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Be Holy, Be Legendary — Tramaine Long on Finding Your Sound, Faith & AI

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Atlanta-raised and church-shaped, Tramaine Long is a minister, rapper, producer, mixing engineer—and a testament to sticking with the craft. 

He started with FL Studio and a $20 mic, spent years sounding like everyone else, and then did the hard work to sound like himself. 

We talk about the DJ Drama-era lesson (influence ≠ imitation), vocal coaching and production reps, and how he treats AI (Suno) as a workflow accelerator—not a replacement for skill. 

Tramaine opens up about the dream that sparked his album “Legendary” (“It’s time for you to be legendary”) and the indie discipline behind a release that cleared 300K+ streams in its first three days. If you’re building a catalog and a life at the same time—this one’s for you.

Listen here or what the video interview here 

Topics:
• Origins: ATL, church, FL Studio, the sock pop-filter
• Finding your sound vs. sounding like your heroes
• AI as a tool (Suno) without losing your identity
• Workflow, speed, and staying present for family
• Albums & growth: Clear (2015), R & G: A Love Story (2020), Legendary (2025)
• Faith, obedience, and the “Legendary” mindset for indie artists

Guest links:

Music:

Credits:
Host — BeatsToRapOn
Guest — Tramaine Long

We’re building the future—empowering every artist and creator with the tools, beats, and network to share their voice, connect boldly, and leave a mark on the world. 🔗 Visit us at https://beatstorapon.com.

Keep creating. Keep sharing. Keep rising.

