As May quickly approaches for graduating seniors, some are still asking the big question: what do you do after college? Many students get jobs on Capitol Hill or go on to graduate school. But 2004 School of Business graduate Gabe Smiles decided to take a job on K Street at a litigation support company (or what Smiles describes as Kinkos on steroids). The goal was to save enough money to move out of D.C. and to New York City to start his music career as a hip-hop producer.

Last fall, Smiles finally saved enough money to make the leap.

Originally from the suburbs of Boston, Smiles said music was a part of his life from the beginning.

“Music’s always been in my family,” he said in an interview with The Hatchet. “It was just something that was always around. My father was a jazz musician in the ’70s and ’80s. (My parents) pushed me to pick up an instrument when I was young and I started playing the trumpet in grade school.”

As Smiles grew older, he discovered the world of rap music and began listening to Nas, Jay-Z (before the Roc) and the Wu Tang Clan. In high school, he got involved in band, but the tall hats and marching weren’t for him.

During his sophomore year in high school, his school began offering a synthesizing course.

“That really showed me that it was possible to make the music that I loved listening to,” he said. Smiles began recreating beats by his favorite artists on his computer, all the while trying to figure out what they used to piece together the bridges and the choruses.

“My first beat . it was real jazzy. It was a laid-back drum beat,” Smiles remembered. “It was a really exciting feeling to be like, ‘This is hot,’ and it’s done and people can listen to it.'”

Looking for a school with an urban environment, Smiles found his way to GW in the fall of 2000. He got involved at WRGW and began networking around the city, attending shows at 9:30 Club, working on demos with friends and other artists and going to “Freestyle Wednesdays” at a club near Howard University.

After graduating in 2004, Smiles worked the suit-and-tie, nine-to-five life while producing beats in his free time. He created music for Black Entertainment Television promos, an official demo for the artist Trix and co-produced some songs with Justice League.

In October, Smiles was finally able to pack his bags and move to New York City. The tribulations of moving to a new city without a job only fueled Smiles’ motivation.

“The first couple moths I really didn’t know where to start,” he said. “It’s definitely not easy. It’s a big city. I wasn’t ready for it.”

Smiles took a job at a temp agency to pay the bills and recorded beats and searched for another job in his spare time. After a few months, a friend from D.C. told Smiles of an internship opening at Sony Music. He saw this as a way to get his foot in the door of one of the major music corporations in the country. He now balances temp work, the internship and traveling among New York, Boston and D.C., while creating beats and working with artists in each city.

His next goal is to gain recognition at a producing battle at New York’s Remote Lounge later this month. Judges include some of the top audio and recording reps in the city, and artists and managers assess the quality of the beats produced by the competitors.

“Being at Sony really lets you see how it works; it’s like being at the center of a machine,” he said. “Single. Single. Single. Everything is about a single. Nobody really cares (about anything else). The music isn’t about a complete package.”

Smiles said he sees the record single mentality as the downfall of the rap business and advocates producing music independently.

“With the new technology, it’s so much more feasible to create an album yourself,” he said.

“I have a theory that hip-hop in general is on its way out. What made it hot in the beginning was that it wasn’t accepted, it was something edgy, and it was something different.”

“Now it’s all big and universal, which is a good thing,” he said, “but I think it reached its peak and lost its edge. It’s not dangerous anymore. It’s not sexy. It’s kind of like its just there; it’s accepted.”

Through his most recent project, Smiles hopes to prove his theory wrong. A 26-track work known as PROGRESS features a variety of jazz-infused beats with Smiles describing what “PROGRESS” means to him laid out over several tracks.

“I just want my name to be hotter,” Smiles explained. “I’m not the kind of person that seeks attention. But if nobody recognizes your name, it’s not going to be worth anything. I want it to be a name that people say, ‘Hey, this dude is nice. His music is good.'”n

-You can visit Gabe Smiles’ Web site at www.gasmilesbeats.com. Or, if you’d like to work with him, e-mail Gabe at [email protected].