About

What’s up? My name’s Carlo, also known as ONE3D. All caps, no dash. And in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced one-three-dee.

The Music

At the end of the day, my end goal is to release great fuckin music that you’ll be proud to label as Filipino and transcends the Philippine rap stereotype.

Through my music, I strive to capture and represent everyday life as I see it. With every song, I try my best to marry the vocals, the lyrics and the beat so that the song conveys whatever emotions I’m feeling — whether the topic is about life in the Philippines, a romantic wooing of the opposite sex or just big-upping myself.

The Story

Note: This is a work-in-progress.

Having written tons of poetry when I was a young kid, I upgraded to writing my first verse when I was in 7th or 8th grade way back in 1997. High school was when I got really deep into it — I got addicted after I hooked up with a few friends to perform at a school talent show. I then went on to record songs with my PC using low-budget equipment, and even released a couple of mixtapes then.

Fast-forward a couple of years — I moved back to the Philippines and I was now a student in Ateneo de Manila University. We formed a group called Audible with three other friends: Protege, Liquid and PJ, and we went on to make our mark in the local hiphop scene.

Sadly, that came to an end when I moved to Vancouver, Canada after graduating and I had to drop the music so I could put 100% of my focus on my business. But working 12-hour days ain’t so healthy, and I desperately needed an outlet. Now that I’m making ends meet, I decided to make a return after a three-year hiatus from hiphop. Since I will be returning to the Philippines in a year or two; there’s no better time to get a headstart on pursuing this music thing than now!

The Motivation

I’ve been in the rap game for about many, many years now, but I still cringe whenever I see aspiring Filipino rappers simply trying to ride the wave of Western hiphop through sheer imitation — the mean mugging doesn’t look natural, the uber baggy clothes make them look like try-hards… And basically something just feels wrong.

As for the actual music… Well, without letting this develop into a commercial vs. underground debate, I do believe that Philippine hiphop has failed to have any long-term success in the mainstream because the majority of rappers (those who are getting attention, at least) haven’t been able to take the art form and make it *our* own.

My goal is to change all that.

At this point, music is still strictly an outlet of expression for me. I’ve given up any and all hopes of getting rich off this shit, so you can bet your sweet ass that I don’t water my music down.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you don’t need to be a genius to see that the music industry has been dramatically changed forever.

For labels and musicians, they’re struggling to sell albums, since it’s easier than ever to pirate music for free. For the listeners, they’re faced with an abundant variety of choice of who to listen to, since it’s cheaper than ever to create music.

So at the end of the day, we have a bunch of hungry listeners who have so much music to freely choose from, and a whole bunch of starving artists desperate to get these listeners to pay attention to their shit.

Digital Revolution is a fancy name that I came up with for how my strategy with music is going to be from this point on. I got this idea while I was reading Christopher Anderson’s “The Long Tail” (great book for you business minded folks out there).

Instead of trying to fight piracy, I’m embracing it by essentially “bootlegging my own shit” and release everything I do digitally for free online.

This stance is inspired by one simple observation: nowadays, you don’t have anything unless you have the listener’s ATTENTION. Good luck trying to sell albums when they have absolutely no idea who you are or what your music sounds like. There’s way too many things fighting for the average person’s attention; your music will not have a chance if you’re asking them to pay for it first before they can listen to it.

You might be wondering: how am I going to make money off my music this way? Well, that’s actually a secondary concern (if it’s a concern at all). Before asking you to pay for my music, my first challenge is to make you like my shit. I’ll worry about the making money aspect later on. Besides, I have a business that’s responsible for putting food on the table — this music thing is a passion, not a way to pay the bills.

(But if you want to know… Hopefully, I’ll get enough traction that there will be a select amount of people who are willing to pay for a physical copy of the music as artwork. I’m talking limited edition albums with linear notes and lyrics, DVDs with behind the scenes footage of the song creation and maybe even live performances, etc.)

The Digital Revolution has come upon us.

To be continued…