A Hustler’s Spirit

Austin Levy (A. Levy) is a modern day Jack Of All Trades: touring hip-hop emcee, event curator, audio engineer, recording studio owner, and all around go-getter. His ingenuity and adaptive spirit were established early in his rap career when Levy figured out a way for him and his friend to collaborate, despite the latter’s overprotective parents not letting him outside.

“When you have problems, you figure out things,” says the resourceful emcee. He quickly learned during his adolescence that he could record music through the end of a microphone and a pair of headphones. This led to the remixing of No Limit songs and putting his own lyrics on it in a parody-like fashion and eventually to writing his own stuff on beats downloaded from peer-to-peer music sites like Napster and BearShare. In the years since, the New Orleans award-winning artist has released a slew of projects from the You Welcome mixtape of the early 2000s to this year’s Midas LP. Levy describes the latter as “music made with the fans in mind.” He goes on to say it’s “a fun album, something that would go well with performing.” As an emcee, you learn fairly quickly how to read an audience, what songs become potential fan favorites, when to issue a call-and-response, etc. The New Orleans East-based rapper has developed these time-tested skills performing at Atlanta’s annual A3C hip-hop festival, the monthly freestyle parties of Bangkok’s SuperFly, Austin’s SXSW, and several nationwide tours he booked independently.