Rasheed Jamal

Rasheed Jamal Washington, is an American rapper, songwriter, and actor better known by his stage name, Rasheed Jamal. Rasheed has released various projects, albums, and singles including 2012’s My Beautiful Ugly and 2015’s SANKOFA both of which received critical acclaim. Following the release of SANKOFA, Rasheed was nominated as Best New Artist in the Willamette Week News Paper in 2015. He founded an artistic collective known as FRSH TRB Republic in the winter of 2011 with the help of Glenn Waco and Mic Capes who together are known as The Resistance. Best known for his dextrous and dense word play, Rasheed has a gift for being able to entertain while conveying a sense of intellectual dialogue on bouncy and bass driven music. Born (February 10th, 1987) in Hot Springs, AR, he drew early musical inspiration from his jazz, gospel and blues festivals his Mother, Father, and Uncles took him to as well as music that played around the house. In an effort to continuously celebrate the heritage of hip-hop, Rasheed often samples the rhymes, song titles, or album titles of rappers he studied. As a self described, “Student of the Game,” he strives to connect dots in the culture. “I’m like a rap anthropologist when I write sometimes” he laughs. With a style and subject matter that has drawn comparisons to Tupac Shakur, Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Big KRIT, and other iconic musicians by fans and music critics alike, Rasheed takes this is stride and tends to focus on being in his own lane of creativity and pushing himself with each release. His latest offering entitled, Mystery School, Vol. 1: 22 Grams (The Language Of The Unheard), also known as 22 Grams for short, is a testament of the experience of the Young Black Male in modern day America given from the perspective of the “Soul” as the main character in the narrative. A project that has been a few years in the making will be the first of a trilogy of offerings beginning in the Spring of 2017. There is also a short book that will accompany the projects as well. Rasheed looks up to many different artists, but attributes the basis of his inspiration to three in particular. "Tupac Shakur has been the most inspirational to me emotionally, Outkast has been the most inspirational creatively and Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor gave me the confidence to find my own voice and to stop hiding my intelligence, not only on my records, but in my day to day life," Rasheed says. You can sense all of these influences when listening to his music, but hints of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, B.G., T.I., UGK, Three 6 Mafia, No Limit Records and Houston based rap label Swishahouse can also be heard, as he studied these artists as well while coming up in the game. With current music being nothing like it used to be, Rasheed has still taken a fancy to some lesser-known groups, like Ibeyi and The Internet, and to some bigger ones like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Flying Lotus. He's got quite the hope for what's to come, saying, "It's a dope time to be a musician because the game changes everyday.” He can be found at www.rasheedjamal.com and across social media platforms @RememberAlwayz. A true Artist that seeking the Truth to tell you the Truth... Play my music like I died.