Like many career musicians, Linafornia’s childhood and teenage years contained a broad range of melodies and tones. The daughter of Belizean immigrants, her parents often played reggae, punta, and soca in their family’s Leimert Park home in South Los Angeles. Immersed in this diverse blend, she took to the piano in early elementary school. A young Linafornia spent subsequent years absorbing her brother’s love of rap and her sister’s passion for dancehall reggae. Along the way, she earned a diploma from Crenshaw High School in 2008 while forging friendships with Left Brain and Mike G of Odd Future.
Linafornia made her first beats in FL Studio a year or two after completing high school. There, she learned an important lesson that still resonates today—her best music happens during moments of joy. “Since I first started, when I made my music, it was because I was happy,” she says. “It was something I felt good about.”
A Focus on Healing
Practicing on FL Studio cemented a basic comfort level with production. A Roland SP-404, acquired in 2012, unlocked her love of “hitting pads and turning knobs.” Soon, she landed a spot on Stones Throw Records’ street team, promoting their 2013 documentary Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton. This seemed like another exciting turning point in her artistic evolution. Unfortunately, a severe car accident left her incapacitated. The event put her position with the beloved independent label on hold. Linafornia focused on healing.
The rest and recovery time from the accident provided Linafornia the space to think deeply about her future as a producer. By June 2014, she was well enough to perform her first live beat set alongside fellow 404-user ALWAYZ PROFLIFIC. This set off a remarkable streak of solo performances around Los Angeles lasting 52 consecutive weekends.
After entering and winning her first beat battle with a 404, Linafornia added the Roland SP-555 to her arsenal in March of 2015. Since then, she has used the 404 and 555 “in tandem” at live shows. “The 555 is like the 404 on steroids,” she says. “Just super-beefed up and with more fun stuff.”
“Even though it may not be as mainstream, there’s still a lot of disillusionment I had to deal with maneuvering throughout the music community.”
Confidence in Bloom
In addition to its live capture feature, she finds the 555’s D Beam technology a particular joy. Producers can add an increasing/decreasing low-pass filter, trigger samples, or create synth sounds by running a hand over a sensor. “There are at least eight different synth sounds in there you can play with,” she says. “Also, you can set up the synth feature by key and scale, which is crazy. It can get really intricate, and it’ll sound like you have some kind of Moogy energy going on.”
Linafornia’s growing confidence in live performance resulted in more beat battle victories. These led to performances at the famed Low End Theory event, and an eventual slot as one of their resident DJs. She also developed a growing catalog of beats like 2014’s Erykah Badu-endorsed “xtrctions.” These tracks morphed into an official project. Using a blend of FL Studio, the 404, and the 555, she produced her critically acclaimed 2016 debut instrumental album, YUNG. The record brought a new level of visibility, culminating in journalist Jeff Weiss crowning Linafornia, “the beat scene’s rookie of the year.”
Though YUNG was a personal and professional triumph, the four years since have been challenging for Linafornia. She’s had to come to terms with questionable behavior and power structures in the male-dominated underground beat scene. “Even though it may not be as mainstream, there’s still a lot of disillusionment I had to deal with maneuvering throughout the music community,” she says. “It’s not been easy at all.”
“Sometimes I wish I could be that robot, beatmaking machine that can just pump out commissions super fast and make beats for hella people.”
A Slow-Cooker
At times, Linafornia has also struggled with the pace of her workflow. She’s a self-described “slow cooker” producer. A social media landscape pressuring artists to continually share new creations can be exhausting. It also leads to moments of comparison with others who work at a faster clip. “Sometimes I wish I could be that robot, beatmaking machine that pumps out commissions super fast and make beats for hella people,” she says. “Maybe it would make my journey a lot easier.”
Coming to terms with unpleasant aspects of the industry and assessing her workflow has been painful at times. However, it also provided valuable insights. For one, she now knows beatmaking doesn’t work as a tool to work through emotional duress. “I know for myself, I cannot create through the pain,” she reveals. “That’s not my thing. That’s not something that’s conducive to my creativity as an individual.”
Into What’s Going On
Linafornia has also learned that financial incentives, while nice, don’t provide motivation to make music if her heart isn’t in it. “Not even money can motivate me to make music if I’m not feeling it, honestly,” she says. “I have to really be into what’s going on.”
What does provide her with the necessary energy for new projects? Space and time to nurture creative interests outside of production do the trick. “I like having multiple creative outlets, ‘cause that’s what makes me happy—creating things and making and re-imagining things, not just within the music realm, but other realms too
Moving Pictures
Adding moving images to her music has long fascinated Linafornia. This interest started with the “visual bumps” during Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim commercial segments. Connecting with the Oakland-based [SMARTBOMB] collective and their member/artist flatspot gave Linafornia an opportunity. Now, she can further explore the creation of visual mixes during her live sets. She wants to take this performance component to the next level, perhaps adding a visual sampler to her setup.
