i first heard fashawn in 2009 with his debut album, boy meets world. i bought the cd at access hip hop in san diego right on garnet street in pacific beach. this was where i fell in love with a record store back in the 00s. it was a home for me when i needed some drugs… music has always been my therapy and it’s helped keep me out of trouble since i was a kid.
at access hip hop, you could find all of the underground gems of the time. this is where the real heads would come up on stuff that all of the homies didn’t know about yet. but other than all of the dope on the shelves, there were also the in-store performances. access hip hop gave all of us the closest view of hip hop we had ever seen. and that’s why i kept going back… they were hipping me to groups like emanon which were just…. idk… different… so dope tho! emanon was made up of one dope emcee named aloe blacc and one dope producer named exile.
while i loved aloe blacc’s lyricism, flow, cadence and harmonies, it was that producer that i couldn’t take my ears off. his beats were so sharp… they sounded so clean… and the timing of him bringing samples in and switching up drum syncopation reminded me of dj shadow. but shadow never had that one mc, one producer type duo that i yearned for. emanon were a gang starr type duo to me and i bought every cassette of exile i could.
i always had rappers i would check for on features… exile was one of the first producers i had where i would look to see who he produced for. exile was always the shining symbol with his various projects over the years. as weird as it sounds, i felt like exile was my spirit animal in the hip hop game. i knew he was a white dude from cali but i knew nothing else. i just knew that he had the dope for my veins whenever i needed something to kick me out of my mind… i was always a happy smiling kid to the public eye but behind closed doors i had a hard time keeping it together. albums like exile and blu, or i guess i should say blu and exile, would help keep me from having dark thoughts. i would get lost in beats from exile and the words of the emcees he worked with spoke to me in a way that a book never could… a way that my parents never could… a way that real life experiences weren’t offering to me…. exile and blu were a ray of bright light through the blinds of my life.
because i purchased anything that had exile involved, i bought below the heavens with zero hesitation. that album cover was so fresh and exile never let my eardrums down. i first spun that compact disc on my sony discman tucked into my fresh jansport backpack back in 2007. if emanon were gang starr to me, blu and exile were nas and primo to me. blu to me was a mix of murs and ice cube with a voice that was so ill. just listen to the intro and realize that i had no idea who blu was at the time. exile leveled the fuck up and was now rolling with this new spitta who was craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
from that below the heavens album until about 2015 i listened to every blu track i could find… every verse i could find… some were unreleased tracks you could barely hear but i didn’t care… i needed it all! blu was an old jazz musician to me playing in a hip hop space that didn’t welcome the jazz rap cats with open arms. blu could care less… he wasn’t one to be boxed in. he had no ceilings…
blu was working with other producers as he had a work ethic that i don’t think any one producer could keep up with. and blu seemed to drop a new track every day… he had so much music!!!! but go back to what i’ve been saying… it was exile who was the common denominator to all of this dope. when i saw he had an instrumental project dropping in 2009, you know the drill…. cop on sight… that album cover was wild and the track “love” was wild. radio was a dope album with nothing but instrumentals… i always loved shadow but wondered why there weren’t more hip hop producers just making beats for heads to vibe to while they studies, worked, or needed to focus.
what was next from exile was something i wasn’t ready for. just 2 years after blu & exile dropped below the heavens, a new emcee out of Fresno, CA was linked up with ex. the album cover was beautiful the way that the bubbles were in floating in front of the youngster. it gave the image layers and this kid just looked so innocent… but who was this rapper named fashawn??? how is he just gonna come out the blu and drop a track like “hey young world” with aloe blacc featured… tuggin on my heart strings here… exile with the crazy beat and this young cat just seemed… idk… like you? like me? this song was so polished… a young fash and an og like aloe just seemed like a couple of cats from the rat pack. but this kid fash…. wow… i had never heard of him and he comes in like this sounding like a vet who had been in the game for 10… maybe 15. fashawn reminded me of az’s feature on “life’s a bitch” and his debut album, boy meets world is a work of art.
