Beats Master

Meet Grant Yarber, aka YOG$.

Suzanne Chessler
Contributing
Writer
I

rant Yarber will begin his
junior year at the University
of Michigan as a commu-
nications major, but he already has
begun electronic communications by
developing hip-hop tracks heard on
the Web.
Yarber, working with keyboard and
computer, produces beats for music
with and without lyrics. Generally, he
devises platforms for other artists with
the help of Reason software.
Using the name YOG$ (spoken as
Yo Gee Money), he recently released
"Marvin's Room" a remix of a song by
Grammy-winning rapper Drake, the
Canadian-born performer who is the
son of a Jewish mother (born Aubrey
Drake Graham, he had a bar mitzvah)
and African-American father.
"Marvin's Room" premiered on
the website HotNewHipHop and got
10,000 plays overnight, according to
Yarber, who says that number grew to
25,000 plays within two weeks.
"It's one of my favorite songs" says
Yarber, 20, who launched as G$Beats
(pronounced Gee Money Beats) but
wanted a more concise name. "The
message of the lyrics has to do with an
ex-girlfriend.
"I like hip-hop because there are so
many approaches you can take to it.
There are so many hip things about it."
Yarber, who spends most of his
away-from-schooling time with music,
got hooked on contemporary sounds
when he was 9, listening to his sister's
tapes of teen entertainers, such as
Britney Spears.
When he turned 11, he asked for a
guitar like the one given to a brother for
Chanukah, and his parents, Judy and
Terry Yarber of West Bloomfield, agreed.
"I had no idea how to play, but I
strummed it day after day and slowly
started to play songs and make up my
own" Yarber says. "Then I began tak-
ing guitar lessons.
"One month into those lessons, my
bar mitzvah was coming up, and I
decided to play 'Stairway to Heaven' at
the party I learned it really quickly.
"That year, I took a computer-music
class at Orchard Lake Middle School in
West Bloomfield. It was super-basic with
a program called Fruity Loops, which a
lot of producers use in starting [out]. I
worked on the program at home"
Yarber, who also has taught himself
to play piano, uses the Web to connect
with others producing hip-hop music

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Grant Yarber (aka YOG$)

in different ways. On Facebook, he
linked up with people asking him to
do beats. When he got to Twitter, he
met people working out of Detroit stu-
dios and later branched out to rappers
working out of Los Angeles.
"I've worked with Niko G4 on 'Roll
the Dice: Rickie Jacobs on 'Remember
to Smile' and Sayitainttone's '500
Million:" Yarber says. "I also did some
work with Rockie Fresh and Casey
Veggies. These projects have been fea-
tured through Complex magazine, The
Source magazine, XXL magazine and
so many others.
"I released my own project called
Everyday Vacation at the end of last
summer, and it still gets plays. I did
three of the 17 tracks, and it became a
compilation album that can be heard
on iTunes and has been featured
on [the music website of] Ashley
Outrageous and HotNewHipHop."
The tracks released so far are con-
sidered promotional by Yarber as he
strives to build his career through vari-
ous projects, including Ambient Pack,
available on iTunes as two instrumen-
tals, half meditation music and half
hip-hop.
Through hip-hop connections,
Yarber has secured a summer intern-
ship in the California studios of Hans
Zimmer, a film composer (Gladiator,
The Dark Knight, Inception) and music
producer who has composed the scores
for more than 100 films, including the
Oscar-winning score for The Lion King.
Yarber, who went to West
Bloomfield High School and affiliates
with Temple Shir Shalom, scheduled a
trip through Taglit-Birthright Israel in
between music projects.
"My career goal is to produce a lot
of albums that do really well" he says.
"I also want to do film and video com-
posing. Ultimately, I'd like to head up a
record label:' ❑

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June 12 • 2014

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