Today we’d like to introduce you to Cesar and Adrian Alba.
Cesar and Adrian, before we jump into specific questions about the company, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I, Cesar Alba was a trumpet player in the marching band in high school. My Senior year the school shut down the band program so I turned to dance. I began teaching my friends how to dance Spanish music such as Cumbia, Merengue and Bachata that my sister Gricel had taught me, I added my own flavor of course. lol We entered the Senior talent show, we went by the name D’ KLIK (Damn Kids Living In Kontrol) and we won 1st place. From then on, I got a lot more serious with craft of dancing, we became a surprise dance group and started getting paid to perform at Quinceaneras. After high school I attended Texas Southern University to pursue my Music Education. (S/O to the Ocean Of Soul Marching Band) In between semesters, D’ KLIK would get together and rehearse. My goal was to become a music teacher, specifically band. That dream was cut short because my mom developed a bad case of asthma that caused her to stop working for a while. I ended up getting a full-time job to help my parents out with bills and my two younger brothers who were still in middle school at the time. I continued with the group on the weekends but I also began teaching Quinceaneras, to make more money. My brother Adrian eventually ended joining my dance crew. A few years later the crew split up but my brother and I continued. By then I had developed a pretty strong clientele so I was teaching about four to five different Quinceaneras every weekend.
When I was in college, I used to arrange original music compositions, I had quite a few of them in my computer. A few coworkers of mine were into rapping and they asked me if I knew anyone who made beats. I told them that could make music but I didn’t have the programs to produce them with. A coworker gave me a program called “Fruity Loops”, it took me a few weeks to figure how to use it but I figured it out. Once I produced my first beat, I was addicted and that eventually lead to me writing lyrics for these beats. That’s how I got into rapping and my brother Adrian followed right behind me and got into doing music too.
In 2008 my brother and I began messing with the idea of becoming rappers. Everybody who knew us, knew us as dancers so the idea of us becoming rappers was funny to a lot of our family and close friends but we pursued it. In 2010 we gave up dancing, recorded 3 original songs and did our very first rap performance. I went from “Penguin” the dancer to “Tripl3 P” the rapper. My brother kept his nickname, Lil A. On July of 2011, we recorded our first mixtape to build our buzz. A mixtape is when you use old or popular songs and write your own lyrics to them, that way people will recognize the beat but hear your voice and that helps build your name, brand, fan base and so forth. We came up with the name Heavy Weight Musik as our label name and our mixtape was titled, “The Main Event Tripl3 P vs Lil A”. By August of 2011, we signed our very first tour contract for the BET Hip Hop Awards Tour. It’s a tour that BET puts together to promote the BET Hip Hop Awards. We were scheduled to perform alongside artist such as Wale, Roscoe Dash and Lil Kim. A month before the tour our house was broken into and we lost almost everything. We were forced to miss the tour.
My brother and I began promoting our mixtape, we did free show after free show, sometimes we even paid to perform. We did that for about 15 months. We did win a few competitions in process, one being called “Who’s the Hottest in The H” presented by Michael “5000” Watts. We earned bragging rights and got one of our songs played on 97.9 The Box but even with that we weren’t were we wanted to be and started to lose hope.
By the beginning of 2013, my brother Adrian decided that he was going to give up worldly things and devote his life to Christ. I couldn’t do nothing but respect that, so in I told him, we would do one last show. From January to April we promoted the event, worked on our 2nd mixtape/ep, new music and featured a few different artists. In May we had our concert, we headlined the event with the featured artist. The club’s capacity was about 220 people, we had over 300 people show up. It was a bittersweet! We weren’t able to finish our 2nd mixtape/ep on time. But I Tripl3 P continued to finalize it without Lil A. The title we gave this one was “Pound 4 Pound”. I was finally able to finalize it and get the CD’s packaged up but a few days before I was scheduled to pick them up my engineer Majix Mike was murdered outside of his church. After attending his funeral, we were devastated, we never got the courage to go ask his family for our CDs, it just felt wrong to do that. Majix Mike was our guy, our engineer, one of our best friends, he believed in us from the moment we met in 2009. (Rest In Paradise Bro! Hope we’re making you proud). So, after that we didn’t care to do music anymore.
