i know there was a Brainwash fan on this board somewhere,so heres his bio....
Brainwash was born Kevin Hansford, 11/10/77, in Virginia... At age 2, he & his mother moved to Florida where Brainwash would eventually aquire a taste for music, playing the drums in a school band. At age 9, they relocated to Stockton, California and it was there that Brainwash made a name for himself...
By 1989, Brainwash had taken up rapping as a favorite hobby. He joined a group called Stockton 187 with some other rappers from school: Gangsta-D, T-Spoon, Boss, A-Bomb, Gonzo, Walnutt & KG. The group recorded underground tapes & sold them at school and from the school bus, making a name for themselves in a town still unheard of in the music business. As time progressed, it was clear that the other members of the group weren't taking it too seriously, so Brainwash decided to "go solo" and began making his own songs, recording three underground tapes, "Welcome 2 Stockton", "Polterguiest" & "Death Around The Corner", all with horrible sound & quality, using terrible & cheap equipment. But there was talent somewhere buried beneath the hideous quality & as Brainwash watched T-Spoon, Gonzo, A-Bomb, KG & Gangsta-D all go to prison for charges ranging from murder to carjacking and seeing friend Walnutt & Plan-B die over the course of the next few years, Brainwash decided to get serious & make his hobby a career before he ended up like the rest of his circle of friends; dead or in prison.
In 1993, Brainwash hooked up with another underground rapper, Koid, and the two of them began working together. They were using a studio in Northside Stockton when they met another up & coming rap duo, Black Rhino, who Braimwash & Koid began to collaborate with as well. By 1996, Brainwash was in a professional, digital recording studio finishing up his debut CD, "Skitsofrenic", a gangsta-rap/horror-rap combination piece featuring guest performances from Koid & Black Rhino, as well as production from soon-to-be Bay Area super-producer Crazy-8, as well as himself. The end result was an original & trendsetting underground classic, featuring hits like "Slippin' In The Darkness" & the controverisal "Russian Roulette", a song in which Brainwash kills himself at the end of & one which started a rumor throughout the town of Stockton that Brainwash was really dead.
That year, Brainwash also formed his X-A-Q Shunn Muzick record company & mass produced 2,000 copies of "Skitsofrenic" and hit the road, stopping at every record store from L.A. to Washington state, personally placing his music in the stores with consignment deals & with nothing more than word-of-mouth promotion, the units began selling out. Brainwash established himself with a strong & loyal local fan base and laid the foundation for what would become his Sykadelik Entertainment company.
Following the sucess of "Skitsofrenic", Brainwash recieved a phone call from independent filmmaker Ronny Wyatt, who's credits also include writing for TV shows like "Married with Children" & "Saturday Night Live". Wyatt asked to use "Slippin' In The Darkness" in his upcoming indy movie and also wondering if Brainwash would want to audition for a minor role in the picture. Brainwash showed up to the casting call & not only impressed Wyatt, he changed the production line-up & ended up being cast as the movie's lead, a spoiled, wanna-be thug & troubled youth named Quasi. Brainwash also performed two other songs for the soundtrack, including the movie's title cut, "Lost".
"Lost", the movie, was hailed by independent movie critics as an excellent film, the highlight being Brainwash's debut acting performance. The film was also showcased in many international film festivals, including the prestigious Ed Wood Memorial Film & Video Festival.
In 1998, Brainwash decided to try his own hand at filmmaking. He recruited friends, family & some of the stars from "Lost" as well, and began work on his debut movie-making project, "Smoked Out", a comedy about a couple of losers who want nothing more than to get high all day. Aside from writing, directing & producing the film, Brainwash also co-starred in the movie as Kevin, a trash-talking lightwieght who convienently passes out in several scenes (Brainwash had a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do on this low-budget feature, so he couldn't actually be in too many scenes himself). Brainwash also performed over 30 songs for the soundtrack as well, and performed nearly every backstage duty on the film set, from running the cameras to supplying the catering to taking the still photographs for the movie's cover-box.
"Smoked Out" was another sucess for Brainwash, and won him a Best Director award at the Troy W. Skidmore Film Festival in late 1998. It is available on VHS from Sykadelik Entertainment & will soon also be available on DVD, with additional footage deleted from the film, interviews with cast & crew, music videos & behind-the-scenes looks at the making of the movie as well.
In 1999, Brainwash returned to the studio to begin working on his long-awaited follow-up album to 1996's underground classic, "Skitsofrenic". This time around, Brainwash introduced a new style of rap, which he's called "Alternative-Rap", along with a Spoken-Word Poetry style as well, combining them with his trademarked gangsta-rap & horror-rap style. He also handled nearly all the music production himself, with one track done by Bay Area super-producer j. TRU of the Fusion/Hip-Hop band Planet Mongrel. The end result was a 19-track album called "Posthumous", which also featured many of the previously unreleased songs heard in the "Smoked Out" movie. But the highlight of the project was the hit song, "Chemistry", a rap song dedicated to Brainwash's girlfriend & featuring R&B vocalist Mad-Cel on the chorus. "Chemistry" recieved local airplay & helped push copies of "Posthumous" and was subsequently released as a CD single as well.
