UglyFace

A scrunched-up nose. An exaggerated twist of the lips. You feel it on your face before it
happens. The moment the bass drops and rattles your rearview mirror. The clever line that takes
a verse from great to legendary. The perfect sample. The catchiest hook. The hardest drums.
That visceral moment embodies UglyFace, the chosen collective moniker of four childhood
friends - Aaron Temple, Andre Moseley, Aric Jones, and Kevin Fartella - turned rap group.
The crew’s story begins in Tracy, CA--the third city in a nearly equilateral Bay Area triangle that
includes Oakland and Sacramento. Initially, the four members were in the same orbit, attending
high school together, but the stars wouldn’t wholly align until years later. Aaron and Andre knew
each other before high school, but there were various degrees of separation between everyone.
“In high school, we were all in different programs. So I never had a class or lunch with Kevin, but
me and Andre were usually on the same lunch,” says Aaron. “And I had classes with Aric's older
brother.” Andre connected between Aaron, who was the first member of the group to start
rapping, and Kevin, who had a budding reputation as a producer. Aaron was friends with Aric’s
roommate and got to know him better by hanging out at his spot. As more conversations took
place, more connective tissue formed.
While that didn’t immediately lead to them joining forces as a group, it created a lifelong bond
that remained solid even as they all moved to different parts of the country. The most confident
and determined to make it of the bunch, Aric moved to Los Angeles and set up shop as a
musical jack-of-all-trades.
“I was investing my time and money into more equipment. My whole thing was, it's a whole lot of
artists in L.A.. So this artist over here, they need beats. Cool. I'm finna make you some beats,
but I’ma charge you for it,” Aric recalls. “Another person says, ‘I need someone to record me.’
Cool. I'm going to record you while I make this person over here’s beats, but I’m finna charge
you for it. While at the same time I'm doing my own thing. My whole M.O. is I make time for
music. Fuck everything else.”
Andre moved to Atlanta and spent time working in the legendary Patchwerk Recording Studios.
There, he refined his musical tastes and interests by watching others work on their respective
crafts. “I've seen the great artists and I've seen not-so-great, so I know what we're capable of,”
he says. Aaron went to New York, and Kevin stayed home in Tracy. And it kind of makes sense
that Kevin remained grounded in the group’s hometown, while Aaron, Aric, and Andre found
themselves in the three biggest hubs for hip-hop. Kevin is the gravitational pull that keeps the
crew from floating too far away from one another and the impetus for bringing everyone back
together to pursue music again in a serious way. “I just think that one day Kevin on his own
decided that it was time to do something.” says Aaron. “I would say like over a span of my whole
time in New York, there were maybe a few conversations where I'm saying ‘Bro, we gotta get
back together’ or whatever. And Kevin was kind of silent, you know? Then another convo and
another convo. One day, out of the blue, he was like, ‘Hey, you ready? I hope you're ready
because we’re about to do this.”

While everyone stayed connected, sending beats, verses, and projects in various states of
completion back and forth via email over the years, they never fully locked back in together. It
took a global pandemic for the four men to reevaluate everything and remind themselves of
what was really important. “COVID played a big part in it, especially when it first hit, because
you didn't know what was about to happen,” recalls Kevin. “And so you start thinking about
everything. I wasn't really happy commuting 3-4 hours a day. What made me the happiest was
spending time with my family and doing music. And so I just felt like I owed it to myself to get
back to that.” As he had more conversations with the rest of the group, it became increasingly
clear that everyone else felt the same way. “Everyone was kind of going through the same thing.
And it just kind of brought us all back together. It just felt really natural,” says Kevin.
In summer 2020, UglyFace was reawakened. With Kevin as the sonic architect of the crew, Aric
embodying the group’s swagger and confidence, Aaron as the heart and de facto leader, and
Andre playing dual roles as the wisest and funniest in the crew along with being a rapper and
singer, UglyFace is becoming what it was always meant to be.
And while Aaron, Andre, Aric, and Kevin all have different strengths, they all are focused on
helping each other be at their best. “I think that a lot of our soon to be success and what
success we've had is going to be rooted in the fact that we all want to see each other win,” says
Andre. “I've worked with a lot of other artists. There's certain things you can't fake. You can't
fake a brotherhood. You can’t fake synergy,” agrees Aaron.
So how did they do it? After all of these years, what kept the group from fully separating and
never coming back? “We all came together because we were childhood friends who happened
to be dope at something., says Andre. “So, I think the key to everything is us coming back
around one another and realizing that ‘Oh shit’ there was some evolution happening when we
were away from one another. So now we came back like the Justice League together.”