Marco Polo:
The Interview

For those of you that don’t know Marco Polo is probably the illest producer that you never heard of and that’s because of the mind numbing beats that he puts together for some of hip hop’s elites. Marco has worked with the likes of Masta Ace, OC, Buckshot and so on and so forth. Fresh off the release of his debut album “Port Authority” S1 had a chance to holla at homeboy and get the inside scoop of his very promising career:

S1:  What’s good big dawg? Talk to me baby!!!

  MP: What’s good man thanks for having me on the show…

  S1: No doubt, no doubt so how you feeling today everything alright?

  MP: Yeah man I’m feeling great man just working on music same ol routine…

  S1: Alright, alright that’s definitely wassup…To a lot of catz the name Marco Polo may sound like a new name but it’s gonna become household real soon…The young man is straight out of Toronto but he’s been in Brooklyn for a minute and he has been working with some of the legendary heavyweights but why don’t you tell us your story homeboy, you break it down?

  MP: Okay…Well I’m going to give you the short version because it will take forever…Basically I’m originally from Toronto Canada, when I finished high school I knew I wanted to production, you know what I’m saying and I went to school for engineering in Toronto and when I was done instead of trying to set up shop in Toronto and produce for artists there I was like let me just skip that and move right to where the source…The source for me being New York City, so that’s what I did, I got an internship at a studio called The Cutting Room, which was pretty popular at the time they recorded a lot of the Rawkus Projects…So I started interning there for a couple of months then they gave me a paid gig and through there I met a lot of people…I passed out my beats to anyone and everyone including artists like De La, Pharaoh, Common and one day Masta Ace came through for a Beatnuts session I gave him a CD he ended up picking a couple of joints and one of them landed on “The Long Hot Summer” was a song called “Do it Man” featuring Big Noyd and I consider that to be my first underground big break…  

S1: Alright, alright…Your album that you dropped “Port Authority” you had a lot of legendary heavyweights you had OC, Masta Ace came back and did a feature on that “Nostalgia” which was insane I saw the video to that too…Off the hook!! You definitely have the seal of approval, just break that down I mean because from what I’m catching on the outside as I’m looking at you, you know what I’m saying, It looks…The beats are dope!! What’s real is real but at the same time a lot of knuckleheads are showing you a lot of love and put you out on front street and have put you under their wings and shown you a lot of love…How does that feel? Not everybody gets that in the game dawggie, talk to us homie…

  MP: I mean it feels incredible, it humbling to be able to work with people I grew up listening to, you know what I’m saying…Like Large Professor and Kool G Rap and Buckshot and Ace and it just came from a lot of hard work and hustling, you know what I’m saying…I’ve been doing this for awhile and when I came to New York and moving to New York from Toronto can be overwhelming because it’s 10 times bigger, everyone wants to move to New York and make it as a hip hop producer…It was kind of scary and I just kind of ignored all that and really just put in the time studying the legends and their sounds and buying records and making beats everyday to the point where I got the confidence up to pass out my beats…I think people respected what I was trying to do and it showed because you know I was able to collaborate and work with a lot of legends and actually work in the studio…It’s unheard of  for a lot of new producers, cause usually in those situations you just send a beat and they send the song back and that’s that…I had Buckshot in the lab at the crib, I had OC come thru and really build on ideas and I think that’s what made Port Authority respectful.