Johnny Smoke is a Billboard chart topping producer, John Lennon Award winning songwriter, artist and founder of DEAD|END KIDS record label in Los Angeles. He has also gained recognition working as a producer for OWSLA/Atlantic, Nickelodeon, Scooter Braun, Universal Pictures, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and more. Originally from New York, Johnny began his musical career as a rap artist in the 80’s. Influenced heavily by the rebellious nature of Hip Hop and Punk, he began performing at the age 11 and advanced to sharing stages with his band The Basiqs opening for national artists Ghostface & Raekwon (Wu Tang), Talib Kweli, Mary J. Blige, The Roots and more. At 19 he was briefly signed to Quincy Jones’ label Qwest/Warner Records as “GAGE”. A name he would continue to use as a producer up until his first solo release in 2020.
His self titled LP “Johnny Smoke” is his first individual project and is less an album and more an “8 panel sonic art piece”. “Working as a producer in the music industry I started to pay closer attention to how the commercialization of music into a consumer product has created false expectations around how we define music. For me it’s not about classification. It’s about the overall ride. The emotion and feeling from start to finish” says Johnny. Johnny speaks from a place of embracing imperfection and accepting the negative aspects of ourselves. The entire project full of hidden musical gems and is produced, written, performed, and engineered by Johnny himself. On the track Fade II Black he debuts his singing abilities capturing the emotion he was feeling while in the streets protesting police brutality. The song Novocain was produced using binaural audio where pieces of the song are specifically placed around you in 3D space to create what Johnny calls “an audio short film”. In addition to being a creative force, Johnny is an activist and is donating 100% of all record and streaming sales to the ACLU. Check it out now on your preferred digital streaming services.
Tracklisting
- Smoke Up Johnny
- Wonderland
- Picasso
- Fade II Black
- High How R U
- F@ck Em feat. Mr. Sin
- Off the Leash feat. Bobbi Rich
- Novocain
