Gilberto Raul Valiente Jr was born on October 24, 1987 at Jackson memorial hospital in Miami Florida. Gilberto grew up in little Havana Miami Florida. For as long as he could remember he lived in a duplex at the back of his grandparents’ house where every morning he woke up to parakeets chirping. It was at this same house where one his mother and father were outside talking when a drunk man with a load weapon approaches Gilbertos parents demanding money. Gilbertos father immediately springs toward the man and begins to struggle for control of the weapon when a shot is fired. At this time Gilbertos mom was pregnant with him and due to lack of money at the time propane tanks where ideal for stove cooking. The bullet nearly missed the right side of her stomach and nearly missed the left side of one of two five foot propane tanks. The crime rate seemed to have slowed down toward the end of the eighties in Miami.This was also the same house where Gilberto and his family survived hurricane Andrew. At a young age Gilberto started to take notice in music. Every festive holiday his family would play salsa and merengue.
Music
They would dance for hours after eating Cuban style plates such as seasoned steak plantains white rice black beans and avocado washed down with the traditional rum and coke or occasional president beer. It was a must that gilberto learned how to dance because that was a big part of the culture and the better dancer you were the more popularity you would have at these parties.
Gilberto also acquired an ear for reggae music at a very young age. Olga Gilbertos mother would get together with some of her friends and their children and go to a place called Montys in coconut grove Miami. It is a sea food restaurant right next to a boat marina that had live performances by local and famous reggae artists. Gilberto would run around the dance floor and dance foolishly to covers of bob marleys songs like could you be loved and rock steady. Now A days in Gilbertos or G Braves music Bob Marley is a huge influence. 8th grade along came skateboarding.
Many of gillys 8th grade peers would show up to school with their skateboards and would skate after school and play a game called skate. This game was what playing horse is for basketball. This was a fun competitive way of to learn new tricks and to strive to get better at the craft. the first few times Gilly tried it out he slipped and fell but noticed he wasn’t in pain. He continued to ride the board and felt a sense of freedom. A month or so after Gilly finally had his own skateboard all he was thinking about was learning new tricks. He made it through 8th grade and was embarking on a whole new voyage to high school. Going to Miami senior high he met many other people that skateboarded and they were at a much higher level of skill then he was and that was motivation to quickly get better. Gilly made many good memories with friends and 24 hour skateboarding sessions. There was another park that gilly would go to at the Peacock Park in Coconut Grove. He would often ride the public transportation every day after school, skating for countless hours. In the same group of teenagers gilly would skate with were skateboarders that liked graffiti and this intrigued gilly . He felt a need to put his street name up in every vacant spot on a wall and this became very addictive. It was very important to have a clean style that no one else had and always remember not to let your art drip. Between skateboarding and graffiti, Gilly transformed his love of music and poetry and began to free style rap. This made him feel complete. Many days of skateboarding was followed by many nights of late night walking around the city and putting our aliases up for recognition. Gilly found himself brave enough one day to tell his mother that he wanted to be a hip hop artist and she replied, “No matter what you want to do in life son, make sure you have something to fall back on, and no matter what, don’t give up on your dreams”. Gilly would try very hard to get people to let him record to be able to have songs to do shows, and to let people know he was a hip hop artist. Gilly quickly found out how people were only out to help themselves and saw how greed forced him away from people he thought he was friends with. This drove gilly to come up with the idea of buying his own equipment and he swore he would help anyone that would ever need advice or help in music. Two weeks after graduating high school Gilly had a job at a Magic store in bayside mall next to the American Airlines Arena. A lot of times when an artist had a concert at the American Airlines Arena Gilly would see lines and lines of people and hear the announcements come from the arena. He would day dream about performing there himself and fulfilling a lifelong dream. Shortly after he would be scowled by his manager and told to get back to work. Back in high school Gilly had become part of an alliance called IHC (iron Horse Crew) this was a group of old friends that thinned out and soon had few members. The members that remained were very into the graffiti scene. many times again again Gilly found himself around people that were musically involved but never really tried to make it a career out of it. Gilly kept finding himself frustrated at a lot of people because even if they had a studio connection they wouldn’t be willing to record all the time. Gilly was Starving with the need to make music. He would eventually buy a microphone, mic stand, interface and sony vegas pro as the music production software.He convinced himself to learn how to engineer and mix his own hip hop tracks. Gilly was making music now independently and he connected himself well with the local people around his jobsite. He found himself making a handsome amount of cash flow. Soon Gilly was riding around the most dangerous parts of Miami to increase his courage, Finances, and street smarts. Gilly was blinded by the dollar signs and grew sloppy and his errors became obvious. The construction project he was part of began to lay off people because the job was coming close to being complete. Gilly was one of these people. Out of a job for three weeks Gilly received a call from his Union representative and he was told that the next project was going to be the demolition on the Orange Bowl Stadium. This was a very historic part of Gillys life and it brought him many memories. Through many days of hard work Gilly saw this historic landmark slowly deteriorating. With no extra money coming in and living check to check things began to go downhill quickly but still Gilly continued to make music. The Stadium was practically fully demolished and once again the time to lay people off came. Gilly found himself once again at a crossroad hoping he chooses the directions bone thugs chose. He got a call from his sister jacky and she offered to shelter him in Panama City Florida. He left all the Good and bad memories behind and was ready to start a new life. When he got to Panama City that same sister was a business owner and offered gilly a job that he worked at for about two years before seeking higher pay at a shipyard. This is where he met Eryn Cook. Eryn was always kind to gilly and when Eryn heard Gillys music he told Gilly that he was very skilled and that he would call a few of his friends in the music industry to see if they were seeking talent. Time passed and Gilly had been connected with Carlos Stephens a multi platinum selling producer. Now Gilly is working on a project called Cohiba Smoke. Its release date has not yet been determined but it has been rumored that it is coming soon.