All right, welcome to Beats to Rap On, another session here. We have got an absolute epic artist. We've got something real special for you today. We've got Jermaine. He's coming to you straight on a Beats to Rap On podcast. Jermaine, break it down for the fans, tell us a little bit about you, and yeah, let's kick it off from there. What's going on everybody? I'm a producer, mixing engineer, songwriter, minister, rapper. That's awesome. I do it all, man. But yeah, a father, husband. All those things, man. So yeah, that's a little bit about me from what I do. Yeah. I would love to know how this all started for you, right? So take us all the way back. You know, we all want to know, who are you? When did this all start? How did it come about? So it started, like, the love for music started as a kid. Like, you know, growing up in church, growing up in the neighborhood, the city that I grew up in, in Atlanta, Georgia, listen to all types of music, listen to hip hop, R&B, stuff like that, listen to gospel, listen to pop. And I just fell in love with it. You know, I really fell in love with it. Around 14, just before I actually started actually recording. But at 14, I told my friends, I said, you know what, I feel like we can create our own music, because we'll always rap and do stuff in the neighborhood. But we were just kids, you know. And so 17, that's when I turned 17. That's when one of my friends, I've known since I was 11, introduced me to FL Studios, Frooter Loops 3 at the time. Wow. That's crazy. Frooter Loops 3. And so he showed me that program and gave me a Sony Acid Pro, I think it was 3.0 at the time. Wow. I didn't really use Sony Acid Pro like that. Yeah. At the time, that was a program that we used to record in. So at that time, that's when I started really taking it serious. I really wasn't good, but I started investing into myself. The first time I invested into my craft, I had a little job. I was 18 years old. No, 17, take that back. I had a little job and I was working at a little restaurant and I took my money that I made from that job, went to Radio Shack and bought me a dynamic mic, a little stage mic, and bought a mic stand, put a sock over it. And my mom had an old computer that she wasn't doing nothing with. So I put Frooter Loops on there and I put Sony Acid Pro on there. And then I got started actually doing it, actually recording. I was not good. I was horrible. You hear what I do now? It's funny too, because people hear it now and I'm like, you should have heard me when I first started. I remember this one time, my mother, I was trying to make a beat and whatever. And I compare my beat to a professional commercial song that was out. I said, Ma, this sound like this doesn't, don't it? She's like, no, baby. I didn't get mad at her. I just realized it don't sound like that. So it pushed me to want to get better at making beats. So for me, I could always sing, but I wasn't trained at singing and none of this stuff like that. I always wanted to rap, but rapping came easy for my friends. But for me, I felt like I had to work harder than everybody else. Now, when it comes down to putting a song together and things like that, it don't take me that long. When I first started, I'll give you an example of how long it took me to do stuff. To write eight bars, me and my friend, he'll write eight bars. I had eight bars. He'll write this stuff in eight minutes. And it's nice. And he tongue twisting too. It's a lot of words in those bars. But for me to write eight bars, it took mama like three hours at the time. Three hours and it sounded like nursery rhyme. So I used to get killed doing that. I needed that push though, because that made me become better. It made me want to get my penmanship up, want to come out to my lyrics. And I was really just rapping at the time too. So at that time, I wasn't really singing like that. I could sing, but a lot of people didn't know I sung. And so I think around 2006, that's when I realized I was doing secular music too. So I wasn't even doing gospel at the time. I was just doing just normal music, whatever. And I was with one of my other buddies and we was in the studio and we were just playing. He started singing on the mic. I started singing on the mic. We had a bunch of girls in the studio. And then I realized, I said, man, these girls going crazy over this. I didn't know that I had this superpower. Oh, that's so good. So I realized that, man, and I actually liked that. The fact that like, man, I always like singing. I didn't sing because I thought it made me look lame. But it didn't. So I had to figure out, I had to find who I was as an artist. So you're talking about from 2004 all the way to now. I didn't really start finding myself until like 2015. So that's been a minute because even though I was making music, I would sound like everybody else. I didn't sound like Jermaine. And don't get me wrong. I still get inspired in the people that you may hear some notes or some things. I mean, oh, man, OK, I can hear a little bit of such and such in Jermaine's lyrics or how he hit that note. But I always put a spin on it now. So, yeah, I know I just said a whole lot, but. I know that that's so insightful. Yeah, I just want to dig into like so much. I want to dig into like one of the bits is I want to dig into is like, how did you find yourself? When I say find yourself, I mean, find your kind of brand. Do you know what I mean? Like your beats, how you put your spin on it, all that kind of stuff, because you started it like 2004 and you were cranking out and grinding out awesome tunes. And then it kind of like hit like 2015. Right. I think you're saying where it all started kind of changing a bit. Yeah. How did you do that? What changed? But what changed is that, you know, after a while I got tired of hearing people say, you sound like such and such on here. Just like this person. You sound like that person. OK. I think it had been like 2007 or 8, I went to a I went to like a it's a you know, DJ drum is. Yeah. Yeah. Who doesn't? So sorry, man. Sorry. I went to a seminar. Yeah. They had DJ Drummer, they had voicemail manager there. Yeah, nice. They had radio personality Tasha Love there, all the all these different people that was at this panel. And it was at the time it was a real popular song that used to play on the radio called Party Like a Rockstar. