Brash - Exit 6 [Album Spotlight] | @brashhiphop

I just finished listening to the latest project from Connecticut artist Brash titled "Exit 6". He touches on a variety of subjects including grinding as an independent artist, the essence of hip hop and how money isn't what makes you a dope emcee. We see a ton of influence in the 90's boom bap era and storytelling isn't a problem for Brash. His braggadocios lyricism over knockin' beats does compliment each other.  It was definitely a decent listen! 

"Every emcee sits at home growing famous" - Rewind

Brash is Chris Rapple, a working class artist and general shlub from the South East Corner of Connecticut. He grew up skateboarding, listening to a lot of music, and didn’t have the standard model home life that most people had. Chris is a self taught guitarist and a jazz drummer, who now creates hiphop music under the aforementioned pseudonym. He has been active as Brash since 2005, though he had been playing shows as a drummer with a variety of bands beforehand.

After being signed to a local label that was beginning to fail, Brash struck out on his own to form Aeon Audio, the first attempt in a long time to create some kind of cohesiveness for Connecticut based hip-hop artists. His album, Mind Flex, is set to be released June 21st, 2o11, acting as the flagship record for the label. The music reflects the middle-ground Brash inhabits, with topics ranging from skateboarding, to growth as an artist, to journeys through his strange mind. It isn’t always positive, but nothing real is.

Brash comes from the South East corner of Connecticut, the product of a broken family that had split when he was 12. Learning to play instruments, and learning musicianship in a variety of bands, helped him find his love of hip-hop in the mid 90s, after hearing KRS ONE’s “Step Into a World,” on a cassette that his friend had given him. He then dove into the culture head first as a fan, digging back into the recent past and learning from the great golden-era poets that helped fuse rap music into mainstream culture. While attempting to find success in bands that constantly fell apart as fast as they came together, Brash continued to pursue his writing talents, and eventually his two art forms met up with each other, in the form of lyricism.

Brash’s first album is a lyrically intensive work, a product from doing things the right way in hip-hop, instead of chasing after a short buzz for an eventual go-nowhere outcome. He has production contributed for this album from Domingo (Produced for Big Pun, KRS ONE, Kool G Rap), Benefit, Blacastan, Colombeyond, Kajmir Royal (Produced for DMX, De La Soul, Crooked I), DJ Dyslexic , Teddy Roxpin, Mr. Green (Producer/collaborator with Pacewon), and Anno Domini (Produced for Jedi Mind Tricks). With some of the most elite local talent to work with, Brash is representing Connecticut as someone willing to put his own neck on the line to get us on the map.