Mike Stud

Mike Stud’s entry into music started with a crushing, life-changing blow. With dreams of being a major league pitcher, the Rhode Island native was on the fast track to a career in baseball. He earned LouisvilleSlugger Player of the Year honors in high school, scored a full athletic scholarship to Duke University and was selected as an All-American during his freshman year. And then it was over. After requiring Tommy John Surgery, his elbow never quite rebounded. “It felt like it never really healed completely. I was pitching and it was clear I just wasn’t as good anymore.” But while sidelined from the mound, he started tinkering with Garageband. He crafted “College Humor,”a witty ode to undergrad hedonism as a lighthearted distraction from his sluggish recovery in 2010. The song quickly took off.

“We would play it at the baseball parties and our teammates liked it. The bars at school would start to play it. I went into that video thinking it would be the first and last video I ever shot,” he remembered. “But it went viral. It went from nothing at all to 100,000 views in a month.” “College Humor” has since been viewed more than 1.4 million times.

He continued to roll out more YouTube visuals – from his early tunes “In This Life” and “Happy Ending” to a remix of Justin Bieber’s hit “Boyfriend” – that astoundingly logged millions of views. His first mixtape, 2011’s A Toast To Tommy (a reference to the surgery that ended his career before it began), pulled off a remarkable Top 5 debut on the worldwide and U.S. iTunes Hip-Hop albums charts. In 2012 he launched a sold-out, 20-city tour – another impressive feat for an independent act with zero previous music experience. By the time he dropped his debut effort, 2013’s Relief, he was a rising star pulling the sort of crowds and video views that established acts would envy. Relief showed Mike trading out fratboy rhymes for meatier substance. The album traced his rise from All- American college pitcher to his career-ending injury and his rebirth as a rapper. It reached No. 1 on iTunes Hip-Hop albums charts and, along with his formidable tour figures, forced labels to ask, “Who is Mike Stud?”Closer, his newly released sophomore effort released on Electric Feel Music, will undoubtedly change things for Mike Stud, as the rapper launched his #StudSummer Tour just days after the album’s arrival.

What’s more, the album’s first single “Closer” made major waves on Rhythmic Top 40 Radio, developing quickly at the format. “I’m somebody who had one door closed, and I found another outlet,” he said. “If I never got hurt, I would have never made a song … I now look back on something that was such a low point in my life to a turning point for the better. I try to project that in my music.” Stud will have a new album dropping Fall 2015 and will be embarking on a massive tour at the top of 2016 to support his new release.