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Meet Ramone Alexander of BBMC in Fort Collins

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Ramone Alexander.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ramone. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Well for starters, BBMC stands for the beats, babes, music, collective. Beats because that’s what we make. Babes because we promote our friends (male and female) who inspire us to keep achieving by offering photoshoots and videography of them or their hobbies, promotions, etc. Music because that’s what unites everyone in the BBMC banner. Lastly, collective because we acknowledge everyone who has contributed to our success from the realms of music editing and creation to financial support with software and hardware.

My partner of nine years goes by the name MollyOhh and we started BBMC in the later part of 2018. The passion project stems from my appreciation of all music and stage performance and MollyOhh’s background in Opera and vocal performance as a graduate of UNC in Greeley, Colorado. We like to call our fusion of music Hip-hOpera but really, our brand can’t easily fit into any genre of music. We’ve noticed that our sound represents a generational shift and attitude towards diversity and experimentation and we find ourselves constantly inspired by local music coming out of Denver, combining influence of old school rap with 80’s inspired synths but still maintain elements of funk, political lyricism and Tejano music which reflects our diverse roots and represents the cities culture.

We are currently in the process of fulfilling a year-long goal of filming a docuseries about our progression in the Fort Collins music scene with the goal of creating a musical sound that can accompany us to an adventure in Europe. We want to make sure that we constantly test ourselves musically and on stage by not conforming to one locale and perhaps our blend of styles can evolve for the better in a place like Europe where there is a greater respect for music such as opera, while elements of hip hop remain “underground.” However, we have found that much of Europe is aware to the American hip-hop scene and appreciates the genre.

Overall, we understand that BBMC is a lifelong goal and we want to share it with as many people as we can. If one day we can look back at the photoshoots and music done around the globe with fans in every corner of the world, we’ll know that the collective aspects of BBMC has been accomplished.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Aspects of our journey have been smooth while other areas have been very tough going. For one, we never lack creativity and charisma. We keep performances fresh and musical ideas are never-ending. I have enough understanding in video/music editing to produce great content and MollyOhh is a fine-tuned vocalist. Meeting people for projects is also easy and we show enough interest to inspire others to collaborate with us.

However, our predominant strife is in funding. BBMC is truly a grassroots startup. I come from the typical millennial inner-city youth story. Single parent childhood years, partial college, student debt, working a job since the age of 16, with very little to show for it. Because of this, the funding for BBMC is slim pickings, but that is actually one of our strengths. I truly believe that great things can come from adversity and strife. Interpersonal lessons that you can take forward to make more informed decisions as well as perspective to appreciate the little things in life.

So much of our gear has been supplied to us by friends who truly believe in us and have watched us and grown with us in just a short amount of time. I constantly see other musicians that seem to benefit from solid promotion via paid gigs that seem to excel their journey. That is truly inspiring, but our journey has forced us to learn the same lessons by putting the work in ourselves. Though other musicians and photographers constantly contribute to our passion, they are hardly people that are there for just another paycheck. They are always, first and foremost, friends.

Lastly, another obstacle has been in the genre of music itself and the representation it has in Colorado overall. Colorado is a hub of great local talent, but it seems mostly concentrated in genres of music like Indie rock, alternative rock, punk rock, bluegrass or jam rock. That is pretty alright with me, seeing as my first musical passion was thrash metal, which instrumentally lends itself to many of those genres of music. But the hip hop representation, though growing, is starting on a smaller playing field. It seems as though people forget that Hip-Hop is a genre constantly featured in mainstream media and many of the Hip-Hop greats are everywhere from Grammy’s to the Billboard’s Top 100.

Again, I must stress that I do believe adversity lends to greatness and despite these factors, the opportunities I have found for BBMC in Fort Collins are nothing but amazing! In a way, though, the smaller playing field helps connect the community. Everyone involved in the genre knows everyone else involved in the genre because we frequent each other’s events and run into each other at bigger venues of more national artists. So it becomes an interesting dichotomy where we share a kinship with one another under the struggle of making an impact in a scene saturated by other forces.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
We are mostly known for our stage presence. Albeit, Hip-Hop shows inside a scene dominated by bands can seem kind of boring. The audiences between Denver and Fort Collins are used to 4-5 people on stage, preoccupying their time with the finesse of their fingers on guitar or the focus it takes to play drums. Hip-Hop doesn’t usually have that aspect on stage. Now I am one of those people who will show up for a “backpack” rapper and stand front row all night to hear the lyricism of rap and hip-hop but many people nowadays ask more of their performers, especially in Colorado. So much of our music is done behind the scenes, mixing and mastering our sounds to make the PA speakers at a venue bump and boom through your chest and the icing on the cake is the lyricism, the subtlety of the mouth and tongue that deliver a message in time and rhyme.

