Hold On: brandUn DeShay

First up was me introducing Mike Dreams on my blog, but y'all should already know this cat. I've been the biggest fan of his from the very first beat of his song "Go Fly a Kite" that played on his MySpace once I curiously clicked on his Blogger profile from a comment on a Charles Hamilton blog post. He's one of the most original and insanely witty emcees in the rap game today and has a genius ear for production. And when I say genius, I really mean it. The sounds that he creates, whether with sampling or his monstrously original keyboard skills, are simply incomparable to any other beat crafter in the game. But he doesn't make beats, he makes compositions. He'll make sure and remind everyone of that. And he's agreed to contribute to my "Hold On" remix. He's brandUn DeShay.

brandUn's from Chicago, my favorite hip hop breeding ground at the moment, but he has aspirations for the L.A. limelight. But I don't care where he's setting up residence as long as he's got a project in the works. Like I said earlier, I looked up to the dude creatively from the second that I first heard his music, but on top of that, he was the first emcee who ever reached out to collaborate with me. I put up my MySpace Music page a good while back and those original songs weren't quite the smoothest tracks, to say the least. But once I friend-requested brandUn, we struck up good convos right then and there and he had confidence in my rhymes enough to lend me some beats. Just because. Now that's a good dude right there. Two of the tracks on my iTunes album ("Hannabella" & "Kinda Fly") were produced by this man and he even lent the only rapping feature on the whole project. So I feel indebted to him over this music stuff forever. An additional two joints on my pre-album EP ("Behind the Mirror" & fOR No one") were exclusive compos from him.

If you don't have this man's entire catalogue of his young career, then you need it. There's no way around it because I absolutely swear that there's a song that he's crafted that you'll find was written for your life. This dude makes "feel good" music without a hint of corniness. His flow is straight powerful and his metaphors are as purely dense and beautiful as you'll find. Simply put, he raps better than your favorite rapper and produces better than your favorite producer. So I'm crazy glad that we get to extend our collaboration catalogue onto this new epic remix. So if you ain't already recognized that ... recognize that. And hold on.

brandUn DeShay -
Volume: One! for the Money
Volume: Two! for the Show
The Sup3r DeShay: The EP
Blog - MySpace - Facebook - Twitter

... but do take my word for it.