A 72-Year-Old Grandfather Taught Himself To Make Trap Music And Quite A Few Producers Are Baffled
Updated: Jun 27, 2019
Arthur Dubois, a 72-year-old Chicago resident, stunned hip-hop producers and a lot of people online when he mustered up the courage and walked into a local recording studio, and now his beats have gone viral.
By Tanya Chen
Posted on March 6, 2019, at 5:05 p.m. ET
In his sixties, he discovered trap, the subgenre of hip-hop that rose to popularity in the late ’90s/early 2000s. “They didn’t have it in my day,” said Dubois. However, he said it “sounded good” to him and he was drawn to it. Dubois is a father to two kids in their thirties and forties and a grandfather to teenage grandchildren. About six years ago, he taught himself how to produce hip-hop beats as a hobby.
Recently, after years of “tampering” with and creating trap beats for fun, Dubois said he finally decided to take his recordings to a professional producer for feedback at a nearby free studio called Haven Studios, a youth mentoring music studio in the south end of Chicago. He asked the owner, a 32-year-old producer named Andre “Add-2” Daniels, if he could play some of his music for him.
Daniels was so blown away by what he heard that he brought other musicians and producers in his studio over to listen. He recorded their stunned reactions as well.
“When I heard his music I was in complete disbelief because you wouldn’t expect him to make this style of music, to be able to do it well, and to appreciate it as music, where sometimes our elders don’t see it as music,” said Daniels.
Over the past few days, Daniels said Dubois has been coming into his studio nearly every day so he could help him arrange and mix his songs. He’s also helped him set up his own Twitter account (@BeatsByArthur)!
He’s been touched by his chance encounter with Arthur, and it’s mostly taught him a valuable lesson.
“It’s never too late to pursue your dreams [and] how music breathes life into all of us and how music can bring different generations together,” he said.
“I feel like I just became his unofficial grandson. I want to see him live out his dreams.”
For Dubois, while he’s a man of few words, he does have a message to anyone his age or otherwise about keeping passions alive:
“A person can do whatever they want to — if they want to do it, let them do it,” he said.
