Tone Royal

Ray is a University of Texas at Austin student with award-winning talent. His recent move from San Antonio to Austin has nurtured his blossoming career in music. In a few months, he was the featured artist for The Good Life, which showcases on-the-rise area talents along with national headliners. Shortly after, he was named “Number One Rapper” of 15 other artists by a panel of industry-recognized judges in the Rap for a Stack Competition.

He performed during the recent South by Southwest’s Festival and will be releasing an upcoming album, “Rushing Greatness,” later this year. Until then Ray also actively pursues his journalistic goals and is a co-host for one of the nation’s top-ranked podcasts with a global listening fanbase, Doubletoasted.com. - mysanantonio.com

If you haven't heard of Tone Royal yet, now would be a good time to catch up with the artist, as he’s just released his debut album and like the title says, he very much is Rushing Greatness. With a few rap contests and live shows under his belt, Tone Royal has started to take Austin by storm, as have the local Austinites featured on the album like Phillip Wolf and others. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also studying at UT to become a sports journalist, and acting as co-host on Korey Coleman’s entertainment website doubletoasted.com where he’s better known by his real name, Ray Villarreal. The album, Rushing Greatness, provides a wide variety of styles that at its worst sound like Mac Miller, and at its best, George Watsky. But unlike some of Mac Miller’s work, most (perhaps not all) of Tone Royal’s lyrics are quite meaningful, especially on the songs that are more spoken word than actual rap, like “Want You Back” and the end of “Clark Kent.” If nothing else, Tone Royal’s album proves that great rappers are still out there putting their stuff up online for free, in the hopes that their name will get bigger, so be part of the process and listen below. - The Deli Magazine

The winner, Tone Royal, could rap for days, and in circles around a lot of mainstream “rapper’s rappers.” - The Austin Chronicle

“That moment in seventh grade messed me up, man,” Ray Villarreal says laughing. He’s talking about the first time he rapped in front of an audience. He’s admittedly still “scarred” by the memory. His theatre class was put into groups and the classmates asked who could rap. “I can,” he told them. “I did, and it was so bad. I was the new kid at school and it was the most horrifying experience. I was like, oh my God, I don’t ever want to rap again.”

Ray Villarreal, known on-stage as Tone Royal, was born on August 3, 1991, in San Antonio, Texas. His parents divorced when he was a baby and his mom remarried his step-dad, an ex-police officer, ex-Atlanta SWAT member, and military professional who Ray says pretty much raised him. When he was five years old the family moved to Georgia, where he grew up in an impoverished and predominantly black neighborhood.

“I think that’s why I’m so into hip-hop. That Georgia upbringing,” he says. He remembers the school cafeterias where classmates would drum on the tables to make beats and rap to them; the school bus rides where students would take turns rapping; and one particular ride home where he “took” the DJ Laz verse while rapping to the radio with his peers.

This was before Outkast was big; when the Ms. Jackson single came out and Jay-Z’s Can I Get A was popular. Ray remembers “vibing” with classmates on the playground to these songs. “I wanted to fit in. I wanted to rap. I was so bad, but nobody really cared,” he says. “It’s the culture there, hip-hop’s so engrained in that.”

The first time Ray remembers rapping was in the cafeteria in middle school, but he was always writing. He has journals from 4th grade when he started. “The first song I ever heard was Gangster's Paradise by Coolio. That’s a nice way to get into it.”

Around age 14 his step-dad left the military to work as a private contractor overseas in Kosovo. Due to his new gig the family had enough money to make the move back to San Antonio –– a culture shock for Ray. “I was coming from an all black community and all black school,” he says. He ended up at a “white school,” on the outskirts of San Antonio called Smithson Valley. “It was pretty much in the country,” he recalls. His step-dad would travel back to the states every couple of months. But in San Antonio, it was Ray, his mother, two sisters and younger brother.

He’d grab hair combs to use as microphones while rapping around the house and his family would tell him to shut up. But after his seventh grade performance; he wasn’t willing to rap for an audience until senior year of high school.

