Von Graves

What happens when a group of talented people team up and put a group together? Probably the answer to that can be found in Team Yizzo and their latest release, Eat. Love. Pray.

There are lots of things we would immediately notice and that would catch our attention, such as the tracks and the influences. There are awesome similarities up to a point, for example, in “The Fix” and “Zone II,” where it’s almost impossible not to identify some Wiz Khalifa and Kanye West vibe in it. At the same time, other songs, such as “The Chase” go more along the line of acts like T. I…. cool piano, background vocals, and, of course, the drum beats make each track pretty special.

As for the vibe, that’s something that’s also diverse. First of all, considering that there’s more than one artist and musician, each one brings his own style and flow to the songs. We can find a combination of old school and new techniques and technologies of this century. This makes it more interesting.

Lyrically, the album also discusses lots of subjects, including hate, love, pain, healing, redemption, vengeance and retaliation, tears of both love and joy, and it all takes place in a crude and realistic environment. Shall we call it the other side of the coin?

In conclusion, the production and arrangements have been well made and worked. The stories and pretty much everything we hear in this album make it entertaining and easy to listen to, but for many hard to swallow. This is, in short, not your average hip hop record from today. - Vents Magazine

Who’s Team Yizzo?

CG: Team Yizzo, on the artist end, consists of myself (CG), Slife Barrow, Dolo Brown, Fre$h, and Taj Torrence. There’s a lot more to our organization than just our artists though; we have a huge group of people that work behind the scenes such as producers, videographers, graphic designers, artist managers, PR interns, etc. As a unit we all make up YIZZO. We’re really a bunch of free spirits that just want to make dope stuff, whether that be music, videos, whatever. We’re just trying to bring some positive energy, peace, love, and passion back to music. With all the darkness going on in the music industry, we really try to stray away from that and keep the balance. We value creativity and the freedom to do so, in an entertaining way because at the end of the day that’s all it really is anyway, entertainment, even though we take it very seriously. We want to inspire the youth of our generation to do the same.



How did you guys get came together and created this band?

CG: I think the misinterpretation about us is that we are a group, and that’s true, in a sense, but we are individual artists that really admire each other’s craft and creativity, so much that we decided to come together to make something much bigger than any one of us… like Mega-tron or Captain Planet. When we first started out it was just myself rapping and Dolo. Slife went to high school with us so once we started rapping he got curious and started rapping too. Since we were broke kids we didn’t have a lot of money to keep spending on videos and new beats so we started in-housing everything ourselves to save money in the long run. Instead of paying for videos we invested in a camera and started doing our own. Dolo started teaching himself how to mix and master our own music. Taj Torrence was already producing and rapping at the time and I was editing videos–that became our niche. Everyone of us can do more than just one thing, we’re multitalented which gives us a lot more control over our craft. We can really get our vision out exactly how we want it to be.



What’s the story behind the group’s name?

CG: When I was in high school my cousin played for Pitt and they recruit heavy out of the NY/Jersey area so that word (Yizzo) would float around the locker room a lot. I started using it in songs and it eventually just stuck with me, so when I started forming our organization it was a no-brainer. What I found dope about it was that it had no concrete meaning or definition, kind of like us. It is what we make it.



What are your music influences?

CG: I think what’s unique about us is that we’re all influenced by different things like artists, films, and even different art genres. Dolo is really into Tarantino, Scorsese, and Anime flicks so his sound is a lot more brash, animated, and gritty. Slife is influenced by Nas and Pharrell, but he actually draws and has this sketch book he carries with him so his music is very visual. I (CG) read a lot so my music is more introspective, I’m a story teller and I really tried to push the boundaries with this on my latest project EGOII. Taj not only raps, he also produces, but we don’t know which one he’s better at because he’s great at both.

You can hear in his music that he greatly influenced by popular culture and the world around him. Fre$h, being the southern swag rapper of the team, is heavily influenced by his Florida roots and the music of southern hustlers which can be heard in his latest project “wonUP”.