As 2000 approached, Brainwash began work on his book of poetry, "Cocktail Napkin Poetry", and a few other music projects, but found himself the target of local police & could find little time to complete any projects in between his 15 arrests that year. Brainwash was being "brought-in" left & right by grudged police officers in the town and it wasn't long before he ended up being sentenced to serve a year in jail. He scurried to complete his "Eclectic Fusion" compilation, an experimental combination of musical genres as diverse as Rap to Jazz to Punk to Spoken-Word Poetry. The compilation was regaurded as a masterpiece for fans of versatile originality, but was unfortunately never promoted or distributed as it should have been, due to Brainwash's incarceration that year.
2001... Brainwash is released from his imprisonment with an arsenal of new material & a plate-full of upcoming projects. He has just completed "The Velvet Hour", a collection of Spoken-Word Poetry set to original backround music done completely by Brainwash himself. Fans of his work on "Eclectic Fusion" & "Posthumous" will no doubt appreciate it. For the fans more into his original rap style, Brainwash has also compiled together a collection of previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1990-2000, called "Razor Blades & Bloody Bathwater", hoping it will satisfy his fans' thirst until he can complete yet another rap-project in the works, his new album "Politics", guaranteed to be his best rap album to date.
Brainwash is also finally completing "Cocktail Napkin Poetry", as well as working on projects for Sykadelik artist Koid, on his two upcoming releases: "Left 4 Dead" & "Loved By Few, Hated By Many", as well as a collaboration project with Koid called Connected - "Twenty-Four Felonies"... Brainwash's next film project is the mafia-drama "This Thing Of Ours", which will also be released with a hard-hitting soundtrack & a written novel as well. Other projects in the near future include working with Self-Made Records rapper/vocalist Mad-Cel, jazz/fusion band Four Feet Projects, rapper Crazy-8, hip-hop band Hemp Nation, music manager-turned-comedian Vic "the Jew" Goldstien & a newly signed alternative rock band: Social Insecurity, of which Brainwash will try his hand at vocals himself.
2002 looks promising for the artist currently known as Brainwash, a man of many hats...
Brainwash was born Kevin Hansford, 11/10/77, in Virginia... At age 2, he & his mother moved to Florida where Brainwash would eventually aquire a taste for music, playing the drums in a school band. At age 9, they relocated to Stockton, California and it was there that Brainwash made a name for himself...
By 1989, Brainwash had taken up rapping as a favorite hobby. He joined a group called Stockton 187 with some other rappers from school: Gangsta-D, T-Spoon, Boss, A-Bomb, Gonzo, Walnutt & KG. The group recorded underground tapes & sold them at school and from the school bus, making a name for themselves in a town still unheard of in the music business. As time progressed, it was clear that the other members of the group weren't taking it too seriously, so Brainwash decided to "go solo" and began making his own songs, recording three underground tapes, "Welcome 2 Stockton", "Polterguiest" & "Death Around The Corner", all with horrible sound & quality, using terrible & cheap equipment. But there was talent somewhere buried beneath the hideous quality & as Brainwash watched T-Spoon, Gonzo, A-Bomb, KG & Gangsta-D all go to prison for charges ranging from murder to carjacking and seeing friend Walnutt & Plan-B die over the course of the next few years, Brainwash decided to get serious & make his hobby a career before he ended up like the rest of his circle of friends; dead or in prison.
In 1993, Brainwash hooked up with another underground rapper, Koid, and the two of them began working together. They were using a studio in Northside Stockton when they met another up & coming rap duo, Black Rhino, who Braimwash & Koid began to collaborate with as well. By 1996, Brainwash was in a professional, digital recording studio finishing up his debut CD, "Skitsofrenic", a gangsta-rap/horror-rap combination piece featuring guest performances from Koid & Black Rhino, as well as production from soon-to-be Bay Area super-producer Crazy-8, as well as himself. The end result was an original & trendsetting underground classic, featuring hits like "Slippin' In The Darkness" & the controverisal "Russian Roulette", a song in which Brainwash kills himself at the end of & one which started a rumor throughout the town of Stockton that Brainwash was really dead.
That year, Brainwash also formed his X-A-Q Shunn Muzick record company & mass produced 2,000 copies of "Skitsofrenic" and hit the road, stopping at every record store from L.A. to Washington state, personally placing his music in the stores with consignment deals & with nothing more than word-of-mouth promotion, the units began selling out. Brainwash established himself with a strong & loyal local fan base and laid the foundation for what would become his Sykadelik Entertainment company.
