Zone 01 · Entrance
1950s
Hard surfaces and natural reflections. A waiting room that doubles as a tracking space when the session wants that vintage New Orleans bleed.
Southern Hip Hop Academy · Chef Menteur, U.S.
From scratch.
A 40′ × 50′ metal warehouse shell,once home to Blunt’s Auto Parts Store — the Blunt Family’s business — rebuilt as the Southern Hip Hop Academy.
The Box Studios — founded 2015 by Byron Jupiter and Shanelle Blunt — now home to the Southern Hip Hop Academy, training the next generation of producers, engineers, DJs, and vocalists on real SSL, Neve, MPC, and 1200 hardware. Built from scratch to honor the culture.You do not have to be from the South to enroll. Worldwide and international students welcome.
01 · The Layout
Walking timeline · 1950s → ModernFour zones, three eras, one shell.
The 40′ × 50′ footprint reads front-to-back as a walking timeline of American recording. Isolation requirements get stricter the deeper you go — the front embraces room reflections, the back is fully decoupled for precision dialogue work.
Zone 02 · Left Wing
1990s
The loudest equipment consolidated along one wall. Thermal loads and fan noise stay away from sensitive listening environments — the building's cheapest square footage doing the heaviest work.
Zone 03 · Middle
1980s
Office, meeting room, and a working piece of history at once. The large-format console anchors the room and the brand — a working museum, not a display case.
Zone 04 · Back · Phase 1
Modern
Long, narrow control room split into a tracking station and an editing / finishing station, tied to a high-isolation vocal booth for ADR and precision dialogue.
Acoustic zoning
Front lounge embraces natural reflections · Center houses the heavy mixing hardware · Left wing buffers all mechanical noise · Back wall contains the fully decoupled, ultra-quiet booth required for paid dialogue work. The layout solves the architecture.
02 · The Practical Business Plan
Day job · Night jobDay Job
Commercial audio — ADR.
Automated dialogue replacement for film, television, and audiobooks. This is the bread-and-butter — predictable invoices, repeat clients, and the reason the 7′ × 6′ booth has to be dead quiet.
Night Job
Artist development & archiving.
Firing up classic 12-bit samplers and vintage drum machines to capture authentic textures. Where the museum stops being a display and starts being an instrument.
Fairy Tale
The Shell That Learned to Sing
An ed-tech chapter book for the Hip Hop academy. Each plate is a page — read it however you read, at whatever pace works for you.
Chapter Pages
15 Plates · Once Upon a Warehouse
Plate N° 01
01 / 15
The main mix position opens the suite: widescreen visual field, twin speaker banks, and a command surface staged for phygital direction.
Plate N° 02
02 / 15
The listening position anchors the room, placing body, sound, and screen on a single axis.
Plate N° 03
03 / 15
Foreground tools and back-room console fold performance and production into one intimate frame.
Plate N° 04
04 / 15
A softer vantage from the suite seating, where collaboration, playback, and hosting begin to merge.
Plate N° 05
05 / 15
Close focus on the analog chain — tactile control, signal color, and the graphic language of the room’s hardware spine.
Plate N° 06
06 / 15
The computational core arrives as a sculptural object inside the suite: quiet, industrial, and deliberate.
Plate N° 07
Forthcoming · Museum Vitrine
07 / 15
Off-site reference image. The SP-1200 will be installed in a sealed museum vitrine on the suite floor — exhibited as artifact, not patched into the signal chain.
Plate N° 08
Forthcoming · Museum Vitrine
08 / 15
Off-site reference image. The 808 is destined for vitrine display: an instrument-as-monument, lit and labeled, never touched in session.
Plate N° 09
Forthcoming · Museum Vitrine
09 / 15
Off-site reference image. The rack will be re-cased behind museum glass — signal flow preserved as sculpture, not as patch.
Plate N° 10
Forthcoming · Museum Vitrine
10 / 15
Off-site reference image. The full cast — monitors, machines, screens — is held in storage pending museum-grade vitrine installation inside the suite.
Plate N° 11
11 / 15
A second control room reveals itself around the AMS/Neve V3 series: warm timber cladding, an ultrawide canvas, and the upright piano poised at the edge of frame.
Plate N° 12
12 / 15
The tracking floor opens onto the AMS/Neve V3 series: a wide working stage where the grand and the console share a single horizon.
Plate N° 13
13 / 15
Lights rigged, lounge seating cleared into the frame — the room readies itself for performance and capture.
Plate N° 14
14 / 15
Quiet vantage from the live floor: padded doors, the booth window, and the worn blue floor that carries the room's history.
Plate N° 15
15 / 15
A long view across the live room: the console runs out of frame, the ceiling lifts, and the booth window holds the far wall.