A Hands-on Approach
Another form of design has helped enhance her creative powers. “I lean into my femininity a lot, so I’ve been getting into nail design,” she says. “I do a lot of things with my hands and I like to adorn them to add to the effect of my shows as well.”
Giving time to music production, experimenting with nail designs, and creating visuals provide the necessary blend of artistic ingredients. “It’s like a creative goulash or something, man, I don’t know,” she says. “Feeding my creativity brings me all types of joy, and I feel like that’s what’s most important to me.”
Moments of Happiness in a Time of Challenge
These forms of self-expression bring moments of happiness. Still, coming up with enough new music has been an emotional battle, particularly over the past year. In July of 2019, Linafornia experienced the devastating loss of her friend and producer peer Ras G. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 took away her gigs, a primary source of revenue and joy. Finally, there were the recent police murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor. Coupled with the portrayals of their deaths and state-sanctioned violence in the news and on social media, created an untenable and traumatic environment for Black creators.
“The fact that it's been four years since I released my first album, correlating with me only feeling like I create the best when I’m happy and I’m confident, says a lot.”
Somehow, Linafornia still finds a way to make music through it all. On her upcoming LP Lavender, listeners will hear the celebrated producer leaning further into her “softer” side, with a focus on making “the prettiest beats ever.”
In addition to each track’s unique beauty, the Lavender songs represent positive moments distilled from trying times. “All these tracks from my newer project are little pockets of happiness and little pockets of joy that I captured since YUNG was released,” she says. “The fact that it’s been four years since I released my first album, and correlating with me only feeling like I create the best when I’m happy and I’m confident, says a lot.”
Seeing Through a PRIZM
The PRIZM EP, something she conceptualized after wrapping up YUNG, is on the horizon as well. Though the “super aesthetically ambitious” set of songs has been marinating for some time, the music didn’t fully start to materialize until late 2019. “The way my brain works, I am able to come up with concepts before I come up with the music for some reason,” she says. “It’s like a Hogwarts sorting hat. I’ll just start making stuff and then whatever I feel goes to the concept that I have, I’ll just send it over to that section.”
Once she dipped her toe into the house music genre, PRIZM became more tangible. In addition to house, Linafornia is making footwork and broken beat tracks for the EP. To fully understand the broken beat genre, she’s studying the percussion of tracks by artists like Madlib’s alternate persona DJ Rels, Mark de Clive-Lowe, and Bugz in the Attic.
As with YUNG, she find moving her music through different DAWs and samplers is a key part in creating both Lavender and PRIZM. Ableton also plays a role now. She figured out how to incorporate the software, thanks to some assistance from her producer friend Kiefer. “It’s really a hodge podge of all those different programs and hardwares, just like the first one,” she says. “I take things and I move it around, add something from my 404, then I’ll put it on Ableton and maybe do something else to it. The 404, the 555, FL Studio, and Ableton—I’m always moving my music through those different mediums.”
Linafornia appreciates what Ableton has done to expand her production possibilities. Still, she prefers using her ear and her SPs for creating loops. “When I work on Ableton, it usually comes from a sample on my SP first,” she says. “My favorite way to loop things or sample things is to do it on my SPs because I’d rather hear and set the loops by listening to it than by looking at it and dragging the markers.”
Sharing the Sound
Her productions often start with capturing and collecting intriguing loops. Lavender promises to take her trademark unique sounds in new and exciting directions. While YUNG was mostly a solo affair, Linafornia hopes her upcoming album will evoke a more collaborative spirit. She’s shared early versions of the tracks with trusted creative peers. “I’ve been sharing this private playlist with different artists that I trust, love, and admire,” she says. “Just trying to facilitate an organic opportunity to collaborate more if it resonates with them.”
“I like having multiple creative outlets, ‘cause that’s what makes me happy—creating things and making and re-imagining things, not just within the music realm, but other realms too.”
This includes MCs, producers, and musicians she holds in the highest regard. “If they’re interested in adding a verse or my musician homies who are in bands who play keys, drums, and sax, feel any kind of inspiration on any track, I want to facilitate that kind of creative collaboration,” she explains.
Bold New Music
The decade-long journey to get here hasn’t been easy, but the remainder of 2020 and 2021 promise to be big years for Linafornia. An EP full of bold new musical ideas, a meticulously constructed LP that will likely feature the most guest artists of any of her projects to date, and two other recently announced collaborative ventures will keep her very busy.
Whether solo or in collaboration, broken beat or more traditional instrumental hip-hop, quality remains the central focus that always guides Linafornia’s work. “I just want things to sound good, honestly,” she says.
