Myles Moraites is a well-respected record producer that has worked with multi-platinum certified recording artists such as Lil Wayne, Keyshia Cole, Iggy Azalea and Ja Rule among other big names in hip-hop and R&B.
But before all that, Moraites, better known by his stage name Myles.William, was an architecture student at ASU.
Originally from Park Ridge, New Jersey, Moraites said his journey in music began making beats with a newly-purchased MacBook on GarageBand during the plane ride to Arizona to attend school.
By the time he settled into Manzanita Hall, as friend and then floor mate Garret Myers attested to, music became more than just a hobby. Myers said Moraites expanded his musical equipment to a beatpad, a keyboard and whatever instruments he could get his hands on.
“You could already tell then that it was a passion,” Myers said. “He would have all sorts of people, anybody that really could rap, they would just come up to (Moraites') room.”
Joe Arellano, roommate at the time and friend, said almost all of Moraites’ time was spent holed up in the dorm making music.
“Even on the weekends, if we weren’t going out partying, we were hanging out at the dorm making beats,” he said. “If you went and knocked on his door, more times than not you probably would’ve heard some heavy bass or something going on inside.”
After two years, Moraites said he dropped out of ASU in 2009, wondering if he “screwed up his life.” It was then, he said, he began selling and promoting his beats online, and dedicating everything to his newfound passion for producing.
“That's when I decided I (was) going to go 100 percent with this music, and I’m going to make something happen by any means,” he said. “I (didn’t) want to let my parents and other people in my family down that believed in me to go to college and get a degree.”
In 2013, Moraites signed a deal with Irv and Chris Gotti of Murder Inc. Records to co-produce Ja Rule’s first single since being released from prison, titled “Fresh Out Da Pen.”
He said it was a strange coincidence that his first major record was with Ja Rule, having encountered him before he started making beats.
“In New Jersey, Ja Rule happens to live right down the street from where my parents live,” he said. “I was in an Apple store, and Ja Rule was at the Apple store, and I was getting my computer to go to ASU. Ironically, he gets out of jail and the first thing he does is go to the studio and happens to see me there.”
Last summer, Moraites said he worked with Lil Wayne, co-producing the track “Murda” on his “Free Weezy Album." Having fulfilled a lifelong dream by working with his favorite rapper, he said it was “the happiest moment of his life at that point.”
As for the future, Moraites now heads his own label, FutureMoguls, and said his long-term goal is to continue developing it. He also said he will produce a track for the long-awaited Lil Wayne album, “Tha Carter V,” which will also feature Drake.
Moraites said he was also proud of his work on the song “I’m Coming Out” featuring Keyshia Cole and Iggy Azalea, released on the soundtrack of the 2014 critically panned romantic comedy “The Other Woman.”
Having dropped out of college a few years before, Moraites said the film “defined” who he was to his family in New Jersey.
“I was at the movie theater with my family and my credit came on the screen,” he said. “Everybody believed in (my career) and supported it, but when those things started happening, there was no doubt. Everybody was like ‘Yeah, this is my son Myles, he’s a music producer, or ‘this is my friend Myles, he’s a music producer.’”
Related links:
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Reach the reporter at idickins@asu.edu or follow @sailormouthed92 on Twitter.
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