Southern Hip Hop Academy · Enrollment Open
Learn the craft on the same hardware that made the records.
The Southern Hip Hop Academy is a working-studio curriculum. You don't practice on a laptop pretending — you sit at an SSL Nucleus, load a kit on an MPC, ride faders on a Neve, cut on a pair of 1200s. We teach where the records are actually made.
Mandate · 01
A cure for the Louisiana culture crisis — with worldwide reach.
Louisiana exports its sound and loses its people. Studios close, masters leave the state, young engineers move to Atlanta and LA for a room they could have had at home. The Southern Hip Hop Academy is built as the cure — keep the rooms open, keep the credits local, keep the tradition in the hands of the people who actually live the culture. Bounce, second line, U.S. bass, Baton Rouge swing, Shreveport drawl — all of it tracked and taught on the same floor. Enrollment is open worldwide; you do not have to be from the South to participate. International students welcome under applicable U.S. and international law.
Prerequisite · 02
Vibe coding is the entry ticket.
Every track — Beats, Engineering, MC, R&B, DJ, Phygital — opens with a one-week Vibe Coding intensive. Plain-language prompting, shipping a working tool by Friday, versioning your ideas the way you version a beat. You will leave able to spin up a cypher signup page, a stem-delivery portal, a tour map, or a merch drop without waiting on anyone. Music first, but software literacy is non-negotiable.
Training Tracks
Track 0112 wk
Beats & Production
MPC · SP1200 · TR-808 · Logic · Pro Tools
Sampling ethics, chopping, swing, layering, drum programming on the machines that built the genre. From a dusty loop to a mixed master.
Track 0212 wk
Engineering & Mixing
SSL Nucleus · Neve · Pro Tools · Auralex Room
Signal flow, gain staging, mic technique, vocal chains, bus compression. Tracking a full band and walking out with stems that translate.
Track 0312 wk
MC & Songwriting
Cypher Lab · Writing Room · Booth Time
Cadence, pocket, breath control, hooks, storytelling. Weekly cyphers and a final EP cut, mixed, and registered.
Track 0412 wk
R&B Vocals
Atmospheric Vocals · Stacking · Comping
Atmospheric Vocals activities — texture-building, ad-lib stacking, falsetto layering, reverb-as-instrument, harmonic comping. The breathy, room-filled R&B that lives behind the lead.
Track 0512 wk
DJ & Turntablism
Technics 1200 MK2 · MK5 · Rane Serato
Beatmatching, blends, scratching, routines, crate digging. From bedroom mixes to opening a real room.
Track 0612 wk
Phygital Media & Ed-Tech
Video · Documentary · App Development
Tie music to story: short docs, music videos, B2B tourism and CSR education apps built inside the warehouse. The academy ships product, not just demos.
Enrollment
Next cohort opens fall. Rolling interviews — no audition tape required.
Featured Hardware · Highlights
What each machine teachesThe gear is the syllabus.
Every flagship piece on the floor doubles as a teaching tool. Students read the manuals, map the signal flow, calculate the heat loads, and trace the A/D conversion before they ever push a fader. The hardware is the curriculum — the records are the proof.
Unit 01Featured
SSL Nucleus 2
Digitally controlled analog · DAW command surface
- Read the manual cover to cover before first session
- A/D & D/A conversion: clocking, jitter, headroom staging
- Signal flow from mic pre to monitor bus
- Cable wrapping & routing — over/under, no exceptions
Unit 02Featured
AMS / Neve V3 Series
Large-format analog console · Tracking & mix
- Heat load math: BTU, airflow, console-room HVAC sizing
- Routing matrices, bussing, monitor sections
- Critical listening on a calibrated room
- Communication on the talkback — clear, brief, kind
Unit 03Featured
Akai MPC (Live II / X)
Sampler · Sequencer · Performance instrument
- Sample rate, bit depth, and why the SP color exists
- Basic music theory: keys, modes, harmonic rhythm
- Groove quantize, swing, and feel as emotional intelligence
- Critical thinking: when to chop, when to leave it alone
Unit 04Featured
Technics SL-1200 MK2 / MK5
Direct-drive turntables · Rane Serato
- Body awareness: posture, weight, the hand on the platter
- Self-control on the crossfader — patience over flash
- Music analysis & appreciation: era, region, lineage
- Cable routing for the booth — power, signal, ground
Unit 05Featured
Pro Tools HDX · Auralex Booth
DAW spine · Vocal isolation
- Session hygiene: naming, color, comping discipline
- Atmospheric vocal stacking, doubles, harmonic comping
- Listening as a practice — what the singer needs to hear
- Emotional intelligence in the room when takes get hard
Unit 06Featured
Vitrine Artifacts · SP-1200 · TR-808
Museum display · Not in signal path
- Music appreciation: what these machines did to the culture
- Reverence without nostalgia — study, then build forward
- Documentation: photograph, label, archive
- Communication: tell the story to the next class
Prerequisite · 01
Cable wrapping & routing.