So we sought a way to combine lyricism and conscious rap style with the elements of band performers through BBMC, and I think we have achieved that. I frequently play the bass on many of our tracks, the keyboard is always an arms length away and MollyOhh is privy to her electric violin that can help add a unique element to our music. All of these pieces of equipment, combined with our lyrics, help to keep us an interesting presence on stage and honestly, it makes rehearsals very fun. Learning how to rap to the tempo while playing the bass can be a great challenge but once you find your own cues and relationship between the two, it becomes a puzzle that you can’t wait to finish.

Besides the actual instrumentation of BBMC, I am probably most proud of bringing a woman on the stage for a hip-hop show. Women in the scene are far and few between and often just a feature to our music, especially locally. Molly Ohh however, writes her own lyrics, performs her own style and contributes to the technical and musical elements of our song creation. Her knowledge of music theory makes music composition much smoother and her prowess on keys and violin help sustain the creativity we have with our style of hip-hop. And when it comes to the music we actually have released, it might be easy to miss the concept that we do hip-hop. Songs like “Too Hot To Handle” and “Mi Amor” which are sang by MollyOhh exclusively, lend to different genres of music like funk and Tejano.

What were you like growing up?
Growing up, I was a goth kid. The only brown kid in my school with spiked hair and black cargo jeans and not the skinny versions. Tupac, Eminem and Wu-Tang were constantly on shuffle with Metallica, Pantera and My Chemical Romance rounding out the playlists, the local library being my source for burning CD after CD. OutKast is probably the biggest and most relatable influence to BBMC. Artists like Prince and Micheal Jackson were on heavy rotation in my household and early on in life, I became familiar with all sorts of oldies like Parliament, The Isley Brothers and Funkadelic. My mother introduced me to artists like Korn, Led Zepllin, Tears for Fears, TOOL and A Perfect Circle which to this day, I still appreciate. I liked Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh, and Digimon which gave me an appreciation for Anime and Japanese culture.

I used to want to grow up to be a samurai and it wasn’t maybe till 13 years old when I realized that it wasn’t a plausible aspiration. At a young age, my mom and I would sit down to watch my favorite Disney movie Aladdin followed by the 87 sci-fi film Predator, which looking back now was not age-appropriate but I guess my mother couldn’t contain her excitement to bond with me over the sci-fi genre in general. My father left me at a crucial stage in my life around the age of ten which forced me into a lonely dark hole for many years but it also brought better opportunities down the road. My step-father took us on road trips throughout America by the time I was 14, which gave me my first taste of a world outside of Denver. I attribute that relationship with him as one of the reasons why I want to travel around the world and why we are in Germany right now.

I was blessed to have gone to South High School in Denver which is a school that prides itself on diversity. Forty-two different languages are spoken at the school and the racial makeup is so wide there that it was nearly impossible for anyone group to form a “clique.” I heard very early on about the pain and hardship of refugees from Iraq and Sudan and had my first serious school crushes on Russian and Iranian girls who spoke very poor English. South High School is where I fell in love with Slam Poetry and Multimedia production. These two influences are directly responsible for much of what BBMC does now in music, photography and videography. It is also the place where I left behind stage fright and met Molly Ohh, starring in our school musical of West Side Story, where I played her fiery brother, Bernardo.

The role was great for me because not only did it give me a lead in the play but the fight scene with Riff happens mid-way through the play, where (SPOILER ALERT) Bernardo dies. This allowed me the time to sit for the second half and watch Molly Ohh as Maria shine on the stage. All in all, growing up, my life felt very eclectic and very much the essence of Denver. A melting pot of a city, caught between the west and east side influences of America, multiracial, multicultural and very much accepting of the influences streaming into the city from every direction.

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Image Credit:
Emma Holt, Kind Dub, BBMC

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