I met Fanat 20 years ago when I was over my peoples Shaa & Beezo's crib in Baltimore and they were working on his demo. I had brought my 4 track through their crib so they could get some rough recordings of the songs they had been banging out for him. I remember thinking dude's style was crazy ill and that I wished I could lace him with something but since I just started making beats I didn't have anything on tap that was anywhere close to what Beezo and 'em were lacing him with. The REAL crazy thing is that 20 years later I still have those 4 track recordings! Fast forward 16 years and through the wonderful world of social media, me and Shaa (Fanat's older brother) linked back up and the first thing out my mouth was "is Fanat still rhyming?" Of course dude was still rhyming but now he needed beats since Shaa wasn't producing anymore so after 16 years of wanting to work with dude, we finally started working on his debut album.
Now don't get it twisted like Fanat was some new jack either. Fanat eventually signed to Hydra Records an independent outta Queens and dropped two 12" "Zoo York" produced by my dude Roots and "Blowing Up Spots" produced by Shaa that were both dope with "Zoo York" being an big underground hit in the mid 90's. But after those two 12"...that was it. So even though Fanat had 2 bangers under his belt back in the 90's in 2011 he was just starting to record his debut album. So for the bulk of 2011, Fanat damn near lived at my crib while recording this album and we finished it about mid 2012. After finishing the album we were in talks with an independent label to do all the mixing, mastering and promotion but eventually we realized that deal wasn't gonna come together so between both of us working and me doing a million and one things, time just got the best of us and this project has been sitting on ice like a pair of Jordan 3's.
Now, I never keep any of the albums or songs I produce on my mac book because I don't wanna be tempted to listen to them on the norm and then start getting sick 'em so everything I record stays on my hard drive. The other day I was diggin' though my HD looking for some video footage I shot and came across this album and since I hadn't heard it in a long minute, I decided to throw it on and I ending up listening to it for the rest of the night. And 3 years after recording this album, I still think it sounds just as dope as it did when I first heard it. So I called Fanat, like "bruh...we gotta put this out." See, for me after all of this time I don't care if it's not mixed or mastered or anything like that cause I truly believe that if the music is dope, it'll speak for it's self. But more importantly, I just REALLY want cats to hear a piece of music that I'm proud to say I was a part of making. So do me this justice and check out an album me and K put our heart's and soul into making and an album that I feel is flat out incredible! If you like classic boom bap hip hop, then there's absolutely no way you won't rock with us on this jawn!
BTW, here's some BTS footage of us recoding different songs for the album but keep in mind that when we were recording this album 4 years ago I had never even thought about shooting videos or anything like that so all of this footage is mos def raw. It wasn't until I shot Fanat's video for "Renaissance Musician"the I got bit by the video bug and really started learning the craft so don't hold these first couple of rough videos against me.
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