What’s your method at the time of writing a song?

CG: We really take our time on our individual projects. I have only 3 projects in 3 and a half years so far, but as a collective we feed off of each other and can finish projects pretty quickly, that’s how TOYS (The Official Yizzo Saturday) and Champloo were created. Those two projects were done in about a week or two each. We sat up and watched anime cartoons and different films and drew inspiration from those. Because we live in such a visual era now, it only makes sense to draw musical inspiration off of something as visual as a movie, or cartoon series. Growing up we were all into epic cartoons like Dragon Ball Z. These guys were our heroes in yet they weren’t people you could bump into at the mall or anything like that, they were make believe characters. It forced kids to use their imaginations, dream, and believe. That’s the same energy that we want to display with our music. We want people to use their imaginations, dream, and believe everything they see and hear on the song and in the videos, even if it’s just until the song is finished.



EGOII: EAT. LOVE. PRAY and No Love Lost. How it has been the recording and writing process? How you guys came out with the album’s title? Any release date yet in mind?

CG: Well EGOII was a year and a half process. I was taking creative writing courses here at Ohio University and really tried to use everything within my English major alo - Vents Magazine

Fre$h, an emcee with ties to both Florida and Ohio, is back to work after coming off of the recent drop of The WonUp mixtape in late August. First off, huge shout out to Fre$h for being so cooperative after some technical difficulties occurred during the interview. Everything was quickly sorted out and the interview produced a lot of valuable information.

During the interview, Fre$h talked about the standards he sets for himself, in all aspects, his experiences playing Division I basketball at Ohio University, his transition into a becoming full-time artist, and his involvement with Team Yizzo.

Fre$h also mentioned how he was influenced by both rock and southern hip hop, his current place in the hip hop industry, and potentially working on a project with Cardo.

So I see you’re in LA right now, what are you working on?

Fre$h: This EP right now, I’m gonna title it To The Left Side.

What inspired that title?

Fre$h: Just the decision to move out here to California, that’s what it’s based on.

Alright, cool. Where are you from originally?

Fre$h: Melbourne, Florida. Like, 30 minutes east of Orlando.

So The WonUp mix tape dropped about a month ago. So, did you just jump straight back into everything or did you take a little time just to enjoy the benefits and all that?

Fre$h: Aw nah, I feel like that wasn’t really nothing to enjoy because I feel like I didn’t even do anything, really. I just got right back to it in the studio, man. Yeah, I’m just keeping this grind going. Trying to add more product to get to more people.

I got you. Well you said you feel like you didn’t really do anything with The WonUp. So what kind of standard do you set for yourself where you can feel like you can be proud of what you did?

Fre$h: Oh, I’m the biggest critic to myself out of anybody, man. I feel like once I completed a song, or a project, it’s old. Like, I don’t like it; I’ve got to get on to the next thing. But, that’s just the kind of person I am, I’m not just hard on myself; I’ve been like that all my life, just to keep it going, to keep this drive.

Where’d you get that from?

Fre$h: Shit, just the way I grew up, man, not having nothing forreal. Just going through the struggle, knowing how it is.

Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. Alright, so how’d you end up playing basketball at Ohio University?

Fre$h: Actually I was on an AAU team based out of Florida, called Florida Elite, and the owner of the organization was an alumni of OU. The coaching staff that was there back in ‘07, he was close to them and he brought them to my house when I was in high school, for a visit. And ever since then, me and those coaches clicked and that’s what made me go to OU, and I knew I would play right away.

Cool, so what was it like playing at OU? If you could talk about that a little bit.

Fre$h: I mean, it was a cool experience. I met a lot of people, traveled around the country a lot playing different teams and universities. I’ve got friends playing in the NBA now, like, it’s crazy.

Could you name some people real quick? [laughs] I don’t mean for you to namedrop or nothing…

Fre$h: I fuck with Tyreke Evans a little bit. My dude Larry Sanders on the Milwaukee Bucks. A couple more people.

