Born Legends : iSOUND.COM™

Biography

Biography

Name: Ashanti Shabaka Wenham

Mc name: Dadda

Producer Name: P.I.A.T (Putting it all together)

Dj name: Shantz

Group name: Street Legends/ Born Legends

I first started rapping when I was 13 years old after some older friends said they were going to start a group. This group did not really take off as we did'nt have the facilities or opportunities as we have now. I started writing again when I left secondary school and went to college.

In 1999 I took part in a 4 week course called Summer Youth Express(star search) which was developed by Mark Morrison. I was trained in understanding breathing excercises, basic understanding of the link between vowel sounds, confidence building and technique, voice training and performance, basic dance movements. I took the initiative to use my rapping Skills to write a song called "stand tall". At the end of the of the 4 week course there was a staged performance which was recorded on to video tape. I performed Stand tall to the Nas instrumental tune 'Street Dreams'. My music back then was inspired by my life in general and what was going on in the world.

In 2000 I completed a training project for interviewing, media and radio. The aim of the project was to develop a radio station to go on air in August '00. I was trained in music technology. I created jingles for the radio station using Audio logic. At the end of the training programme, Juice Fm broadcast for a month. During my invovlvement in Class A we were interviewed on, Juice FM

I was in the group called Class A between 2000 and 2002. My participation within the group was MCing. The music we were making was a fuse of Hip Hop and garage made on the playstation. We performed at several different functions including star search judged by Mark Morrison in 2000, BBC music live in the Leicester city centre in May 2001 and a few open mic nights held at small venues in and around Leicester. I started making beats on the playstation game called music 2000. I mastered this by watchin a friend. In the summer of 2001 we decided to send our demo to record labels and it was probably about a year later that we were blessed with the chance to sign a contract with Mo' wax/ Platinum projects and a Universal publishing deal. A few months after dealing with the label I decided to leave the group for personal reasons.

At the same time I was leaving Class A, I decided to purchase some proper equipment ( music pc, cubase, mixer, micraphone etc ) and carry on making music on my own. I began by practicing to make perfect but it was a while before I made anything that I was pleased with, and this was all before I invested in some VST instruments such as HALion.

I am part of a group with two other masters of ceremonies. Yohannes a.k.a Tubu who is my brother and My cousin Melenik a.k.a millo mena. We got together in 2003. The main stage of our group was having the opportunity to perform on a TV show called, No Blings. No blings is a show for Unsigned artist who want to show off their talent. I have a videotape of the perfomance which was filmed in London. We went on the following year to organise a video shoot. The video was shot in Leicester. We had four scenes, one of the scenes included a dance routine put together by four professional dancers, the dancers were my sister a.k.a Lady swoosh, my cousin and a family friend kish.

I am currently working on my fourth solo album. My first album written and produced by myself is called "Give a Damn". Since it was my first album it was based on my life concerning teachings from the bible. The second album "The Books" continued the search of answers to modern day problems. On the third album I was experimenting with new sounds and trying to explain what I had read in the Quran. I designed the front cover for my albums using digital photos in photoshop. I have qualifications in art & design and photography and hope to go back to college to further my knowledge of music technology and the buisness side of music.

Also at the moment I have entered the street beats remix competition The winner will have their work included on a forthcoming Sony/BMG release.