the beat for “why” is a top 10 of all time kinda beat for me. exile just had cut after cut… and now he had a rapper with fashawn who could stretch his words in different ways to stay on any beat. fash and ex were such an amazing duo. fash was this new strain from the farm of exile that was pumping out gas after gas. seeing that blu feature had me skipping that cd all the way to song #9 quickly… “samsonite man” didn’t let me down… fash and blu… exile… brilliance.
exile did something unfathomable. he had one of the best eyes/ears for talent out the west and he was nurturing these emcees and bringing them to the world. boy meets world was such a fitting title for the project because fashawn was like a child actor in a sense… he came out of nowhere and dropped a gem… and fam… he was from fresno… him and planet asia proved that you didn’t need to be from l.a. or the bay to be dope. fash dropped out of nowhere and was an underground rap superstar. it was only right that he was a part of xxl’s freshmen class of 2010…. check out this lineup tho….. legends.
fashawn from fresno, ca was out here with young up and comers like nipsey hussle, j. cole, wiz khalifa, freddie gibbs, jay rock, and big sean… what??!?!? fash was a beast… he wasn’t slowing down… so when you saw him and cole rockin with each other you just knew it would be dope. with the black bart simpson cover too??? this is some pure uncut type ish right here….
the blog era was wild… so many dope rappers coming out. but you had to find ways to stay ahead of the pack and fashawn’s next power move was wild… i don’t think anybody saw fash signing to mass appeal did they? follow me here… nas was mass appeal’s label and his first artist signing wasn’t from nyc. they were from fresno, ca and now this boy named fashawn really was going to meet the world. fashawn, aloe blacc, and nas on the track…. bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
and then the years became a blur but i know exactly where i was when i heard “far left”… fashawn was really rockin with the alchemist and evidence???? what????
fash got albums all over the place…. verses all over the place… dude is an addict with the mic and he’s been on that good good for hella years…. fash doesn’t miss but you haven’t been tapped in… well cmon… let’s go… left coast district on smash and the only missing link to the movement was fash.
fash is top 5 dead or alive… yup… run that shit… i've seen him with the pen… i see how fast he does this… this is wild. dude is a beast on all levels and you’re not even ready for what we got fam…
i linked up with fash a few months ago… yup… less than 4 months ago… i had trent with me because me and trent go way back and he’s nice with the beats… we knew we had a 16 from fash but i dreamed for more…. i knew trent was a good genuine dude who was ready to monster up if given the right opportunity. trent was with me when i was down so when it was time to get back to the up it was time for me and him to steady mob… this is that fashawn and producertrenttaylor shit and you don’t even know what we got…. this shit is wild…. don’t listen to me tho… listen to fash… and of course, listen to that trent beat… and keep it in mind that this was the start… trent beat with a fash verse and we got something…
but me???? if you know me, you know i’ll always roll those dice… trent knew who i wanted for the feature… so when i told him we needed ICECOLDBISHOP on the track it made him smile from ear to ear… no…. really… trent is one of the shyest cats you’ll ever meet but catch him on a good one and you see that glimmer… we ran it by fash and fash said what he always said to me… tim, you handle the features… and that’s what i did… ICECOLDBISHOP is on another level…. he’s like a superhero in the rap game. cats won’t be on his style until 3030… but for those that know what he’s got in the chamber??? fam…. hot water tank…
let’s not stop there tho….
one more…..
i believe fashawn and ICECOLDBISHOP have the talent to be 2 of the best rappers to ever do it. so putting them together is a no brainer… and to anybody that thought they knew what i was doing, you can’t follow the crumbs… there’s no paper trail… me, fash, and trent, are out to fuck up the rap world… ICECOLDBISHOP gotta be with us to accomplish this…. and you know what???? ICB murked this shit… fash murked this shit… real talk… fash wanted us to just take his verse off because of how dope ICB’s verse was… i was like, aight coo… let’s roll… then trent was like, tim….. fashawn and ICB please… here you go fam…. TICK TOCK AVAILABLE NOW WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC. TAP THE FUCK IN BECAUSE MID90S AIN’T ABOUT THAT FUK SHIT. CALIFORNIA UNDERGROUND RAP STAND UP… GRAB A PLATE CAUSE WE ALL GON EAT.