Tags; producing, music, Crystal Palace, Felix Costa
By James Flint
When you think of music and the people that are involved in the industry, you think of the artists/bands that are the faces and household names from the industry. However no one ever talks about the real brains of most of our favourite songs. Music producers, I met up with an up and coming producer who specialises in UK rap and grime. To talk about his start in making music, his passion for UK rap music and his beloved Crystal Palace.
Felix Costa is a twenty year old music production and engineering student at Point Blank Music School in Haggerston, East London which has produced the likes of Leona Lewis and Goldie. But most importantly he is an up and coming music producer. He is predicted to go right to the top of the scene with his YouTube channel ‘prodbyFLX’ which has over 400,000 channel views. He has also produced for Billy Miyagi as one of his other noticeable works. However, I wanted to get an insight into Felix as a person from his beginnings in music and you can tell through his eyes how excited he was to talk about his biggest passion of all in Music producing.
“It was mainly my parent’s love for music, and then by being introduced by people around me at the time on how to make music. I learnt about the FL studio which is a programme which you can make music on. I was introduced to that and just used all the things I learnt from listening to music my whole life and my parents who listened to a lot of R&B, Soul music and then put that into making music and that ended up being rap music.”
“I downloaded the free trial on their website, and I just watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials, because I was never classically trained with an instrument, but just went by ear and taught myself.”
Felix’s music journey started in 2019, just before the Covid-19 lockdown, in his first year of college and has progressed throughout his three years and it was at this point that Felix knew that he was going to focus on music and that he wanted to go to university to study it. #
“It was mainly my parent’s love for music, and then by being introduced by people around me at the time on how to make music.”
Felix costa
However, I wanted to talk about Felix’s actual work and what he believes is his best piece of work.
“I’ve got a project with an artist that is coming out soon, and a couple of unreleased ones that I think are the best songs that I have made, which I am still working on. It’s still early days in the project, but they are the best songs that I have made.
“But for a beat, on my YouTube I have done ‘type’ beats like ‘this artist type’ beats, so I was doing a lot of UK rap stuff and I have a Nines type beat called ‘Lost Souls’ which has got like 85,000 views, which was crazy for me at the time, it still is. My girlfriend sent me the sample and I flipped it and made it into one of the beats I am most proud of and have connected with the most people.”
Felix has worked on producing a lot of these type of beats on his YouTube channel. Whilst producing for other artists. His placements from university allow for him to work with relatively small artists. However he has produced for Billy Miyagi who did a Nextup freestyle, which was big at the time, but he also has some other unreleased music for other artists coming up, as well as other beats for his own music production. It was this sense of mystery that you could clearly see in Felix’s personality, from the sworn secrecy of even asking for a little hint of who or what these works were, it was a solid no, every time. Even his look for the use of the mask as he wants to keep a low key profile.
On the other hand, one thing that was as clear to see and one that was hard to miss, was his love for Crystal Palace football club. But being from Kingston Upon Thames in South West London, I wanted to know how Crystal Palace became the team for him, and the struggle it was to get tickets to games.
“No obviously it’s all Chelsea around there, but my grandad on my dad’s side is from Egypt and he had never really supported a football team, so my dad, who was from New Malden, whose best mate’s dad was from Clapham way, who was a Crystal Palace fan and because of that he took him to a game in the late 70s and because of my dad I have been supporting Palace.
“I haven’t been to too many games, I never really got the chance to go because I couldn’t get a hold of any season tickets and neither could my dad and by 2018/19 when I was really getting into football, Covid hit a year later.
“But whenever one of my dad’s friends has a spare ticket that isn’t getting used then I try to go.”
However I did have to ask him about his first Palace home game, because there is nothing more memorable as a fan of your club then stepping out to look at the pitch and the stands, the roar of the fans and the general feeling being at the game:
“We played Newcastle 2021, it was October and it ended 1-1. I think Benteke scored second, I can’t remember who scored for Newcastle [It was Callum Wilson who scored an overhead kick, blocking out the memory I think!]. I remember us having a goal disallowed from VAR in the final minutes, for a foul ages back in the play. Shocking decision!”
“I had seen a couple of away games, I’ve seen a couple at Chelsea. But it is a completely different dynamic to go to Selhurst Park.”
He wanted to stress that it is Crystal Palace’s most successful period in its recent history. As Palace have stayed in the Premier League for a decade and he says that it has been the best time to be a Palace fan. However, it is the frustration of knowing that this team could be a lot better that is what is annoying Felix.
However, the most significant question I asked Felix was where do you think you see yourself in five years – it’s a very cliched question, but for Felix who I believe, is one of, if not the best up and coming UK rap music producer. I really wanted to see what his aspirations were for himself.
“Hopefully, I want to be comfortable enough to produce music and make some decent projects with some artists, maybe growing with the artists I am working with now. Maybe even run a studio, that would be nice, having my own space. Just working with other artists and being able to live off of it, if I can make a living off it, then I am happy.
The endless possibilities like this is why I can see Felix going right to the top of producing music. This is because he is a quick learner and you can see his love for music producing, from the way he was producing beats in the studio, to the way he speaks about his passion. It’s all this that really makes you feel like the world is his oyster and it won’t be long till he will become a household name in the music industry, like the rest of the big artists have become.