Marquis "Sose" Gilbert is the founder of H2O Digital Arts, a mobile recording studio that turns classrooms into songwriting and production sessions — no experience required, every student walks away having written, recorded, or performed something real. He's been building "H2O" as a music and media brand for roughly two decades, starting in Milwaukee and now running it out of Miami with clients ranging from Boys & Girls Clubs to private families. He's also a T4C Miami original: a pandemic‑era Bars N Beats Challenge win with The Talent Catalog led him into Talent4Change, where he's since worked events and workshops across the Miami nonprofit landscape. Book him for classroom residencies, youth arts workshops, private sessions, or any program — T4C‑affiliated or otherwise — that wants music‑making to double as mentorship.
MARQUIS "SOSE" GILBERT
Teaching Artist-Youth Music Education-Mobile Recording Studio-HIPHOP Educator-Music Scene Documentarian-Founder, H2O Digital Arts
Milwaukee, WI, Miami, FL, United States
About
H2O isn't new for Marquis — he built it in Milwaukee close to 20 years ago. It started as H2O Magazine, an online outlet documenting the Milwaukee hip‑hop scene (including footage from Miltown Beatdown, the city's marquee decade‑long beat‑battle tournament), while Marquis recorded his own music as Sose, releasing his debut album Propaganda in 2009. His cousin Dwight Gilbert — who performs as DJ Tyme and played Sose's 2009 album release show — still runs the Milwaukee side of H2O today; Marquis, now based in Miami Beach, travels back often to help keep that end running.
In Miami, that Milwaukee groundwork became H2O Digital Arts: a genuinely mobile recording studio that comes to the classroom rather than the other way around, running students through beat production, songwriting and recording, and music‑video making. There are no prerequisites, the work adapts to varying developmental abilities, nothing is graded, and every cycle builds toward a public "Debut Day," with finished student work published on YouTube. Marquis built his Miami footprint the way most independent programs get built — one relationship at a time. He worked with Talent4Change and GiGi's Playhouse Miami (the Miami Lakes chapter of the national Down‑syndrome nonprofit network) before piloting H2O Digital Arts with a Boys & Girls Club location in Miami‑Dade. H2O now also gets booked by private family clients in Key Biscayne.
H2O Digital Arts runs independently of Talent4Change — it's Marquis's own operation, not a T4C program — though it's now a listed collaborator within T4C Miami Village alongside S.H.E.A.R. Inc.
Connection to TTC/T4C
Marquis's relationship with TTC started as a competitor, not a collaborator: he won The Talent Catalog's pandemic‑era Bars N Beats Challenge. That win introduced him to Talent4Change, and he volunteered his way into a lead role on T4C Miami — T4C's first chapter. Since then he's worked a wide range of T4C workshops and community events across Miami, including with Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) Miami, Ark of the City's Christmas on 15th Ave. Parade and Toy Drive, Project Ready for School Back‑to‑School events, Anthony Durden's Black Business Expo, ILoveAvenue's Christmas in July, and bookbag giveaways for Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp. It's a track record that runs parallel to his H2O work rather than growing out of it — book him as an H2O Digital Arts teaching artist, a T4C Miami community leader, or, increasingly, both at once.
Media/Press
H2O Digital Arts program page (Talent4Change.global): https://www.talent4change.global/h2odigitalarts.html
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MARQUIS "SOSE" GILBERT
Teaching Artist-Youth Music Education-Mobile Recording Studio-HIPHOP Educator-Music Scene Documentarian-Founder, H2O Digital Arts