Before a student touches the SSL, they wrap cable — over/under, no kinks, Velcro the same direction every time. Routing diagrams drawn by hand, then checked against the rack. This is the door fee. If the cables aren't right, the records won't be either.
Prerequisite · 02
Listening, thinking, and the body.
Critical thinking, critical listening, and clear communication run alongside basic music theory and music analysis appreciation. Emotional intelligence, body awareness, and self-control are graded the same as gain staging. Engineers who can't sit still don't sit at this desk.
Site Survey · Reel 01
Pre-acoustic walkthroughA narrated pass through the building before treatment.
Recorded prior to professional acoustic involvement — the rooms as they stood, the geometry as it was found, the conditions the acoustic design would later answer.
Source Material · Reels & Documents
Pre-Acoustic · U.S.Aaniyah In Session — The Voice Of Tomorrow
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Playin In My Face — Mixed By B
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Origins · The Build
Construction · MMXXIV — MMXXVI
Build N° 017367 Chef Menteur Hwy
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Build N° 027367 Chef Menteur Hwy
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Build N° 037367 Chef Menteur Hwy
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Build N° 047367 Chef Menteur Hwy
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Site Photo7367 Chef Menteur Hwy
New Orleans, LA
The Box Studios — Audio Note
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Series Bible — True Hate
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Build Progress — Field Cut
Diligence Dossier · Confidential
Pre-Acoustic — Building Reference
Site survey · Pre-acoustic design · Source material
Pre-Acoustic — Building Reference
Shell · Pre-acoustic
Shell N° 01
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Shell N° 02
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Shell N° 03
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Shell N° 04
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Shell N° 05
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Shell N° 06
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Shell N° 07
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Shell N° 08
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Shell N° 09
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Shell N° 10
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Shell N° 11
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Shell N° 12
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Shell N° 13
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Shell N° 14
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Shell N° 15
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Shell N° 16
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Shell N° 17
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Shell N° 18
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The Sanctuary — Blueprint for a Working Museum
Walking timeline · Entrance · Utility spine · Museum · Bunker
Manifesto · Reel
The Blueprint for Cultural Imperium — Fortifying New Orleans
Companion film to the deck: the doctrine behind the Sanctuary stated in red, white, blue, and old gold — culture as infrastructure, infrastructure as sovereignty.
Equip · Systems Reference
Pre-Acoustic · BaselineBaseline systems documentation captured before acoustic design — the conditions a specialist team would later resolve. Four disciplines, recorded as found.
01 · Routing
Signal Path & Cable Routing
Trunks · tie lines · floor boxes · patch topology
Pre-acoustic routing study: console-to-room trunks, mic-line drops at each tracking position, and the patch-bay topology as it stood before re-termination and acoustic re-planning.
02 · Cooling
HVAC & Thermal Load
Supply · return · isolation · CFM baseline
Mechanical baseline: supply and return locations, noise-critical isolation requirements, and the thermal envelope of the live room and control under continuous session load.
03 · Electrical
Electrical Load & Power
Service · isolated grounds · UPS · technical power
Service capacity, dedicated technical-power runs, isolated grounds at the console and outboard, and UPS hold-up estimates for the racks — all pre-treatment, as a reference point.
04 · Ergonomic
Ergonomics & Sight Lines
Engineer position · talent sightlines · reach envelopes
Engineer seating, monitor triangle, talent eye-line to the booth, and the reach envelope to outboard and patch — documented before acoustic and furniture redesign began.
05 · Capture
Directional Capture & Isolation
Shotgun condenser · interference tube · supercardioid/lobe
Long-throw capture chain built around a 395 mm interference-tube shotgun condenser — even tighter focus and higher rejection of side noise than a standard short shotgun. Reserved for booming dialogue from distance and isolating single voices inside a live room without bleed.
Blueprint · Engineering Manual
Five Phases · ReferenceOperating framework for a multi-room facility — written as a manual, not a brochure. Electrical and thermal load, structural acoustics, room-by-room construction, franchise-grade procedures, and long-horizon energy planning.
Phase 01
Electrical & Thermal Load
Service sizing · isolated grounds · UPS · BTU envelope
Per-room load calculations to prevent voltage sag and protect noise-critical gear. Dedicated technical-power runs, star-grounded bus bar, UPS hold-up on the racks, and a thermal envelope sized for continuous session load across every room.