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Real big song. Yeah. It was this group that was there and they played their song. Yeah. And let everybody hear it. And so so boys, the main manager told them, like, you know, y'all stole their whole song because their song was the same thing, like basically the same thing, you know, a little bit different. Yeah, basically the same thing. He gave some advice to them, really to everybody that was in there. He was talking about like, look, it's one thing. It's a different from like borrowing somebody's stuff or learning or being influenced by somebody instilling somebody whole style. Yeah. He gave a perfect example. He used Beyonce. OK. When you see Beyonce, you see her influences, but she still sound like Beyonce. You know, you see the Tina Turner's, you hear the Diana Ross's, you see that in Beyonce. Yeah. Yeah. But Beyonce sound like Beyonce. Yeah, totally. Yeah. There's something I took and I added to myself. So, some of my favorite singers is Tank. OK. Oh, wow. Like, I'm a big Tank fan, like Jamie Foxx, Music Soulchild. Yeah, wow. Jagged Edge. Oh, man. So good. Silk is insane. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. The problem that I was having at that time is because I was trying to find myself, mind you, I told you I wasn't singing like that. Yeah. So I was trying to figure out how to do art. OK. Everything I was doing was rap. OK. Right. And so even with my raps, I would sound like whoever was hot at the time, like my style. Yeah. And what I did was, you know, I listen to Tank, I listen to Jamie, I listen to them. OK. And I will practice because I have a vocal coach. So what I do is my vocal coach was trying to mimic what they did to hit their notes. Right. And, you know, but then as I started getting better with my music, OK, let me sing it like that, but let me put my own twist on it. OK, let me create my own sound. I did it with production, like with my beats. So when I first started making beats, I was trying to make beats like all the big producers because I realized I felt like if I can make a beat sound like theirs, I'm on I'm on or something. So I started trying to make beats like Lil Jon, make beats like Kanye, make beats like Timbaland. Yeah. Like Pharrell and what's my other guy? Man from Rough Riders. Oh, yeah. They're all hot. Yeah. Dr. Drake. I was trying to make beats in the style of them. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, and which was cool, you know, but how can I and like I said, as I start growing, how can I now I got I got my foundation on how to make a beat. Now I got my foundation on how to make a song and really like do a lot of critical listening to see, OK, what makes a song hot? But how can I do take that take that foundation and build upon it and make my own thing, make my own unique sound? And then I realized a lot of people voice don't sound like mine. So that's that's already my advantage. That's already unique. Yeah. Yeah. Don't sound like everybody when, you know, I may hit a note, but my voice is different, you know, so I don't really you know, you hear somebody. I mean, they sound like even though they do. Yeah. Voice tone just sound like somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I listen to a bunt, the R&B singer Bunt. Yeah. Yeah. Like R. Kelly to me a little bit. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, his tone. So, yeah. But I try to find, OK, how can I put my own spin? And so and that's how I found finding myself. And I'm still the crazy thing is I'm still trying to figure out how can I progress? How can I become better? Like with my production, with my with my singing? I'm getting older. So now my voice don't sound the exact same when I was younger. Right. How can I like my voice more mature now? It's more you got more bass in it than it did before. Like, you know, I still sound like I still sound like me. But certain notes that I used to be able to hit, it's hard for me to hit them now because I'm getting older. So now it's like, OK, what I got to do, how can I utilize and make produce a great excuse me, produce a great record with my voice changing or things like that? But it's just always I know I'm just saying a whole lot of nothing. No, I'm always trying to just figure out how can I become better and how can I build upon what I already do? You know, like you're doing beats up until like 2015. It's like a certain way. And then you started finding yourself and inventing your own kind of flavor, you know, on things, putting yourself out there a little bit more. Right. Which was which was not the same as everyone else. Right. And you know, was there a little bit of nervousness when you first started or you just went, no, I'm not nervous at all. I'm just getting it out there. I don't think that it was. It's kind of like a boat question. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm very confident in myself with my music. Yeah. But I'm very sensitive when it comes to my music. I know that I got good music. Yeah. And the thing is, I have to put in my mind that God got a platform for me. Right. Yeah. Whoever my music is for, that's who it's for. Yeah. Right. So hopefully this is answering that question. So yeah, that was my platform. I'm not I'm not in competition with nobody. That's so good. Yeah. That's a lot. A lot of people don't have that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not in competition with nobody. I'm just trying to be the best version of Tremaine. That's so cool. Yeah. So I have other projects I put out and I can go back and listen to them. I hear all these flaws in them. But this is where I was at the time. Yeah. I was that the knowledge I had on writing music, on production, the knowledge I had on mixing is all there. So it's documented. And then