Artist: Mixem or YunB

Genre: Hip-hop

Professional experience: I'm self taught and started making music four years ago. I started getting professional two years ago when I established a home studio. About a year ago, I started to revolve my music around philosophy, broadly speaking. Here and there, my songs include content reminiscent of old school hip-hop. In most of my songs, you can find themes of love, life, and politics. I'm still finding my true style, and I can only get better!"

Web sites: www.myspace.com/brpproductions
www.youtube.com/user/mike3yo http://blog.syracuse.com/voices/eastern_onondaga_county/manlius_pebble_hill/
http://beatrhymepoetry.blogspot.com/
http://myeong.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/mike3yo

Inspiration for music: "My inspiration came mainly from within. This may sound vague, but it's true. Perhaps a better way to put it is that I had no outer artists who influenced me. I wanted to make music because I knew that it was a means of implicit communication with the broader audience."

Artists/bands I admire: "I admire Blue Scholars, Rakim, Brother Ali, Nujabes, Substantial, Marcus D and many more underground hip-hop artists. A commonality between all these artists can be their passion for rapping. You can actually hear that they worked hard on the lyrics, editing, and portrayal of themes."

Writing Process: "When I write lyrics, I apply somewhat the properties of 'freewheeling.' Freewheeling is when you write down anything, everything that pops to your mind on a blank sheet of paper... Obviously though, I don't just jot down random things. I turn on a beat and depending on the measures, I have a basic idea on the style of my lyrics. Once I come up with a common theme and have something going, I rap the lyrics to the beat and from then on it's just revise, revise, revise."

Why I do it: "I do this because I believe it is a great way to increase one's understanding of the world. Not only that, but also because music is like a piece of writing. Now, there are many factions in rapping and I guess I am different from what we hear in the radio."

Performances: Mixem does not perform as of yet. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.