Adam Protextor | Backstage

"Bring your rap game and prepare to enter
Austin's hip hop critical mass"

Austin Chronicle "Best of Austin" Awards

PROJECTS

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Austin Mic Exchange

2012 - 2017

The longest-running weekly hip hop residency in Texas history, Austin Mic Exchange (AMX) was founded by Adam Protextor and Leah Manners in 2012 and quickly became a "central hub of Austin hip-hop spit and artistic exchange" (Austin Chronicle), winning a "Best of Austin" award in 2014 and branching out across the city, producing several cypher videos, regular mixtapes, and spin-off events like "The Beat Connection" and "The Battleground".

After producing over 300 shows featuring hundreds of rappers across Central Texas, AMX retired on its 5th anniversary in 2017, leaving a lasting impact and legacy that can still be seen reverberating in the Live Music Capitol of the World.

Weird City Hip Hop Fest

2014-2015

In 2014, AMX producers Adam Protextor, Leah Manners, and Aaron Miller took their indie hip hop brand to the next level with Weird City Hip Hop Fest, Austin's first-ever hip hop-exclusive live music festival.

With a goal of pairing local talent against national headliners to firmly plant ATX Hip Hop as a nationwide force, Weird City opened in fall of 2014 across 5 downtown venues in Austin for a sold-out weekend of beats, rhymes, and community. Returning in 2015 after a sudden cancellation, Weird City went on to produce a locals-only supercut at original venue Spider House Ballroom, a statewide tour featuring Austin artists, and several one-off shows with local partner Margin Walker Presents, including the Texas debut of CupcakKe.

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Live Comedy

2018-2019

From serving as PR Director for Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in 2019 to producing main stage shows such as Slumber Party Club LIVE!, Hunnicut on Holiday, and the award-winning Fishbowl (for which he was nominated for "Best Producer" at the 2020 ColdTowne Awards), Adam Protextor moved from improv theater graduate to live show organizer quickly in the years following AMX.

Despite working across what some might see as separate artistic scenes, the ethos of organization and producing across all these projects has remained constant: If you create a space for people to come together and learn from each other and you do so out of an earnest desire to see talent bloom, then every artist, performer, and fan in the scene will benefit.