In a math class the students started rapping. “It was kind of like the thing back in Georgia,” Ray says. They passed the turn to Ray and told him to “get it.” He said something about a clock, “there’s a clock, I’m off the top, I f---ing rock,” he rapped. “It wasn’t that good, but everyone in the class was like ‘ohhhh sh--.’”

Someone in the class was filming the rap circle, and before long the video spread around school. Ray became known on campus as the “dude who raps.” People were trying to rap battle him and they’d frequently ask to hear more rhymes.

Back in Atlanta, Ray’s friend Mitchell had just dropped his first mixtape and was getting play on small-time radio stations in Georgia. “I was like, man, people over here are saying I can rap, and you’re over there doing mixtapes. Would you be down to do a collaborative mixtape?,” Ray asked Mitchell. He was in, so Ray flew down to Atlanta to get to work.

The pair recorded a 13 song mixtape in a week, though each of them only had three songs completed when they started the project. “Looking back, coming out of high school and never doing it before, that was pretty cool,” Ray says.

They chose the name Innermost Truth for their duo and hosted a party to release the mixtape. The event had a larger turnout than expected and back in San Antonio a local promoter stumbled on their tape. She wanted to book them for a few shows. Mitchell went to San Antonio with Ray, and Innermost Truth started playing locally.

“After that I was like, I got money from it (rapping) like a hundred and something bucks, and I was like, oh sh--, I can do this,” Ray says. From there he was committed to trying to make a career out of his music. Ray was 19 and had never done any solo work. He viewed Mitchell as his crutch, and he didn’t think he could pursue hip-hop alone. But Mitchell had to head back to Atlanta, so Ray set off to start his solo journey.

Ray doesn’t look like a rapper –– a comment he hears often. He doesn’t dress very urban and he’s hispanic –– not a prominent race in the rap scene. At a past studio session with a fellow artist –– a black rapper –– the engineer ignored Ray and only shook the hand of the black artist when introducing himself. “I was laughing in my head. He had no idea,” Ray recalls.

The group sat down and when Ray’s verse started playing on a song the engineer was “jamming,” and turned to Ray’s friend to tell him how much he enjoyed it. His friend replied that it was Ray performing. The engineer was taken aback, and immediately apologized to Ray for the mix-up. “You’re f---ing raw, dude," he told Ray.

“It’s pretty funny. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going to change who I am,” Ray says. “I think I’ve got to be authentic to it for it to mean anything. If i’m faking it and it’s not me then it’s not real music, I kind of pride myself in that.”

The name Tone Royal is a blend of his hometown, San Antonio, where the “Tone” comes from; and his last name Villarreal; when translated from Spanish to English means “Royal Village,” where he got “Royal.”

Friends have compared his sound to Childish Gambino; his style of writing to Earl Sweatshirt; and they say that if he ever signs to a label it’d be Rhymesayers –– funny because he just opened for Prof, a Rhymesayers artist, at a recent show.

His music is humerous. He makes jokes and prides himself on his pop-culture and superhero references. “Best know my name, Dark Knight, fu-- is Bane. Superman, Man of Steel, steal a woman that’s Lois Lane. Outrun a speeding bullet, locomotive, a f---ing train,” he raps in the intro track titled Clark Kent on his debut mixtape Rushing Greatness.

But he admits he has a lot influences –– dating back to his upbringing in Georgia, adolescent years in Texas, and his affinity for east coast hip-hop and boom bap beats.

Ray is a speedy rapper, and he uses multi-syllables, storytelling, and a cadence that emphasizes punch lines and homophones. He’s frequently rhyming the same words together.

Every line that he writes he tries to tie into the previous one, even if it doesn’t make sense directly. “It’s not ambiguous,” he says. “Punch-ception,” he jokingly coins the style. “I try to drop a punchline within another line so it’s kind of embedded in there.”

“Champion champ-eeon, bring the wrath, I am Kahn, or Obi Wan. Lava flow, f--k an Anak-on –– Darth Vader force choke hold, f--k a Padawon –– mind tricks Qui-Gon-jin, the lightsabers drawn,” he raps to me as an example. “So it’s all Star Wars references and later on in the rap I say something, ‘I’m talking Alien sh--, the game over.’ It’s talking about Star Wars and Star Trek but also Alien, because in the movie Alien there’s a famous line that’s like ‘game over, man’.”

