Imag­ine an artiste whose goal is to cap­ture a de­mo­graph­ic rang­ing from the post-teens to the 30-some­things of ur­ban mu­sic. An artiste who ex­plores a range of mu­sic as vast as Big L, Nas and TI, to Kings of Leon and Cold­play be­cause of their lyri­cism. Or even whose dream col­lab­o­ra­tions would in­clude Kanye West and Phar­rell. This artiste does, in fact, ex­ist in the per­son of D Julien.His past is crit­i­cal to un­der­stand­ing his artistry as is his present and fu­ture. Ask Julien, he'll tell you he start­ed rhyming at ten years of age, but his close friends will tell you that it was ac­tu­al­ly sev­en.The first al­bum he lis­tened to was a CD by No­to­ri­ous Big en­ti­tled Ready to Die. It was that mo­ment Julien stum­bled up­on the artis­tic medi­um of ex­pres­sion he had been seek­ing. For this Flat­bush-bred Brook­lynite, in­flu­ences like Big and Jay-Z were "lo­cal artistes that I didn't see as glob­al," be­cause they were from his bor­ough. With a fa­ther who was a DJ, Julien learned at a young age the im­por­tance of lyri­cists like Jadakiss, Nas, and Big L be­cause, "these were the artistes my pops had lay­ing around, lyri­cal dudes who told sto­ries" and who were tan­gi­ble to this young­ster be­cause of his lo­cale. By age 13, he'd be cut­ting his teeth as a bat­tle rap­per, gain­ing con­fi­dence with each vic­to­ry. And by 16, Julien left the bat­tle cir­cuit to em­bark on the jour­ney of struc­tur­ing songs and "mak­ing mu­sic."

Julien's first mix­tape, Let Me In­tro­duce My­self, taught him valu­able lessons about his vi­sion and longevi­ty in the mu­sic in­dus­try. "I al­ways want­ed to make mu­sic my par­ents could en­joy and be proud of. So my con­tent is dif­fer­ent be­cause I'm try­ing to reach a dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ic."Pe­ruse any D Julien mp3 af­ter that, and you'll find songs ab­sent of pro­fan­i­ty and racial­ly-charged terms. Ask Julien, and he'll tell you that choice "en­hances my sit­u­a­tion more than hin­der­ing me. Kanye opened the lane to re­al­ly be your­self for re­al, as op­posed to be­ing a char­ac­ter. "That opens it up for me be­cause the mu­sic be­comes more per­son­al. I'm try­ing to ex­press emo­tions to help peo­ple con­nect with my con­tent, be­cause emo­tions are gen­uine."Jet­ti­son­ing the trends of pop­u­lar ra­dio and com­mer­cial-friend­ly raps, Julien's sec­ond mix­tape, The Ex­per­i­ment, did just that. It ex­plored the idea of con­nect­ing with emo­tion­al con­tent as op­posed to the lat­est fads in pop­u­lar hip-hop cul­ture. Julien utilised the cat­a­log of artistes that were push­ing the en­ve­lope in the genre and tak­ing mu­si­cal risks, stud­ied artistes who he con­sid­ered his mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, and heed­ed the coun­sel of hip-hop vet­er­ans such as Jaz-O to com­plete his third and most crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed mix­tape, Live, Love, Learn.

From there, Julien found him­self cel­e­brat­ed as My­space Mu­sic Artist of the Week, per­form­ing in Ohio to sold-out venues and re­ceiv­ing praise from XXL mag­a­zine, as well as Nahright, 2dope­boyz, Glob­al­Grind, All­HipHop and the rest of the usu­al sus­pects in the ma­jor hip-hop blogspot world.At 19, D Julien un­der­stands the po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties he has to branch out with­in var­i­ous facets of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try. But with ma­jor la­bel in­ter­est for well over a year based on his self-made buzz, mu­si­cal prowess, lyri­cism, artistry and un­ortho­dox con­tent choic­es, Julien's fo­cus re­mains the same-ex­pres­sion and hon­esty through his mu­sic."I will con­tin­ue to do what I'm do­ing and make mu­sic I be­lieve in. I'll be one of the top artistes in this genre. But right now I'm try­ing to tran­si­tion from the un­der­ground to the next lev­el."His new project, Ready For To­mor­row, was re­leased on May 31.