Phase 02
Structural Acoustics
Decoupling · mass · absorption · diffusion
Room-within-a-room construction, floated floors, and floor-to-ceiling treatment tuned per room — Main Listening, ADR, Production Suite, and Video — so each space hits its own frequency-response and noise-floor target rather than a shared compromise.
Phase 03
Room-by-Room Build
Main · ADR · Production · Video
Construction notes per room: monitor placement and sightlines for the main array, isolation and intelligibility for ADR, gear topology for the production suite, and lighting plus treatment for the video and content studio.
Phase 04
Franchise Operations
SOPs · session intake · QC · client handling
Standard operating procedures that let the facility be run by more than one engineer without drift: session intake, file-management standards, QC checkpoints, archive policy, and a documented client experience from arrival to delivery.
Phase 05
Energy & Long-Horizon
Efficiency · maintenance cadence · resilience
Long-term planning: efficiency targets, scheduled fader and contact cleaning, annual grounding and acoustic re-measurement, and resilience against power and weather events — so the rooms stay calibrated year over year.
Phase 06
Atmospheric Engineering & Technology
Humidity · air pressure · particulate · ionization
Active conditioning of the air itself — humidity stabilized for tape, ribbons, and tonewoods, low-velocity supply to keep duct noise out of the room, particulate filtration on the technical-power side, and ionization control to protect sensitive electronics from static and corona discharge.
The Digital Currency Exchange
Settlement · Royalties · Hybrid IntelligenceTrading Floor
The house never loses.
Sessions clear here. Stems, masters, and rights settle into transferable units — tokenized splits for writers, players, and engineers — quoted, audited, and routed through a single ledger. Hybrid intelligence sits on the desk: human A&R judgement on one side, automated valuation, watermark verification, and rights clearance on the other.
Every session leaves the building as a priced asset, not a hard drive.
Desk 01
Master Ledger
Per-stem cap table · live ownership splits
Every contributor receives a transferable position the moment a take is committed.
Desk 02
Royalty Clearing
Mechanical · sync · neighbouring rights
Inbound revenue is decomposed, matched to the cap table, and settled to wallets on a fixed cadence.
Desk 03
Valuation Engine
Catalog scoring · benchmark pricing
Hybrid model: streaming velocity, sync history, and human A&R weighting produce a defensible quote per asset.
Desk 04
Vault & Custody
Cold storage · multi-sig · audit trail
Tokenized splits, master files, and key material held with quorum approval and a full provenance log.
Ledger · Append-onlyCustody · Multi-sigSettlement · T+0Audit · Quarterly
Back of House · The Workhorse
Control · Tracking · Editing · BoothBack Zone
Where the paid work happens.
A long, narrow 20′ × 8′ control room split into a tracking station and an editing / finishing station, connected to a highly isolated 7′ × 6′ vocal booth. Built around ADR first, music second.
- · 20′ × 8′ control room · two work positions
- · 7′ × 6′ vocal booth · dead-quiet for ADR
- · Direct sightline from control to booth
- · Editing / finishing station next to tracking
NotebookLM Blueprint — The Bunker
Plan reference · Zone 4 terminus
Home To
Tenant brands · Phygital warehouseThe warehouse is the operating system for a family of brands.
Each brand runs as its own product surface — built, shipped, and supported from the Southern Hip Hop Academy floor. The flagship publication, Jupe Magazine, sits at the front.
Breathe 444 — Studio Reference Cut
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Peach State Glide — A&R Selection
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The Campus · Secured Legacy Archive
Est. 2015 · U.S.Four distinct environments. One legacy.
A Secured Legacy Archive preserving the sonic heritage of New Orleans — from the raw energy of early Rock & Roll to the precision of modern production. Fiscally sponsored by MaCCNO. Open to industry-standard acoustic certification.
- Shell
- 40′ × 50′
- Clearance
- 15–18′
- Plinth
- 6′ CMU
- Console
- Neve V3 · 60 Ch
- Structure
- Pre-Eng. Metal
- Heat Reduction
- 60%
011950s
Rampart Street
Zone 1 — The Lobby
The 1950s studio and museum. A raw, reflective space capturing the live energy of the New Orleans sound, named for the street that birthed it.
021980–90s
Atmospheric Technology Terminal
Zone 3 — ATT
Home of the Neve V3 Console. An 80s & 90s R&B / Hip Hop themed listening environment with climate-controlled atmospheric engineering.
03Modern
ADR & Vocal Production
Zone 4 — The Precision Room
Engineered to professional acoustic standard for vocal capture and ADR work.
041980s
Lizardi St.
Future Phase — Elevated Extension
An external elevated space honoring the bedroom producer movement.
Contact