow music and gold teeth. I grew up around people who really live the trill life. It’s really meaning behind that shit. People f*ck that word up all of the time.

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HHW: The Fall sounds like a very cohesive project. All of the beats and sounds are where they are supposed to be. Nothing sounds out of place. We didn’t hear a “turn up” song right after a sentimental track.

MJ: I’m really picking about my beat selection. Producers get mad at me because I might pick one or none out the whole beat pack. I can’t rap on it if it don’t speak to me. The only beat I produced was “Schzo.” All of the beats were from studio sessions with producers. That was a blessing to make it that that way on my first tape, instead of just buying beats online or straight off somebody.