In March of this year, I threw a big party at my buddy’s farm. They were selling the farm and I knew this would be the last big party out there. Big party probably isn’t the right term tho… Let me better clarify…. I invited a lot of people to try to come through. I told them I got a taco truck, and we were going to have music playing throughout… Kids were all invited. For those that know me, they know I don’t drink so I let everybody know that the only drinks I would have for people are water, coconut water (H20’s tho), and some fire agua fresca… And oh yeah… I forgot one other thing… I invited a lot of my homies who make music and I told them to bring as much music equipment as they could. Finally, I rented a 20’ foot trailer that used to be used for horses… I wanted it set up on some Breaking Bad type shit… I wanted a trailer where we could record music… record music that would eventually turn into the album which was going to be called, 120 Acres.
This was the second time I had invited a bunch of people out to the farm for an event… The first time around didn’t have much structure so the second go-around I would need to shore up the logistics. I was really trying to through a low key music festival out in nature during the day. I told people they could puff all they wanted and eat boomers all they wanted but….. be smart… keep it away from the kids. Tony helped with figuring out where we were going to stage everything and push people towards hanging out. We needed everybody to go to our makeshift parking lot to create space for peeps to congregate. George and Kevin helped in a major way with the food. Lining everything up, negotiating pricing, figuring out how much food to get… it all takes time and space.
It also takes a lot of coordination. A lot of chasing… But I’m used to… To build something beautiful you need to have a lot of hard work and hopefully a little bit of magic that turns that idea into something real. I told everybody that we would be working on Trent’s album, 120 Acres that weekend. This was going to be a new beat tape inspired by our time out in Escondido on Tony and Liz’s property…. This was going to be the next music project I would be executive producing… ProducerTrentTaylor had beats for days in the stash but he needed somebody like he help get them to the world… Our beat tape, 120 Acres started production in March of this year up at The Farm.
In January of this year, I quit my 9-5 job. I was in a deep depression for 4- 5 months where I didn’t really want to see anybody… I didn’t want to talk to anybody… I didn’t want to call up a friend and go, oh hey… just wanted to let you know that I don’t sleep much and I’m doing horribly in the mind… as we get older, time is really squeezed and unfortunately, we don’t make enough time to be with our friends. The last party I threw at 120 Acres was needed… People needed to see each other… Kids needed to run around in nature…. Add in some good music, good food, solid herbals, some Haribo Gold Bears and Hi-Chews and we gooooooooooooooooooooooood….
Trent and I talked about how cool it would be if we could get some rappers out there. Trent had the beats… OhKayWhy had the beats… RND1 had the beats… REY had the beats… Crispy Akiyama had the beats… REY had bars but nobody else was rapping… So, me, Trent, and Crispy started plotting… Who could we get…. Murs? Nah… He’s chillin now… Odessa Kane? He might not be able to roll… Then Crispy said…. Wait… I got a line into Fashawn… At the drop of a dime I said, yup… Let’s rap with him…
I’ll never forget the first time I talked with Fashawn on the phone… I knew Fashawn from his album, Boy Meets World but fam… Fashawn is on a lot of dope tracks… You hear the name Fashawn and you say one thing… dope rapper…. So here I was on the phone with Fashawn inviting him to 120 Acres to come kick it with a bunch of total strangers. And then… wait… what? HE WAS DOWN??? A day or two before, something came up but for a few days I was tripping out that we would have Fash joining us… I just told him to come out and vibe with us at 120 Acres…. When he wasn’t able to come, we talked about how to keep this connection going… And in March, I locked down a CRAZY feature for ProducerTrentTaylor’s album, 120 Acres. FASHAWN WOULD BE ON OUR PROJECT?!?!?!?
