This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Hollywood Portrait: The Musician-Online Marketer

Izzy Newborn shares his views on the good, the judgmental and the game in Hollywood.

Name: Leonard Aaron Newborn III.  “But Izzy is my nickname because when I was little, my mom gave me a plastic Guns n Roses guitar, and Izzy Stradlin is a member of the band and throughout time the name got thrown at me and it stuck."

Age: 28

Original Hometown: Detroit, Michigan, but I moved a lot.  Detroit, Nashville, Atlanta, Philly for a brief second.  

Find out what's happening in Hollywoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

You live here in Hollywood now? Yeah. I stay right off Western and St. Andrews.

What do you do? I ‘m a singer-songwriter, producer and online marketer. I learned online marketing just to learn how to market and package myself, that is the future of the business. You got to know how to sell it to other people and I do social media campaigns for other people.  I have a company called I&J Media, with my partner Joy Bullet.

Find out what's happening in Hollywoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

What kind of music do you do? I’m a pop artist. Not pop in the Britney Spears bubble-gum way. I just want to create something great, like Bowie, Prince, Jay-Z, Kanye West.  I worked with Fishbone. Shout out to Norwood of Fishbone. He has a side band called Trulio Disgracias, with 20 different members. It’s like a modern-day take on Parliament-Funkadelic.

What do you think of Hollywood? I love it and hate it at the same time. I’m having the greatest time of my life, and also a few of the worst times of my life. Overall, I love it.

What are the good parts? If you are willing to play a game — and yes, there is a game — there’s opportunity, man. I have met so many cool people. I have had a ball. There’s very few places where I can be at one party and some people just think I’m cool, throw me in a car and take me somewhere in the hills.

I’ve met some of the coolest and most beautiful women in my whole life. And I’ve met a lot of my heroes out here.

Like who? Thom Yorke from Radiohead. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I met him at the . I met Cee-Lo Green at the .

And my music has yet to drop. So it’s not even about my music, it’s just, I don’t know, good energy and being at the right place at the right time. And I guess I got a unique look.

You do, you’ve got style.  Ah, thanks. I spent a lot of years being that weird kid. I was looking like this before it was trendy. At least for a black guy. I mean, society sort of caught up with me. I loved the '60s. I looked at The Beatles and how they dressed. I loved John Lennon’s style. Also Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison.  Man, I want a pair of leather pants bad. I take a bit of what the punks do, but I might be guilty of glamming it up a bit.

What’s the bad part of Hollywood?  I take it as a life lesson. At the end of the day, we all pre-judge. But it’s really bad here. At the same time, I understand. Here it’s kind of like a survival mechanism to pre-judge. The way I look on the outside really determines how far the conversation is gonna go. They have to look at me and think, okay, this guy might have a couple of bucks in his pocket, so maybe I’ll give him the time of day. I know it’s like that everywhere, but it’s like that on steroids here.

No one ever bothered me because of the way I dress before I came here. I get asked about my sexuality at least twice a week. There are times I thought I was gonna get killed. There were times I was waiting for the bus and I literally had to run because of the way I look. If I wear a pair of loose baggy jeans and a ball cap, I’ll get treated like a gang banger. And if I dress like this, which is my normal self, I get a lot of questions about my sexuality. In Atlanta, there’s a ton of brothers who dress like I do. I’m far from the only one.

I just have to learn how to play the game, man. Hate to say it, but here some of the stereotypes are true. I didn’t know what a Crip or Blood was.  That was just stuff I heard on rap records. Out here, that stuff’s real.

But I love Hollywood. I’m having the greatest time of my life here.

 

Follow us on Twitter and add us on Facebook for more Hollywood news and tips.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?