Louisville artist, producer, and quiet force 7eventray pulls up to the OddPod for episode 20 with Marc and Pod Rashid — and the timing couldn't be more perfect. His new project Louder in Silence just dropped April 14th, and this episode doubles as the unofficial listening party.
7eventray grew up in Louisville as the middle child of five, with five more siblings on his dad's side. He attended four different high schools — Eastern, Atherton, Liberty, and Aarons — before life intervened. When his mother got sick around 2014-2015, he stepped away from school to be there for her. She passed in 2016, and it took him years to process that loss and find his footing. Getting his GED recently wasn't just a milestone — it was something he did in honor of her, because she never got to finish hers.
As a kid, 7eventray was so quiet his middle school classmates thought he was mute. That silence, though, wasn't emptiness — it was observation. It fed everything. His music taste reflects that depth: J. Cole's Friday Night Lights first got him writing, but his influences stretch from A Tribe Called Quest and Gil Scott-Heron to Linkin Park, All American Rejects, Tina Marie, Curtis Mayfield, and even French cosmic jazz band Cortex. He's been making beats seriously for years — at one point cranking out seven beats a day — and produced the majority of Louder in Silence himself, with mixing handled by collaborator Tay Beats.
The album name is personal. 7eventray talks openly about how growing up quiet made people underestimate him — assume he was a pushover, or simply invisible. But silence was never weakness. It was strategy. The opener "Button Mashing" sets the tone perfectly, built around the idea of whether we're actually playing life the right way or just pressing buttons and hoping something works.
He's also a core member of Hxndsxght — a collective of producers and artists, including June DeWayne, quietly building one of the most interesting sounds in Louisville right now. The conversation also touches on his name change from LaTray to 7eventray after a drill rapper with the same name started flooding his streaming pages. Seven has always been his number — and now it's his name.
Louder in Silence is out now on all streaming platforms. Follow him at @7eventray and go check out the project.