The music of Hashbrown is uncategorizable."experimental folk-soul".sometimes hip-hop.at other times, rock'n'roll. All parts of all songs are played by him. He can be found performing with a loop pedal and a bass guitar, keyboards, tom-and-snare-drum combo, percussion, and anything that makes noise as a one-man band. (See videos at www.youtube.com/ButterInChicago.) After years of appearing on countless underground hip-hop releases, Hashbrown is currently recording songs for his first solo release (to be released in spring 2011). / / /
Hashbrown:::one-man band (formerly Ben Butter) is a musician, hip-hop lyricist, DJ, graphic artist, poet, and high school teacher-by-day who has improvised live with Donald Byrd, opened for Nikki Giovanni, facilitated Chicago community murals, recorded with Galapagos4, competed in National Poetry Slams, won rap battles, taught DJing professionally, been solicited to freestyle on stage and radio, blah blah blah. "I love God.I love people.I love art.I love life. Using this energy to celebrate, but educate, too. We need to have fun. At the same time, life is short.we need to grow, be responsible.and build, not destroy. That's where my music comes from." / / /
Since 1994, Hashbrown (using the name "Ben Butter") has been an artist in the independent hip-hop and poetry scenes in Chicago. From 2007-2009, Hashbrown was a vocalist in the Chicago 8-piece, acid jazz band, Vertikal, with whom he played venues all across Chicago-land (and--after being together less than a year--won 2nd place in the U.S. Finals of the 2007 Emergenza International Music Festival).