when you hear you, you see the progression, you know. So like, like I just dropped the put my my latest album out Legendary. You hear the progression from R&G A Love Story and from the Clear album that I did in 2015 to 16. You you see the progression of it. It's not it's not a nervousness of it. It's just like I did at the time at the moment. Like I feel like this is my best. I like this is once I'm done with it. I'm done. OK, put it out there. God is on you. You know what I'm saying? And I just I get my all. But I know that I'm I'm growing the legendary. It's not my best work. It's the best at the time, but it's not my best work because I'm always creating. As soon as as soon as I get done with it and I start making some new stuff, I'm like, hey, I don't learn some new techniques. Hey, I wish I would have known how to do this when I did that project, when I did that. You know, so so hopefully to answer your question. Yeah, that's good. Like and it's a shout out to all the all the new artists, you know, and creators and producers. It's like, don't be worried. Right. Back yourself. Like Jermaine saying, get it out there, you know, just get it out there, get some feedback and just keep going. Just like Jermaine. So let's pivot a bit now. You know what? I'd love I'd love it if you could share. I want to talk about production. Right. Like you're going into the beats, making the beats. Like does it does it kind of come in your mind like you in the shower or something and something starts tapping and then you you race into your studio or like run us through that? Let's start off by saying one thing that I got to give me unlimited creativity. So, you know, it's not even just with music. It's with anything. I see the creativity and stuff to be able to take something. Oh, man. Yep. But, you know, so I want to start a day with that. Right. But when I make beats or make music in general, it comes in all the the creativity come in all different ways. Sometimes it can come like you said, I can just be I can be at work or be somewhere and a beat just be in my head like, man. So I get my phone and and get that and just start recording myself with whatever I had in my head. So I won't forget the idea. Or I just like, man, I need to get in the studio and I just come in here and or or I try to play some chords or I find a sample or sometimes I may hear a song that's hot that I like and I'm like, man, this song is inspiring me. I wonder how they got those synthesizers to sound like. Like, let me see if I can make something similar to that and put my own spin on like, you know what I mean? So and that's that's that's what I do, man. It's just like it can come in all different ways. You know, then why make you know, and just have one of my my my best friend that Savitar Parigio, that's his name, that's the stage name, whatever. Shout out to him. Yeah, right. He gave me my foundation on how to use FL Studio. So now, like if I do make a beat with him, we just go back and forth. He'll start off with something and I come back and add something. All right, then he added an instrument. We just go back and forth and we just make a five beat like that. And so it's just it's just it's so many ways to create. It's so many ways. Now you got AI. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about how that's influenced you and and creating music. So, so I love Suno. Suno is like hot. Right. You know, I can make beats without Suno. But the reason why I like Suno, especially Suno Studio, is that like it just helps speed up my workflow. Right. So I can produce more like I can have an idea. Let's say I'm in here and I create something and it's just like a little loop or something. And I like this. Let me see what Suno can do with it. And I put it in Suno and let Suno build around it. And OK, cool. Oh, that's dope. All right. Now I can take some of them stems, take it, put it back in my my session, chop it up, do some different stuff to put some effects on them. I can it just it just speeds up my workflow a lot, you know, especially from the standpoint of somebody like I still work a full time job. So I'm sitting in corporate America. Right. I'm a minister, I'm a husband, I'm a father. Yeah. And I'm and I'm a producer, engineer, but also I'm an artist myself. Yeah. So I like I need to be able to create and be able to do it because sometimes, you know, I'd be I'd be in the studio and then wifey would be like, you've been out here for a minute. So now let me I already work but I just like, how can I be more? Yeah. I used to work for FedEx years ago. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is, you know, efficient. How can we get this done? How can we get this production out of these people? Yeah. In a short period of time. Yeah. Right. And so that's what I kind of see with AI is for it's a tool. It's a tool now. And this next generation of producers, they not going to be like as they probably wouldn't have had a keyboard. But I still like I said, I still feel like you need to learn the skill. You got the basics. Yeah. You know how the different types of issues and you need to understand some of this stuff, man, like like Suno is cool, but I can take stuff from Suno and make a beat and flip it and do my own stuff. Some people can't do that. Yeah. So yes, AI is a beast right now. But it's a good tool. It can it can hurt you if you rely on it too much. You know what I'm saying? But it's a dope tool. Oh, it's pretty interesting. Like, what are your favorite tools? And how could it, you know, how do you think it could hurt you? You're talking about from AI? Um, it's just, it's just, you just get too reliant on it. Ah, yeah. You get lazy. Yeah. I love rock. