For multi-platinum producer Pacal Bayley, making his own music, educating kids and helping promote hip-hop in Madison are all part of the same process.

Bayley, who might be better recognized by his artist name DJ Pain 1, is a lifetime Madison local and also an University of Wisconsin alum. As a result, he has been able to bear witness to and participate in all of the challenges and surges that hip-hop has seen in Madison throughout the years.

Bayley first started making his own music when he was in the eighth grade. He recounts listening to music all his life, but was particularly enamored with hip-hop. He first began making his own music when he realized his friend’s keyboard could be used to make hip-hop music.

In the years that followed, Bayley continued to make music, but never believed it to be something he could seriously pursue as a career.

“I never thought it could be a viable career path for me until I suddenly realized it could be,” Bayley said.

This moment of realization came when Bayley’s manager told him that a production of his would appear on rapper Young Jeezy’s 2008 project The Recession — an album that Bayley said was able to catch the tail end of hip-hop, as it sold millions of copies worldwide.

For Bayley, being a part of an album that was an international triumph was a good enough indicator that making music was something worth further pursuing.

Nowadays, Bayley continues to collaborate with artists such as Sole or Royce da 5’9″ and release solo projects. Making music, however, is far from the only thing that occupies Bayley’s time.

As one of the founding members of the non-profit organization, Urban Community Arts Network, Bayley works with others to help professionally develop Madison’s hip-hop artists. He also uses hip-hop as a tool to help educate Madison youth.

Collaboration plays a large role for Bayley. Through organizations like UCAN, Bayley works with teachers at schools throughout Madison at every level of education.  

At Lakeview Elementary School, he is teaching hip-hop and mathematics classes. At Madison West High School, where Bayley attended, he assists in teaching a hip-hop studies course.

Since he works 10 hours a day most days, these various projects definitely keep Bayley’s life busy, albeit interesting. For him, it’s more layered than just time consuming, since it would be impossible for him to educate without also making music.

“If I had never made any music on any sort of successful level, I wouldn’t be qualified to provide education on the subject,” Bayley said.

Another effort of Bayley’s, as well as that of UCAN, is to provide Madison’s hip-hop artists with the resources they need to succeed, even in spite of the challenges that Madison may present.

These challenges, Bayley said, are largely due to hip-hop being de facto banned in Madison, such as police wanting to break up artists’ concerts or venues being reluctant to book a local hip-hop act.

Bayley said these issues go much deeper than just being about hip-hop, and have much to do with conceptions about race and status in Madison.

“The real conversation about the real root of the problem still hasn’t happened,” Bayley said. “Until that conversation is had by all necessary components, the unfortunate situation we have now is never going to change.”

Reflecting back on past negativity that is still relevant today, Bayley also uses his own positive experiences in Madison as a budding artist to help current ones.

At 15 years old, Bayley attended the nation’s first ever national hip-hop conference, “Hip-hop is a movement,” which was held and organized by UW students. That conference was instrumental to the growth of Madison’s hip-hop at the time, Bayley said.

Nowadays, that conference is long-gone. But through efforts of UCAN such as “Level Up,” where they provide professional workshops to Madison hip-hop artists, Bayley hopes to capture the conference’s spirit and impact — albeit with the resources of a non-profit.

Aside from helping them succeed, Bayley also believes the current generation of Madison hip-hop artists are more poised for success than his generation by their own merit. The key, for Bayley, is to build a local infrastructure of support and think outwardly towards national audiences as well.

“They’re doing it way better than we did because they’re acutely aware of the opportunities on the Internet,” Bayley said. “They’re building a local infrastructure while branching out globally, and that they have both is really the right energy.”

As of right now, Bayley believes that Madison is widely viewed as a stepping stone for hip-hop artists — a place artists can go to build momentum to carry themselves into a city with a larger hip-hop presence. And in spite of current challenges, Bayley believes that one day Madison can have a hip-hop setting in which both current and new artists can thrive.