Alright, cool. So do you see anything in common between music and sports? Like when it comes to work ethic or anything like that?

Fre$h: Yeah man, you just gotta always stay hungry; you can’t be satisfied with anything. Like, say in a game you score 20 points, you gotta use that to come back out in your next game and perform that much better. Or you drop a mixtape and you got so many or so downloads, you gotta try to top that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I got you. Do you remember the actual moment when you decided that you were going to go into music full time?

Fre$h: Yeah. Back in, I think, 2010, when I was still playing at OU, I had broke my hand so I was just sitting out. A lot of shit happened, and I had the chance to come back, but me and the coaches, like, we had to sit back and make this agreement and then I had to do all this other shit and I wasn’t with it and I just stayed at home. I told myself from then I’m just going to keep going with this music because it was the only way. But then I got another chance to play at this DII school. I went and played and I left there again so, yeah, it’s all about the music.

Yeah, most definitely. Alright, so you didn’t work hands on with Cardo or Sledgren, or anything like that but, like, what do you think you benefited from working with them in music?

Fre$h: I feel like it opened up my lane a little bit more, because he has that sound that I’ve been particularly looking for. I’ve been in contact with his manager lately and I’m going to try and do a project with him, if possible.

Alright cool, I could see a lot of hype around that, forreal, forreal. I assume you grew up listening to rap and all that, so what artists did you grow up liste - Paul Meara

We won’t hold it against you if you slept on Yizzo’s Champloo. Given the amount of music vying for your attention on a daily basis, it could have easily slipped through the cracks. Now more than ever is a great opportunity to get hip though, as Yizzo team leader CG has a project that you need to hear. Called EgoII:Eat.Love.Pray., the project shows continued growth for the 21-year-old emcee.

With 22 tracks spanning over three chapters, trust that this project has a little something for everybody, bolstered by on-point production that makes it hard to believe you’re listening to a dude recording around college classes. And if you want to sample before you download, try spinning ‘Zone II,’ ‘The Chase,’ ‘Time’ or ‘End of the Line.’ At the rate that CG and Yizzo are dropping quality material, you’re going to hear about them sooner or later, through this blog or elsewhere. Might as well hop on the bandwagon early.
- Smoking Section

Here’s the follow up to the Team Yizzo track ‘C.R.A.C.K.” I posted a couple of days ago. The tape is a good first release, with modern sounding production and a good collection of beats. It features the likings of rappers CG, Slife Barrow, Dolo Brown and Erik Paul; Team Yizzo. Definitely cruise worthy. Shouts to Jordan Paradise and the rest of the Team in Athens over at Ohio University – I think Team Yizzo will bring some needed hype to the midwest hip hop scene. - Good Music All Day

Hip-Hop is a fluid genre, one that borrows inspiration from the unorthodox. On their latest mixtape, Champloo, Ohio-based crew Team Yizzo draws from a cartoon to create a guttery, grimy sound. Pretty far removed from the superficial, name brand braggarts that populate the radio, the members of Yizzo take their latest somewhere new. The entire mixtape was engineered using the soundtrack from classic anime Samurai Champloo and, for those that aren’t hip, expect something dark and hard-hitting. Tracks like “Star Target” beg to be played on a loop, hitting like a dulled sword from one of titular series’s samurai. Champloo is one of the most unique projects to surface in months, perfectly embodying the subject materiel from which it draws inspiration. Make room on your radar, folks. 2012 could be a big year for the Yizzo collective.

- Smoking Section

In the 1990’s there existed a show of ecological good-doers called “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” in which five youths were each given the power of one of the elements of nature to defend Earth from further destruction. That is what Ohio University junior JaVaughn Graves, known in the emcee world as CG, compares his rap group Yizzo to.



“That’s the idea we’re going about,” Graves says. “We’re really just establishing Yizzo as an artist in itself that’s made up of all these different elements.”