In January of 2016, we received an invite from Michael “5000” Watts for a rap competition. We decided to give it one last go in this music business. We ended up winning the competition and we won a slot to perform in Austin, Tx. for a SXSW Music Festival show in the end of March of that year. Some people in Dallas, got word of that so then they booked us to perform in Dallas in February of that year. After that in the beginning of March we went to Austin, Tx. to support a friend who was competing to open up for Frankie Beverly and Maze. During the intermission they announced they were having a dance off for a chance to win tickets to the show. Our friend Eric Garcia aka Pito, kept bugging us to go on stage to dance. We kept declining because we weren’t dancers anymore, we wanted to be recognized a musical artist. We eventually gave in, the DJ played “Tootsee Roll” by the 69 Boys, we danced and the crowd went wild! Pito ended up recording the whole thing, we posted the video on Facebook and it hit a million views in a week. After a few days of it going viral Thrill of the 69 Boys made a post saying if people could help him find us because he wanted to take us on tour. About 30 minutes after him making that post people started tagging us and tagging us and tagging us. We got in contact with each other and sure enough he booked us on the spot, the show was scheduled for April 4th in San Antonio, Tx. Ok, so we finally make to Austin for the SXSW event, everything went great. A few people recognized us from the viral video a few weeks prior. That same night we go back to Houston and we end up at Bombshells – Fuqua. After few drinks we’re feeling good you know, getting loose. (lol) We end up in the patio where the DJ is playing, the DJ ends up playing a song called “Walk It Out” so we start dancing to it and immediately the DJ starts recording us. It’s like she knew, (lmao) (Hey DJ Chocolate) At first nobody’s really paying any attention to us but in the middle of the song we start freestyling, I (Tripl3 P) end up doing my 1990 with a cigarette in my mouth and the people go nuts. After that people are high fiving us, sending us drinks, so now we’re feeling it, right! We back door and bus the routine one more time and this time people are on their feet, surrounding us, cheering, screaming and applauding. We don’t think anything of it, we go home and that’s that. So, we thought lmao. A few days later we’re getting tagged in DJ Chocolate’s video, the video hit a million views in two days, right now it’s seating at 43 million views. So, after that video we created our fan page on Facebook, people start liking it, following it, sure enough they start asking for more content. We got to work! We finally reach the day for the 69 Boys show in San Antonio, when Thrill brought us out on stage, he yelled, “Heavy Weight Musik!” It had to have been at least 3500 people at that show, and the crowd went wild. Off of one month of two viral videos, people already knew who we were. That was so crazy to us but it was what we had been working for since 2008. After that we things just kept getting better and better for us. But we quickly realized that we had to continue to put new content out weekly. That same year we linked up with a car show tour called “WeGo Tour” so we started traveling all over Texas and that helped us mash up our dancing and rapping skills into our performances. That really set us apart from the other artist and the people were loving it. The tour ended at the big car show event here in Houston called “Los Magnificos” it was the 34th annual. We got to perform a long side artist such as, Too Short, Slim Thug, Dope House, artist we grew up listening to, we felt we were finally achieving our dream. 2017 was a roller coaster, and then later that year we got hit with Hurricane Harvey so it pushed back a little bit but we kept that fire burning on our Facebook page.
We had no clue was 2018 had in store for us but man we’re so grateful. We received a message from an entertainment coordinator of the Houston Rockets. We got invited to a game, we came out on the dance cam and immediately after people started sending videos of the dance cam. It got posted on social media and went viral on almost every platform that shared it. They ran that video on the news, espn, the rockets social media pages, Chicago news did a story on it, the radio stations did a story on it, that video was everywhere. After that video became known as the “Rocket Dancing Brothers” lmao. That year the Houston Rockets made it to the Western Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors. We were invited to 6 playoff games, 2 vs Minnesota, 2 vs Utah and 2 vs Golden State. During the Rockets 5th game against the Warriors, we went to watch the game at Bombshells – Spring. By then people recognized us left and right, people asking for pictures, we had a real fan base now. The Rockets ended up winning that game, the fans started trying to hype us up to do a dance but we really had to leave. We love our fans so we gave in, we did a short dance, everybody was happy but this guy calls out my brother (Lil A) to a battle. I told Lil A to forget about it, the guy was trying to get under his skin. But my knuckle head brother said, “Naw, I’m give’em what he wants”. So, I told Lil A, “Ok, well if you’re gonna battle him, you start off with the flip”. Lil A agreed, we did the flip, crowd goes wild! (lmao) The next morning we’re getting messages that we’re going viral on Twitter. We already knew what it was but we didn’t expect what was coming next. The young lady that posted the video sent us a message on Instagram saying that a, Houston Rockets representative wanted to talk to us. Later that day we received a call from the Rockets entertainment coordinator saying that a, a person from higher up wanted us at Game 7 for the Western Conference Finals and they wanted us to perform on the court. Our jaws dropped… After that phone call we received an email from Good Morning America, they wanted to know that if the Rockets won the WCF, would be available to perform on their show a few days after. Of course, we said yes! Now, it’s game 7, we go on the court do our performance, not even 5 minutes after our performance, TNT, NBA, House of Highlights, Bleacher Report and World Star Hip Hop posted the video on their Instagram accounts. We broke the internet that day. Our Instagram page had 213 followers by the end of the night, we had 15k followers. The Rockets lost but we still got invited to New York to be on Good Morning America. There was one problem with GMA though, they wanted us to go on their show and represent the Cavaliers… We turned it down. They tried to convince us but we just couldn’t diss our team and city like that. The next GMA calls and says, “Great news, you guys can represent the Rockets, now can yawl please come to our show?” After we appeared on GMA, we received and email from America’s Got Talent saying, they wanted us on season 14 of AGT. No lie, we turned them down too, three times! After talking it over and over among ourselves, we decided to go ahead and do AGT in 2019! Long story short, we did our performance, the audience loved, the AGT staff loved it and the judges loved it. We got 4 yeses and we advanced to the next round. Only thing that sucks about AGT is that, we weren’t able to make the 2nd audition because we were booked up, so AGT decided not to air our first-round audition. It is what it is but at least we know we made it. After Simon, said he was impressed and he was expecting what we did, you couldn’t tell us nothing! (lol) Later that year in October we got invited to perform on Fox 26 to represent the Houston Astros in the World Series.