120 Acres that weekend was dope… It went off so smoothly… Roughly 50 - 60 peeps out vibing with the music and being cool with no drama for a weekend… Sure Trapper Loc fell on his skater trying to bomb the sketchiest hill but other than that, we all left there in great shape mentally… Or at least we all had a dope night/weekend to reflect back on. That’s dope! But now we had this rap feature from Fashawn… And it just happened that Fash was from Fresno and Crispy lived not too far away in Hanford, CA. Crispy was throwing his 4th annual Skate Block Party and Trent was gonna roll… I always go big with the thoughts… I hit Fashawn and talked through getting him to headline Crispy’s party… He was down! So now, we had a feature confirmed from Fash and a performance at a skate park in Crispy’s hometown of Hanford. The fact that Crispy looked up to Fash when he was coming up just made it that much cooler… So, I packed my bags, hit the road, and was gone… Trent and I drove to Hanford in the middle of May…
I took Trent to hang with Trap while Crispy was setting up the event that night. I then stayed on the road so I could go pick up Fash’s cousin named Tim… His name was Tim… My name is Tim… Cool foundation right? I ended up driving to the wrong house… I was definitely not at Tim’s house… I called Fash and he was like bro, you’re at the wrong address, get out of there… Then I mozied down the road and eventually pulled up to pick up a total stranger… Out the house came Tim… We dapped up and started mobbing listening to some tunes… You probably don’t know Tim… That’s good though… You’re about to see that T.A. The Handful is a special talent out of Fresno. He was a sick pen game… He can skate… He’s a funny dude… I’m stoked to call him my homie now… Here’s T.A the Handful so you can see what up….
T.A. quickly learned that I never have any idea where I am going… We were both hungry so met up with Fash at a restaurant that he suggested… T.A. and I were there eating the crispiest chips into the best fresh salsa you’ve ever had… Then, after like 12 minutes, it was like both of the front doors open and Fash just cruised through like the wind… Wearing the flyest shit I had ever seen… He was 2 steppin into this late lunch cool as fuckkkkkkkkkkkk… we grubbed… we were simply shooting the shit… Then we split up, and would later reconvene at the skate park where T.A. would perform a few tracks and so would Fash…
All this time that we spent rapping on the phone had now leveled up with us all meeting in person… I now had 2 features for Trent… Fashawn and his cousin, T.A. The Handful… Dope… We’re building! That following day was Saturday and both Fash and T.A. would be coming over to our makeshift studio in the living room in our airbnb in Visalia, CA. We had the skate block party… it was so dope… Fashawn grabbed the mic and the sun was going down while he was rapping over ALC beats that he had songs to… wow… this is crazy… and then what happens? of course… a big fight breaks out over dumb shit… yup… show done… At that moment, Hanford, CA became HANDSFORD, CA and me, Trent, OhKayWhy, Fash, T.A. The Handful, and Trapper Loc started building a bond. A bond that would only get stronger when we would meet up to do our rapper shit the following day.
That next day was a day I will never forget… We all linked up later in the morning… We had a good crew… I went to grab Fash and T.A. and Crispy and Trent set up the studio in the living room… While we only had a commitment for one feature from Fashawn and one feature from T.A., I think we all collectively knew there could be something here… Trent had beats lined up he couldn’t wait for Fashawn to here… But we didn’t to further build our friendships before the magic could happen.
We completed 4 songs in one day… Yeah… 4 SONGS IN ONE DAY! We all got to experience something special that weekend. It was Crispy having that event… It was Crispy even knowing Fashawn in the first place… Or having his number… It was Trent having these beats… It was me giving zero fux and ready to go foot on the gas if I felt the opportunity was right… I knew Trent had CRAZY beats… I knew Fashawn had CRAZY bars… It was that weekend we knew we had 4 Fash verses now to build with.
That impromptu recording session went down in mid-May… Following the tracks that were laid down then, we just kept building… 120 Acres had morphed away from a beat tape from Trent… Now we had a rap album on our hands… Trent on the beats… Fash on some rhymes… T.A on some rhymes… Crispy on the engineering… REY on a feature… Okay… we cooking…
So much transpired in the last few months… fam… We got a Odessa Kane feature… We got a Scarub feature… We got a Chris Crack feature… We got a Reverie feature… We got The Grouch to come through… Blu on that track with The Grouch and Fashawn? Yup… run it… SADGALNINA on a track… Lay Law Big Rob on a track… Eligh on a track… People are starting to call me crazy with all of these features… Yup… I am… Propaganda on a track… Vel Nine on a track… My homie Errol Reifman playing guitar on a track??? We have a music video? We have our album cover done by Thrilla Krew? I got family and homies working on building the Mid90s brand??? WE COOOOOOOOOOOOKINGGGG!
The album drops tonight… In preparation for the drop, I wanted to put together a YOU OWE US WITH INTEREST playlist… This is all tracks from Trent, tracks from Fash, and then tracks from our features on the project… get familiar… we about to wrecking ball this shit tonight….