These “different elements” (the group’s various members) make Yizzo an act that appeals to all types of hip-hop enthusiasts. Dolo Brown’s aggressive style is for underground rap aficionados; SLIFE’s up-tempo rhymes are quick and witty; CG channels the writer within to relay socio-conscious anecdotes like Chicago rapper Common; and Stevie Fresh’s southern flare adds some soul to the ensemble. To cap it off J Farell specializes in hip-hop and instrumental production.



The collective’s latest coup is their opportunity to perform a 15-minute show at the annual South by Southwest festival (SXSW) later this month in Austin, Texas. While there, Yizzo will also be exposed to the kind of treatment that is said to bridge the gap between independent artists and well-known acts. Radio and magazine interviews, video blogs and the traveling aspect will give Yizzo a taste of what it’s like to be an accomplished group.



With their wide range of talents and styles Yizzo hopes to win over fest attendees with their eccentric product. Each member in the group can draw in their own fan base, which in turn brings all of those fans under the same umbrella.



“If you have five different options of artists or musicians that you choose from, out of those five someone has to like one of those people,” Graves says. “I think that’s what separates us from other groups too.”



Besides the fans, Yizzo also hopes to impress a lot of big name music representatives.



“I think it will foster a lot of confidence,” Graves says about the opportunity to perform at SXSW. “We’re just going to go for the exposure aspect of it, the networking aspect. This kind of gives us an event to look forward to, something to get used to, a goal, something for us to accomplish.”



Yizzo has already started to raise money for the Texas trip with a few concerts in Athens. Their next fundraising effort will take place on Saturday, March 10 at 12, 14 and 16 Hocking Street, a perfect block party to get Ohio University students in the “fest mood.” The concert will start at 8 p.m. and will go until midnight. Entry is free, but volunteers will be going around collecting donations for Yizzo’s trip to SXSW. For every donation goal that Yizzo meets, they will be doing special promotions such as performing fan favorites.



What the group has accomplished so far could never have been done if they had split and focused on only their solo careers. Just like the heroes in “Captain Planet,” Graves knows that Yizzo can best perform at its highest potential when all members are contributing for the good of the group.



“Everyone just brings an important element,” Graves says. “It helps us all function. Without one piece it doesn’t work.”
- Zak Kolesar, Backdrop Magazine

This year is a big one for Athens hip-hop trio Yizzo with a four year chapter coming to a close in May with graduation. Rappers CG, Slife Barrow, Dolo Brown and their manager Brian Williams are more than ready for what’s to come in their future. This is grander and more complex than just some guys spitting words, it is a movement; a conundrum of self-expression through what these guys love to do. They incorporate film, culture and style into their music and they do it all on their own.

An entire mixtape, Champloo, available for free on their website, is dedicated to the Japanese television series Samurai Champloo. The tracks are built around samples from the show to add another level of entertainment and depth. Yizzo’s music reflects their genuine, varied interests and ever-flowing creativity.

Sitting in their living room listening to a mix CD made up of some of modern rap’s finest, including some of Curren$y’s latest release New Jet City, the artists talked about where they’ve been, where they are now and where they’re headed.

The movement began simply, on a basketball court in Columbus their senior year of high school.

“We used to hoop on the same basketball team: me, Slife and CG," said Brown, the tech head of the group. "After basketball season, we were looking for something else to do and ended up getting a computer with some programs on it. I’ve always been messing around with computer stuff and I was messing around with a program where you could do voice-overs and make instrumentals. We started rapping on there and ended up taking it a little more seriously; I got another mic and we got [to OU] our freshman year and CG was really wanting to get his music out there, so we started just promoting and sharing our music with our friends and people we met and that’s how it started.”

Brian Williams, Yizzo’s manager, joined the team sophomore year. “We were just kind of friends and it grew as this thing started to build up," said Williams. "That’s the thing, too: they made a lot of big moves over the summer between freshman and sophomore year. That’s when they started establishing the group, establishing the ‘this is who we are, this is what we’re about’ kind of thing and that’s where I got involved.”

