DESOTO, Texas — On the second floor of an unassuming industrial-style building, just a few minutes north of Downtown Dallas, Julian Mason is working -- even if he struggles to call it that.
“This is not even a job," he says. "This is something I just love to do. I just get paid a lot of money to do it.”
He's hunched over his laptop, with two men on either side of him. He presses a few keys and then a few more. Then, the product of those key clicks blasts through the speakers sitting around the room.
A beat is born.
All three men bob their heads up and down. One of them smiles. Mason later explains that they're artists he works with. He brags on his artist, saying he could rap over the freshly birthed beat in that moment.
"A song is 50-50," he said. "50, the beat. 50, the lyrics."
He's pretty good at his 50%.
“If you’re anywhere where hip-hop music is being played, I’d say there's a 99% chance you’re going to hear my tag," says Mason.
Mason, who works under the producer name LilJuMadeDaBeat, has in recent years become a household name for lovers of the kind of music you hear on hip-hip radio stations, on gym playlists or in any kind of party situation where rap music is being played.
His tag "And if the beat live, you know Lil Ju made it" means something to the millions who scream the words out to prepare to recite all the lyrics that follow.
“Everybody knows that the turn-up is fixin' to come next after you hear my tag," he says.
His beats flow under Megan Thee Stallion's lyrics in popular songs like "Body", "Captain Hook", "Cash Sh*t" and "Megan's Piano". They set the vibe for 2 Chainz's January-released "Million Dollars Worth of Game", and on Juicy J's "Pop That Trunk".
He's Grammy-nominated and has multiple songs that have gone platinum -- multiple times over.
He's having fun, he says. His job doesn't feel like work. He knows he has a gift.
“I’ve cried listening to my beats several times because I’m like, 'God really gave me this talent and I’m really good at this,'" he says. “Like, this is my intellectual property and now it’s on the radio for everybody to hear it.”
Like most people who've made it in music, though, his path to success had detours and delays.
Before the world learned his producer name, Mason was on a different track. He graduated in the top 10 percent of his class from DeSoto High School, and went to the University of Houston after being admitted to the school's architecture program.
“I really wanted to do music before going to school but, obviously, music is a farfetched dream," the producer remembers. "Not everybody makes it in music. Like, one in a million people makes it in music."
After running into academic trouble at U of H, he dropped out. However, by then, he'd already fallen in love with H-Town.
“Messing up at U of H and moving back home really put the fire in my back," he said. "Like, I messed up in school. I really got to make it with music for real.”
So, he did.
He kept making beats, hoping for his big break.
In 2013, rapper Gucci Mane rapped over his beat in "With My Pistol" and LilJuMadeDaBeat was sure that was his ticket to success.
"I was just waiting for a record label to call me," he says. "I was just waiting."
It didn't come then, though.
In fact, it took six years.
"I wasn't going to let anybody deter my dreams," the producer says. "So, I just kept doing it like tunnel vision. Paper thin tunnel vision. I knew it was going to work out. I didn't have a Plan B."
In 2017, he was freelance producing when he met a young up-and-coming rapper from Houston.
"December 2017 is when Megan came in there for the first time," he says of his studio.
He played her a beat he'd been sitting on for about a year.
"As soon as she got in the booth and said words over that beat, I said 'We about to blow up,'" he recalls. “I knew that beat was a hit, but I didn’t think someone was going to make a hit on that beat.”
That song became "Big Ole Freak".
It went platinum for a second time this spring, and it was the song that put Megan Thee Stallion on the map.
"It took a long time, from 2017 to 2019," he says. "That two years went by slow. I’m watching everything happen for her. She’s doing shows and getting paid for features and stuff. For producers, when you get paid, it's a long wait. Like, once the comes out, you get paid like a year later. Even though hadn't seen anything yet, I see my song going up on the charts."
In that waiting period, he kept making beats. He produced half of the songs on Megan Thee Stallion's mixtape Fever, and was already making songs that would later become hits like "Captain Hook" and "Body".
Finally, the call came in 2019, and he signed with Sony shortly after.
“Everything I thought in my head actually happened for real -- just not when I thought it would," he said. "Like I said, I was living in a fairytale land where I thought it would happen for me. I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me different."
Hours and hours in the studio. Creating beats out of anything he could get hands on. An unwavering commitment to make his dreams a reality.
All of those things got him to where he is now.
His favorite song? "Big Ole Freak".
The song that surprised him when it became a hit? "Body".
“I was a little nervous cause I’m like, 'She’s saying the same thing [over and over] on the hook [and] I don’t know what people are going to think about that,'" he says. "But it worked."
His next dream collaboration? Drake.
The project he's most excited about that's on the way? That he can't talk about just yet.
"It literally just happened, and it's big," he says. "I can't talk about it. I literally cannot talk about it."
And his advice for anyone chasing their dream? Don't you dare give up.
“The day you give up... the next day would’ve been the day it would’ve happened for you," the producer says. “You gotta believe in yourself before somebody else does. You can go off what other people say, but it’s really you at the end of the day. It’s your life."