J-14 is scouting out the hottest music around... and this week's pick is Tino Coury!
Here are five things you need to know about Tino Coury whose album This One's For is out this fall!
1. Though he's always had a love for music (he got his first guitar when he was in seventh grade!), 23-year-old Pittsburgh native Tino Coury was an athlete growing up, planning to go away to play college football. However, when he got injured his senior year and couldn't play anymore, he set up a studio in the basement of his house to focus on music. "There came a point in time where I said to myself 'do I want to go away to college and live that normal college life or stay close to home?'" Tino tells J-14. "I decided to stay close to home so I could commute and focus on music."
2. He found musical inspiration growing up through bands like Blink-182, Green Day, and The All-American Rejects. "I wanted to teach myself how to play so I would go online and look up chords and these bands were a huge inspiration, I wanted to make a CD just like them," he tells J-14.
3. Tino has had the opportunity to perform with many artists throughout the past few years including Pitbull, Chris Brown, Jason Derülo, and B.o.B. but his favorite was with Drake. "It was 13,000 people. Everyone was in to it because they played the record [Diary] a lot," Tino tells J-14. "My goal is to sell out an arena someday."