Following the sucess of "Skitsofrenic", Brainwash recieved a phone call from independent filmmaker Ronny Wyatt, who's credits also include writing for TV shows like "Married with Children" & "Saturday Night Live". Wyatt asked to use "Slippin' In The Darkness" in his upcoming indy movie and also wondering if Brainwash would want to audition for a minor role in the picture. Brainwash showed up to the casting call & not only impressed Wyatt, he changed the production line-up & ended up being cast as the movie's lead, a spoiled, wanna-be thug & troubled youth named Quasi. Brainwash also performed two other songs for the soundtrack, including the movie's title cut, "Lost".
"Lost", the movie, was hailed by independent movie critics as an excellent film, the highlight being Brainwash's debut acting performance. The film was also showcased in many international film festivals, including the prestigious Ed Wood Memorial Film & Video Festival.
In 1998, Brainwash decided to try his own hand at filmmaking. He recruited friends, family & some of the stars from "Lost" as well, and began work on his debut movie-making project, "Smoked Out", a comedy about a couple of losers who want nothing more than to get high all day. Aside from writing, directing & producing the film, Brainwash also co-starred in the movie as Kevin, a trash-talking lightwieght who convienently passes out in several scenes (Brainwash had a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do on this low-budget feature, so he couldn't actually be in too many scenes himself). Brainwash also performed over 30 songs for the soundtrack as well, and performed nearly every backstage duty on the film set, from running the cameras to supplying the catering to taking the still photographs for the movie's cover-box.
"Smoked Out" was another sucess for Brainwash, and won him a Best Director award at the Troy W. Skidmore Film Festival in late 1998. It is available on VHS from Sykadelik Entertainment & will soon also be available on DVD, with additional footage deleted from the film, interviews with cast & crew, music videos & behind-the-scenes looks at the making of the movie as well.
In 1999, Brainwash returned to the studio to begin working on his long-awaited follow-up album to 1996's underground classic, "Skitsofrenic". This time around, Brainwash introduced a new style of rap, which he's called "Alternative-Rap", along with a Spoken-Word Poetry style as well, combining them with his trademarked gangsta-rap & horror-rap style. He also handled nearly all the music production himself, with one track done by Bay Area super-producer j. TRU of the Fusion/Hip-Hop band Planet Mongrel. The end result was a 19-track album called "Posthumous", which also featured many of the previously unreleased songs heard in the "Smoked Out" movie. But the highlight of the project was the hit song, "Chemistry", a rap song dedicated to Brainwash's girlfriend & featuring R&B vocalist Mad-Cel on the chorus. "Chemistry" recieved local airplay & helped push copies of "Posthumous" and was subsequently released as a CD single as well.
As 2000 approached, Brainwash began work on his book of poetry, "Cocktail Napkin Poetry", and a few other music projects, but found himself the target of local police & could find little time to complete any projects in between his 15 arrests that year. Brainwash was being "brought-in" left & right by grudged police officers in the town and it wasn't long before he ended up being sentenced to serve a year in jail. He scurried to complete his "Eclectic Fusion" compilation, an experimental combination of musical genres as diverse as Rap to Jazz to Punk to Spoken-Word Poetry. The compilation was regaurded as a masterpiece for fans of versatile originality, but was unfortunately never promoted or distributed as it should have been, due to Brainwash's incarceration that year.
2001... Brainwash is released from his imprisonment with an arsenal of new material & a plate-full of upcoming projects. He has just completed "The Velvet Hour", a collection of Spoken-Word Poetry set to original backround music done completely by Brainwash himself. Fans of his work on "Eclectic Fusion" & "Posthumous" will no doubt appreciate it. For the fans more into his original rap style, Brainwash has also compiled together a collection of previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1990-2000, called "Razor Blades & Bloody Bathwater", hoping it will satisfy his fans' thirst until he can complete yet another rap-project in the works, his new album "Politics", guaranteed to be his best rap album to date.
Brainwash is also finally completing "Cocktail Napkin Poetry", as well as working on projects for Sykadelik artist Koid, on his two upcoming releases: "Left 4 Dead" & "Loved By Few, Hated By Many", as well as a collaboration project with Koid called Connected - "Twenty-Four Felonies"... Brainwash's next film project is the mafia-drama "This Thing Of Ours", which will also be released with a hard-hitting soundtrack & a written novel as well. Other projects in the near future include working with Self-Made Records rapper/vocalist Mad-Cel, jazz/fusion band Four Feet Projects, rapper Crazy-8, hip-hop band Hemp Nation, music manager-turned-comedian Vic "the Jew" Goldstien & a newly signed alternative rock band: Social Insecurity, of which Brainwash will try his hand at vocals himself.
2002 looks promising for the artist currently known as Brainwash, a man of many hats...
Props:
Freeway Rich