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes, you know, it just, it's almost like you in school. Yeah. And you got to do a paper. So I can just take this information that here, get AI the information and then just put out the whole paperwork for it. Yeah. Going to change some stuff up. You ain't really did the work. Right. You know what I'm saying? Um, that's one thing about school, school teach you about research and this stuff. It can, it can, it can be a hindrance. So, because if you don't know how to do this stuff without it. That's a great point. Yeah. And they ban it. Yeah. Like, you know what I'm saying? You gotta, still gotta be able to adapt and be able to produce whatever you're trying to produce, not just music or anything without it. It's a tool. It's a tool. That's all I'm saying. Like, it's a dope thing. It's real cool, but don't let it be a crutch to where you can't live without it. Like, that's why I kind of feel bad for the next generation coming up. My boys, they coming up in it. They're growing up with it. We, I didn't grow up with it. So just like, just like I didn't want most of my, my son already got cell phone. Like, you know what I mean? I didn't have a cell phone. Me neither. When I was 18 and it wasn't a smartphone. It was a Yeah, it was a Nokia. You know, so, so, but we had house phones. We had them. Yeah, with a cord. You know, it's already tough now to like, to not have my phone on me. So it's just like, what does that mean? How are you going to be able to function without it? I can. Yeah. You know, I just said that. Yeah. It's, it's really interesting. Like what you're saying about the AI tools. Completely agree. I feel like, like you need, you need like the foundation, the baseline in order to use it to speed things up. No, like you got to know what to do. And a lot of artists I'm talking to yeah, they're saying the same thing, right? Like a lot of the younger ones, you know, and that's a shout out for the younger artists, you know, don't rely on everything on AI, you know, make sure you get grounded in your, in your craft. So listen, I mean, Jermay, I just want to pivot now. So we talked a little bit about producing, you know, we got great insight about you and how you're feeling and your creativity and all of that great stuff. And I want to kind of bring it up now to, you know, some of the tunes that you may have previous release recently, some of the stuff you've got coming. Karl, tell us all about it. Oh, so, all right. So, so I have three projects that you can actually go listen to on, on Spotify and all this stuff. Okay. So I have an album called clear, right? I didn't 2015. Right. And at this time I was just going by Jermay. And then I ended up, and that's the reason why I changed from Jermay to Jermay Long. I'm just going over my whole government. That is a dope project, but like I said, you will see the progression. The stuff was cool for what it was at the time. You see the progression then in 2020 early February 14th. So I put out a orange, your love story on Valentine's day. That's cool. And I put out, um, legendary my, this February 14th on Valentine's day of this year. So the same way, I don't know why I'm putting out on Valentine's day. I don't know. But that was a cool album. So that's out, but legendary is a special album. That's, um, it's really doing real good right now. Like the first three days I was over 300,000 streams, which is good to be an independent artist. And yeah, I've been putting on music out since, uh, since 2020. Oh, that's so good. Cause with that, with the orange, your love story, I didn't even push it because of COVID. Right. So I was actually working on a movie for that. Like we were shooting a bunch of music videos. I was, so that's another thing I do. I shoot music videos. Holy shit. That's crazy. Yeah. It's something that I always told myself when I first started doing music and it's always stuck with me. It's just like, I don't mind if somebody's good, I let them do it. But I know I like things a certain way. And I always think about how can I cut costs. But if I had, if I had a big budget to pay somebody, I would definitely pay somebody else. Hell, everyone would do that. Absolutely. Somebody could do it better than me, man. Do it. I do. I know I rather for, I'd rather to do it myself sometimes and be mad at myself that I screwed it up. To have somebody else do something. Cause I tried that and people really didn't make my videos come out the way I wanted them to. But anyways, I'm sorry. But with Legendary, it's a dope album. So last year, around June or July, I had a dream. And in this dream, I walked in a building and looked like a church or whatever, like my small little church. And people's in there having praise and worship, uh, practice, uh, rehearsal. And I just got in with them and start singing, start leading some of the songs. Right. And this is in the dream. And as I was worshiping or whatever, she came and put a, um, a hand over my head and she stopped praying over me. And then she spoke into my ear and she said, it's time for you to be legendary. That's divine right there. That is, that is divine. Yeah. And she said it again. And then I woke up. That's so cool. What's his dream? What would you, what are you trying to tell me? And he told me, he said, it's time for you to be legendary. He said, I've been hiding. Now it's time for you to be seen. Boom. Yeah. Nice. I ended up doing on my birthday of 2023. I ended up doing this one, the, the, the song legendary is actually on the start of the whole album called legendary. And basically that song is what that whole album is about. So when you think about Paul, you think about David, all these great men in the Bible, all these great people, not just men, but great people. Yeah. These people have been dead for centuries. Yep. Thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. We don't even know how. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. One of the things that God has said, he told me at this time, he said the same way because of their obedience, their name still reign in this earth. Through your obedience, your name will reign in this earth. And you, I will make you, I will make you legendary. Press some deep shit. Yeah. So when the Bible says that once you humble yourself under his mighty hand, he will exalt you. So I wasn't even trying to do no music. I actually crazy thing is I was working on an album called Mrs. Long for my wife. Can we just