By Sonia Montalvo

The deep punchy 808 bass drum of Yo Gotti’s 2013 Hit Single I Know, sent the masses to the dance floors to flex in the bravado of the song’s beat drop and the lyrics. Featuring the late Rich Homie Quan’s legendary voice, the song became a cultural staple hitting #31 and spending 21 weeks on Billboard’s Hot R&B and Hip-Hop Charts. With 182 million views, the song’s existence lies behind the genius and gritty production of Charlottesville native, Trauma Tone.

The 34-year-old producer who prefers to go by his self-appointed moniker, first popped on the production scene around 2010. Prior to his entry in the game, he had been creating beats for some time in his hometown, creating a buzz for himself in the city. Taking his time in high school to perfect his craft, his most vivid moment of realizing he was on to something came during his sophomore year. “What I will say is, I think it was a song that an artist at the time, which is my homie who I love to this day. His name is Nick. He did a song, and, like, it was my tenth grade year and I remember this, everybody was playing it. Even the people we had problems with growing up- I remember them pulling up to the school playing the song. I was like, ‘This must be what it feels like to have a big song.’ A few years after his graduation, Tone ventured to Atlanta to expose himself to a bigger market. At the height of Rap’s Mixtape Scene in 2013, what solidified Trauma Tone’s place in the game for him had to be his first song with major recording artist at the time, Chicago’s ambassador drill rapper, Chief Keef. This song was placed on Chief Keef’s mixtape ‘Almighty So’ which dropped after his commercial success in the mainstream with hits like, ‘I Don’t Like.’ For the last decade plus, Trauma’s song credits have continued to grow and so does he as he continues to take on the job of becoming one of Hip-Hop’s hidden-in-plain-sight gems of the production game.

With influences like The Alchemist and Dr. Dre, Trauma Tone’s earliest memories outside of spending part of his childhood in the studio with older family members, was being gifted the gift of music. “My mom, had us like, we was the Death Row house. She had us all on Tupac. The first gift I ever owned in my life was a single [Cassette] of Snoop Dogg’s Gin and Juice. Dr. Dre is definitely like one of them influences, you know, one of my favorites growing up.”

Trauma’s ultimate goals as a producer are to leave a musical legacy behind and to create music identifiable with where he’s from. Interestingly, with Virginia debatably having very few identity markers in one significant musical influence or sound, Tone’s predecessors of musical greats may have shaped it this way on purpose. Virginia is home to several legendary producers in the industry. Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Pharrell Williams, The Neptunes, and DeVante Swing—Trauma Tone is quite literally standing on the shoulders of giants. Each of the these legendary artists could be considered snowflakes in the music industry because though they all hail from the same state, none of them have similar sounds to one another or any of their musical counterparts for that matter. As time progresses, each of their sounds doesn’t even allow them to sound like their previous work. Take for instance Missy Elliott. With no production of hers sounding quite like the other, Virginia Legend Missy Elliot gave us hits Supa Dupa Fly in 1997 and Lose Control in 2005. Two sonically different songs eight years apart, with the ability to move her fanbase all the same. Comparable to the Virginia legends before him, Trauma Tone further proves that the sound of Virginia is not a sound at all, but a feeling. With household hip-hop names under his belt like Migos, Kevin Gates, Rich Homie Quan, NBA Young Boy, Curren$y, and others, Trauma Tone is navigating through his music career in a similar fashion. “We [Virginia] got like a lot of different influences, because we’re right in the middle, of the north and the south, but like our bounce is different. When you look at people like Timbaland, Pharrell–I think we just got a different vibe to us. It’s hard to really explain the sound because I don’t want to put us in a box, but I just think that the bounce is just a little different. We are very versatile, all of us. You can pretty much come to any of the Virginia producers for any type of sound, especially if you’re trying to push it forward. I think it’s always gonna be some envelope pusher type of shit. “

Trauma Tone shares that his new endeavors and collabs are special to him. Recently he started his music label, Which Way Is Up, affectionately named after a 1970s comedy of the same name starring Richard Pryor that his mother introduced him to as a child. “That name always stuck to me because it’s like me and my manager joke about it all the time. Now, when people call us to fix shit, we’ll always be like, ‘Man, they don’t know which way is up.’ Like, they don’t know which way to go. You know, but I feel like I’m the guy for my circle[and] for my network. I’m the one that people call.” He states the creation of his label comes from the business knowledge he began attaining during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The producer creates his newest projects under his label with the most current project being a joint album with him and Louisiana Rapper Curren$y. “We do our projects in-house. We do everything on our own. I didn’t really understand none of that type of stuff on the independent side until I got with my manager and started learning about that earned income. So, I just think once you learn the game and like, you find different ways- it’s a million ways to skin cat, find your lane.” While nervous to share any names, Trauma’s excitement tends to flare when he talks about his upcoming 2025 projects.

At a perfect pace, Trauma Tone’s production credits are making him a household name in the music industry, but he doesn’t wish to stop there. Tone has his eyes set on scoring movie soundtracks and writing scripts. To end this article, it’s important to note that Trauma Tone stands behind believing in your own delusions of self. When asked what it took for him to get to this place, he exclaimed, “I was feeding my crazy, man, probably a little bit of delusion in there, but like, you couldn’t tell me, I wasn’t gonna be who I said I was gonna be. Even when everybody was like, “Oh yeah, it’s not gonna work,” or, “Get a job” and all that, I was just like ‘fuck what everybody else is talking about. I know who I am, and I know that no matter how long it takes, and I still got a ways to grow, but I know who I am, and I know what I’m trying to get’”I was feeding my crazy, man, probably a little bit of delusion in there, but like, you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t gonna be who I said I was gonna be. Even when everybody was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s not gonna work,’ or, ‘Get a job,’ and all that, I was just like, ‘Fuck what everybody else is talking about. I know who I am, and I know that no matter how long it takes—and I still got a ways to grow—but I know who I am, and I know what I’m trying to get.’ ”