2020, started off strong for us, even appearing on Fox 26 again to represent the Houston Texans in the playoffs. This time we were able to perform one of our singles, called “Time of My Life” with a Houston Texans twist to it. We performed at the Houston Rodeo Cook Off and then the Coronavirus hit, now we’re in quarantine until further notice. We haven’t been able to do any events but we’re still putting out content for our fans.
It’s been a long struggle from 2008 to 2016 but I can honestly say, it was worth it.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. Our house has been broken into and we lost almost everything, especially our laptops with all our new music and lyrics in them. Because of that we were forced to back out of the BET Hip Hop Tour we were scheduled to do in 2011. There was plenty of times where we had to sacrifice paying our bills to invest into our music. We lost so much hope in pursuing our music career because nothing was happening for us, yet we kept putting a lot of our money into studio time, buying beats, promoting, doing shows, it was stressful. At one point we split up stopped dancing and doing music for about a year. In 2010, we were walking out of club in Houston, Tx with a friend of ours. Mind you, I (Tripl3 P) was stupid wasted, I blacked out. Well Lil A and this friend were carrying me to the car, out of nowhere these guys pull up on us in a van and start talking s*** to us. I slurred something, they hopped out of the van, two other guys in motorcycles pulled and they tried to hit me with their helmet, Lil A immediately reacted, so now we’re in a big a** rumble, Our friend locks himself in the car, so it two of us against six guys and six girls. As drunk as I was, I stood there and fought, Lil A took the majority of the beating but he did it to protect me, his big brother. I don’t know how he did it but he fought them dudes off and they left. If Lil A wouldn’t have been there, you could consider me deceased. I thank him for that all the time.
Tell us about your company. What do you do, what do you specialize in, what are you known for, etc. What are you most proud of as a company? What sets you apart from others?
Heavy Weight Musik is our company, brand, label and group name. We are in the entertainment business. We are a dancing and rapping duo; our artist names are Tripl3 P and Lil A. Cesar is Tripl3 P and Adrian is Lil A. We’re known for being extremely large guys that are light on their feet. We have a signature dance move we call “The Flip” where Lil A does a hand stand to, I grab his feet and pull him over my shoulders. I’m proud that we have become a household name. We have fans from all over the world, we have inspired so many people specially the people that are overweight like us. Most obese people lose hope, motivation or get discouraged because they feel like their weight is getting the best of them. I can’t tell you many messages and emails we’ve received since 2016 of people telling us their story, thanking us for the inspiration. It wasn’t our intention to inspire or motivate people, we were just having fun and showcasing our talent. One mother from Detroit, sent us a message saying that her 11 year old son wanted to commit suicide because he was being bullied at school because of his weight. One day she came across one our videos and she said we made her smile from ear to ear. She said she began to show her son our videos, slowly but surely his confidence began to grow, he started being way more active, she said she was writing us that message with tears of joy in her eyes because she just knew in her heart that we saved her son’s life and she wanted to thank us. Stories like that is what really set us apart from others.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
At the beginning there was a lot of bad luck. No bookings, no money, content was not doing good, our music was not being heard but we stuck it out and kept the faith. 2016 was our lucky year, it felt like we were always in the right place at the time. Video after video kept going viral, bookings started rolling in, radio interviews, our content started doing major numbers and our music was finally getting discovered. Overall luck played a small role in the success of our business. Hard work played a huge role, we busted out butts to get where we are.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.youtube.com/HeavyWeightMusikTV
- Email: info@heavyweightmusik.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heavyweightmusik/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeavyWeightMusikTV/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/heavyweightboys
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@heavyweightmusik
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