The musicians in Crown City Rockers developed their chops at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, but soon met up with Pasadena transplant Raashan Ahmad. Ahmad must have filled the East Coaster's heads with sunny Cali skies, coz the whole crew - Headnodic, Kat, Woodstock, Max and Raashan - are reppin' Oakland these days, where they released their first full-length album earthtones in 2004. There hasn't been a Crown City Rockers release since, but lately I've been hearing about individual projects from the crew's members. I looked into it and found out that Kat and Raashan each have solo albums out (or on the way) while Headnodic is actively involved in a side project with Gift of Gab (Blackalicious) and Lateef the Truthspeaker (Latyrx & the Maroons) called The Mighty Underdogs. Here's the info plus links for the 3 side projects:
Raasham Ahmad's debut solo album is called The Push and it hits the streets on May 20th. The first single "Weight/The Push" is out now. More info at CrownCityRockers.com
Kat O1O released her debut solo instrumental album last year. It's called Natural Phenomenons and there's loads of info available on her page of CrownCityRockers.com.
The Mighty Underdogs released their 1st EP in March of this year. It's titled The Prelude and features guest appearances by MF Doom (at least we think it was him...), DJ Shadow and Ladybug Mecca. More info at Amazon.com
Cool bio/history/interviews with Crown City Rockers, including where they got the name:
My Trusted MOGs
I like what they're up to. Earlier today I was digging some of their sounds off their myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/crowncity
My Trusted MOGs
dag. these guys are good. can't believe they're so close.
My Trusted MOGs
Sweet! Heard of Crown City Rockers before but hadn't had a chance to check out their sound.