The other separating factor from other rappers for Ray –– he’s still in college –– he studies journalism, where he’s usually behind the camera. He's a senior at the University of Texas at Austin.

Outside of school he’s become known throughout some Austin circles for his work with Double Toasted, a YouTube series that was recently signed by BroadBandTV, the company that runs the NBA’s YouTube channel. Double Toasted has 43k subscribers, a deal with Soundcloud, and won the Austin Chronicle podcast of the year award for 2015.

Prior to joining, Ray had followed the show for years –– since they were known as Spill.com and predominantly did movie, music, and television reviews. His first month living in Austin he ran into the founder, Korey Coleman, on Rainey Street. “The journalist dude in me ran up to him and I was like, dude I’d love to do an interview,” Ray says. Korey asked him to go by the studio to do it and he had Ray on the show as well. The cast enjoyed Ray and felt that he was a good compliment –– and before long he joined Double Toasted as an official host.

But they initially didn’t believe Ray rapped either. He invited them out to a show before they realized he wasn’t kidding. After seeing him perform they started a segment on Double Toasted for him called Ray Raps, where he films and edits videos of himself and others rapping after people send in beats and their work.

19 year old Ray is playing his first show with Innermost Truth at Club Mirage (the venue has since shut down) on the South Side of San Antonio; the rougher part of the city. He’s fresh out of high school and he’s never performed in front of a crowd before. He’s hispanic and Mitchell is white –– and the crowd wasn’t “having it.”

The pair’s performance was ill-received and they were booed off the stage. “It was bad. And it was another moment where I wanted to quit,” Ray says. “First seventh grade, and now this sh--?” Ray was frustrated. After the show the promoter approached the pair and told them it was the wrong show for them; they were too young and it wasn’t their crowd. She told them the following shows would be booked for the right audiences.

He says it was because he was acting like a stereotypical rapper that he saw on TV. “I wasn’t natural to myself. I was trying to be hard, and I’m not. It wasn’t resonating because it wasn’t genuine.”

The experience changed his attitude and the way he approaches the stage. Now before every show he asks the audience to boo him. It’s his ice breaker and people see his personality from the start, so they don’t think he takes himself too seriously. He cracks jokes in all of his sets –– but when the songs start he’s passionate. “People always remember me for that, so it’s kinda like my calling card,” he says jokingly. “The boo me rapper.”

Ray’s won “Rap for a Stack” a local Austin tournament for up and coming rappers. He’s played shows for a fraternity, SXSW, and a Bernie Sanders rally in Lubbock, Texas. And he just signed with Coolie High Clothing Company as one of their first sponsored artists. He’s already seen a few of his shirts on UT’s campus. Some have sold as far as Australia, Canada, and China. “The fact that I’m like, dude, my shirts are on other continents; someone out there is rocking a Tone Royal shirt in England. That’s f---ing dope.”

Ray is graduating from college in May of 2016, and he views it as an opportunity to go all in on his music. He wants to release an entire album. “For what I’ve been able to do while in school, I’ve gone really far,” he says. “I have the skills to do it but I just need to get it to the right people and keep pushing.”

The path to making it as a rapper is harrowing, and Ray admits it. He knows he's an underdog. But he says he owes it to himself to take a shot at it. “I think everybody’s born with a gift. A certain thing that they should give back to the world. Some people are afraid to try, but you have to. At least to say that you did it.” - http://thediegonetwork.com

Tone Royal is a young dude who hails from Austin, Texas, who just released his first project Rushing Greatness. Dude is a pretty good lyricist with a lot of charisma, this project showcases his sense of humor and talent. If you’re in the mood to just hear some dope spittin over solid production, give Tone Royal a listen. Also, check him out when he occasionally appears on Double Toasted. He’s just your everyday Hispanic who doesn’t actually speak Spanish. - SwurvRadio.com