User:July30/July 3-0

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Born into a blended family filled with gifted artists, Alexander Coffin-Lennear, also known as “July 3-0” was drawn to music at a very young age. In his early childhood he was exposed to many different genres of music, "My mom listened to a lot of Kd Lang, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Classical music, Earth Wind and Fire, and my dad, being a saxophonist was always practicing, performing, or listening to his favorite jazz artists, so music was always around me" says July. It soon became his passion. At the age of four, he had memorized his first hip-hop song, “Rapper’s Delight,” any fan of hip hop knows that is a 15 minute record.

By age 10, a young Alex began to write songs, forever keeping a notebook with him so that he could jot down ideas whenever he felt the need. This was not always to the pleasure of his parents because he did most of his writing while at school, while distracted from his subjects. He would write verses for his friends, delivering them at recess and lunch breaks, always trying to inspire the group.

In his freshman year of St. Mary’s High School, July took the name “ICE” and formed the hip-hop group 4DEEP with 3 friends. The group had a strong independent following and regularly received radio play on the local hip-hop and top 40 stations.

At the age of 16 ICE left St. Mary’s High School and moved to Los Angeles California with the other members of 4DEEP, to pursue a career in music fulltime. The group worked with the producers, jukebox, cookies, and co-stars, getting a crash course in song arrangement, and progression. 4DEEP toured briefly with B2K, and started to see their popularity grow rapidly, their website received 1.5 million unique visitors monthly before the advent of MySpace and Youtube.

In 2005 the group would part with one of the members, and the three remaining members all named Alex would adopt the name “The A’z”. The A’z saw success with their record, “Yadadamean” during the Bay Area’s “Hyphy Movement”.

After months of Yadadamean receiving regular rotation on west coast radio station the group was courted by many labels and eventually signed with TVT Records. This accomplishment was short lived, because through local politics with disc jockeys and poor upper management at TVT records which had to file for bankruptcy, The A’z never reached their potential as a group and decided to part ways.

Abandoning the name ICE, Coffin-Lennear began using his birthday, “July 3-0” as his stage name. July 3-0 started his solo career in 2008, a journey of cultivating his own sound of “soul-pop” which is grounded in a hip-hop foundation. For the last three years July has been developing the “Passing with Flying Colors” EP, a colorful, feel good collection of records, from a hip-hop perspective. The project forced July to be patient and discover a unique and authentic sound while constantly striving for perfection with the songs. The effort and dedication it took to create, “Passing with Flying Colors” has culminated with July giving his music away to audiences for free, so that his art and passion could reach the most people without pricing barriers.

July credits his social philosophy to his grandfather William Sloane Coffin, the once Chaplain of Yale, Senior Minister at Riverside Church of NY, President of Sane-Freeze (anti-nuclear weapon organization), and a strong advocate for social and political change.

July has always been driven to achieve musical success, by the accomplishments of his great grandfather, Grammy Award winner Arthur Rubinstein who was considered by many as the greatest pianist of the 19th century. His greatest musical influence was his father Larry Lennear a popular saxophonist, and teacher of music who toured with Little Richard right after high school in the early 50s and ghost performed for Kenny G. Larry taught him at a young age about how to control his breathing while performing, song progression and harmonies.