SAM SHOEMAKER - BLUE CHECKS

Origin Story of Blue Checks:

A couple years back, while visiting LA for the ASCAP expo, I hopped on the train and carted my MicroKorg synthesizer to the USC campus. On that sunny SoCal afternoon Brooks Brown came down to the court yard in front of his Dorm building to let me in.

A couple years earlier I had met Brooks at iStandard’s Beast of the Beats VIII. Then only 16 years old he was already a stand out talent in the crowded field of over 80 proven producers in the US’s biggest national beat battle. We caught up at Beast of the Beats X, that time in LA, where he had just moved to attend USC. He said “next time you’re in LA we gotta meet up and collab!”

That session got to happen a few month’s later in Brook’s freshman dorm room, my aforementioned MicroKorg recording into Ableton on his laptop, blending the keyboard’s dark, gritty synth and bass sounds with Brook’s go to EDM Trap drums and risers, and both of us knew we had started something official…

Now, fast forward to 2018 when Sam Shomaker gets ahold of the beat: “I had been listening to the beat for months while I would go on my morning run. I knew I wanted to rap over it and really the verses came first. Just having fun with word play. A bar here and a bar there. I also was becoming very aware of the "verified" blue check culture and process and had been reading a bunch of articles on how people get them. I think the whole thing is kind of corny to be honest but one day on a run I started screaming "blue checks, blue checks, blue checks" and it fit in the beat so I went with it. From then on it was just about filling the spaces with punchlines about being established, verified, official, etc. Some of the most fun I've had writing a song and I think it shows.”

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