Sony RCA Records artist, Luke Christopher, took the time to visit Loyola for an interview with Crescent City Radio, and engage in an open question-and-answer dialogue with music industry students.

Despite the often impersonal professional public profiles of many large-scale artists in the rap industry, Christopher, who is currently embarking on a national tour, has made a habit of stopping by universities to engage students in discussion and provide them with advice on how to handle themselves in the music industry.

“I focus on coming to universities because y’all is my age. It’s my age group. I’d way rather talk with people who are my age and who I can learn from. We’re the ones shifting the culture so its important to just come out here, and vibe with people,” Christopher said.

Christopher told aspiring musicians and music industry workers that the best way to stand out in the music industry world is to embrace yourself.

“My most valuable advice would be: you’ve gotta be honest. If you’re gonna make it its gotta be real. It can’t be a gimmick. It has to come from you, and it can’t from nobody else. I think people get confused cause they try to follow trends, then they end up stuck,” Christopher said.

Before being signed to Interscope Records by veteran recored producer and songwriter Jimmy Lovine, Christopher was a high school senior in Los Angeles gearing up for his freshmen year at University of Southern California.

“I didn’t even actually go to USC, but I was supposed to: I got in. Senior year, I got signed senior year by Lovine. It was crazy. I still remember the moments, every single thing. It was like slow motion, walking through the record label office,” Christopher said, marking this as the first defining moment of his stardom.

However, the glitz and glamour of Christopher’s early career was partially smoke and mirrors. He later had a fluke in his record contract which nearly left him back at square one. He calls this period the lowest point of his career.

“When we signed to Interscope the dude who signed us, Ron Fair, got fired a week later. We realized, we had to do this ourselves, but they still kept the money. It took us a while to get out of the contract,” Christopher said. “That whole period of time was just about focusing on the inner squad, the team, and the music. That kind of record label stuff could kill the vibe. It took us a long time to get out of that Record label situation.”

Christopher told Loyola students that the most important asset and factor to your success in the music industry is having a solid ‘team’ as a foundation behind you, whether personal or professional.

“You gotta have a strong team otherwise you get in your head. That doesn’t mean manageament. That can just mean two friends who have your back. Cause it gets crazy when you tryna do it on a higher level. But at some point, something happens to you where youre like, oh ok, the labels were lying, that’s not what it was. It takes that moment. You don’t know when someone in the industry is being honest,” Christopher said.

Christopher isn’t hopeful for the financial draw of popular artists like Future and Drake, who released their due album What a Time to be Alive exclusively on Apple Music, and Travis Scott who released his debut LP Rodeo exclusively on Spotify.

“If you torrent my music of the internet, I aint trippin. I do that to my own music. Its not gonna stop so why try, why be on the wrong side of history,” Christopher said.