The Come Up
Ray Luminais grew up around music. As a young kid, his dad was always playing the drums and bass along with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, and Joe Cocker upstairs in his jam room. In the ‘90s and early ‘00s, Ray fell in love with the beats to Juvenile’s first album 400 Degreez then to the Hot Boys and pretty much all production by Mannie Fresh.
Ray shared, “I remember my mom getting me one of them lil cheap Walmart keyboards that you would get like 30-40 different sounds from. I would start to come up with melodies, then along came the demo version of FL Studio. It was on from there. A year or so before Katrina hit I'd say I started mingling around the studios of the New Orleans area meeting people and trying to pitch cheesy bland beats. My first big placement came with Skip from UTP. Later in 2009, I met Petey Zepina with Mibe Music through a Craigslist ad, who would've thought lol. I pitched some beats and he absolutely loved it. Less than a week later, my beats were playing in the background of a Monday night Eagles game. My first big placement was a piece for the Superbowl in early 2010 for my home team, the New Orleans Saints, and yes we won that year! Who Dat!!!”
After that, Ray began attending beat battles against other local and out-of-town producers, eventually meeting Raw Dizzy from Young Money at one of those events. That led to producing Raw Dizzy’s self-titled album and his first major feature with Lil Wayne. Later that year, he got his first major artist placement with Boosie. Ray said, “I continue to produce and work with artists as I look to build my catalog and one day get that Billboard plaque."
