2008 Woodie Awards
Mini mogul in making
Michael Brown
Issue date: 10/9/08 Section: City Style
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The session was a typical night for Hernandez filled with pulsating beats and rhymes and venting his day's frustrations lyrically.
Seated in a swivel chair in front of a laptop during a late night recording session in July, Hernandez evoked the image of a young Dr. Dre or of Diddy, as he adjusts and re-tunes vocals for new tracks completed by the Gardena rap duo, Swerve Gang.
Dreary eyed and clearly tired, Hernandez offered up his motivation for the session, which took him away from promoting concerts around the Long Beach area for the night.
"I rarely record artists in the studio. I do it when I'm low on cash. Other than that, I rent out the studio to engineers who bring in artists they're working with," Hernandez said.
The session, which took place in Hernandez's self-owned Section 8 Studio in Bellflower, is just one aspect of music that he's involved in.
The jack-of-all-trades dabbles in recording, promoting, engineering and producing.
Hernandez, a 22-year-old English major who received a certificate from LBCC's music program, became fixated on music more than 10 years ago.
Prior to entering the college's program, he fine-tuned his production skills by "messing around."
The up-start music executive and artist uses the cramped confines of Section 8 as a central command post for a budding empire he envisions creating, including his fledgling independent record label, Dead Poet.
When he's not attending class during the day, Hernandez is often networking and linking up with industry players such as Dead Prez and RZA.
In fact, RZA, the Wu-Tang's producer, took such a liking to Hernandez's business sense he dubbed him an honorary member of the Wu.
Working with area promoters, Hernandez helps artists secure gigs at venues such as the Blue Café at the Long Beach Promenade.
"The highlight of my promoting career so far has been bringing The Pharcyde to Long Beach," he said. "The only bad aspect of promoting is that some of the people I deal with can be shady on the business end."
Section 8, a nondescript studio situated behind a hip-hop clothing store and (closed) supermarket, lives up to its name, which is usually associated with low income housing.
Comprised of two small rooms, a restroom and a booth with a mic, the studio was built by Hernandez from the ground up including the black foam insulation on the walls.
"Since I moved this studio from Long Beach two years ago, it's been a good base," he said.
"My whole team works from here. On the music side, the artists and producers get it in here and I stay in contact with my legal team who make sure copyrights and contracts are taken care of."
Kosmic, one of Hernendez's business partners, who's also an artist and engineer, said, "Alex is going places and I see our operation only expanding because me and him work well off each other."
Hernandez also has made contacts in the music industry through the studio, where not only local musicians record, but the likes of Ras Kass, Crooked I and Killah Priest have laid down vocals.
Owning a studio is no small task.
However, Hernandez makes it work through promotion, low hourly recording rates and selling instrumentals to artists in all genres of music.
Along with eventually attending UCLA, Hernandez has other ambitions.
He said, "My goal is ultimately to move away from the artist part of the business and into scoring movies and writing music for other artists. I want to start a revolution through music and help the people around me, so that we can all eat."
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