Williams, a finance major at Ohio University, takes care of the booking, the publicity, the money and basically everything else that has come with the formation and growth of Yizzo.

The team is entirely self-made. Yizzo records its own releases, writes its own songs, produces its own music videos and promotes its own work. It’s all done in the comfort of the group's studio and it's all quality. This is by design.

“Today’s rap scene is more independent than it has ever been before, even [from] the early 2000s," said Williams. "Take Nelly for example. The first song he ever recorded was 'Country Grammar'. That was the first single he ever recorded by himself. It was a hot single and it took off. It’s not like that anymore--you need to have a collection of self-made stuff. They’ll ask about how many albums you’ve sold, how many shows you have done, how much money you have generated. We also want to make sure we keep creative control."

They’re only interested in distribution partnerships if anything, and even that isn’t necessary with the accessibility of Internet distributors like iTunes, where they can be their own publisher.

“It’s going through a lot of changes, but this is what we’ve got at the moment," said Brown.

Brown leads up the stairs of their old, college-town home to their studio, a bare room set aside specifically for the creative process. Impressive, expensive recording equipment, a broken-in futon and the faint smell of marijuana smoke fill up the space. To the left of the entryway is an old cardboard box filled to the brim with tattered record sleeves booming with various Motown releases, G-Unit singles, a Bob Marley album, Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall and The Best of Bill Cosby, among many others. Brown inherited most of them from family members, and presented his copy of Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt with a smile.

Brown, Barrow and Williams showed off their self-produced videos, all recorded with Brown’s DSLR around Athens and Columbus. They look professionally done, complemented with creative story lines and quality filming.

The guys are modest and humble; when asked about where they’ve performed, Barrow responded, “We’ve been here for most of the time. We’ve done a few of the Number Fests. We just recently did SXSW. That was fun, that was a good experience. [We do] a lot of shows in Columbus and Cleveland; big venues like The Newport in Columbus and stuff like that.”

Brown kindly added, “We opened up for Wale in Columbus.”

And that’s only the beginning. “We’re working on breaking into Cincy and Pittsburgh right now and getting a few more shows in Cleveland," said Williams. "I’m working on a mini tour of some sort; trying to find a tour that’s already going on and get them on board with it."

As for after graduation, the guys have big plans, explained Williams. “Upon graduating in May, our plans are to move out to LA; either Santa Monica, Venice Beach, West Hollywood, somewhere outside of LA where it’s relatively cheaper. We have a couple guys out there already so we want to get out there and tie up all of our connections; basically do exactly what we’re doing here but there.”

Yizzo feels that they’ve grown out of Athens and are ready to move on to something larger. “My biggest thing is to get out and get ourselves into a bigger market,” Barrow said.

The guys don’t even consider themselves in touch with the local music scene anymore because they’re so focused on the next best thing. They feel they’ve done all they can here. Barrow continued, saying, “We’re still going to be doing shows around here up until we leave. We’ve got the Number Fest and The Over Hang coming up next semester. Those will probably be our last few shows here for a while.”

But Athens will always be home base for the guys and they consider it to have been great practice for the next best thing. “We’ve had so many learning experiences, from running our own events, to promoting, getting people to hear our songs, everything that goes into it," said Barrow. "We’ve learned so much. We’ve built a team here. It started out just us four. There were other side-pieces and things that went into it but now it’s a team that we built together. Everyone knows their role, everyone has a job. We’re just making big moves out here.”

CG, a huge factor in the build up and artistic vision of Yizzo, joined in after the initial interview. He provided a peek into his writing process, saying, “It might seem kind of weird, but I use my phone when I write.” He put his headphones in and zones out to another world. Pen in hand, he wrote what was on his mind, connected to the twangs and drum kicks and from this writer's perspective, visibly felt whatever he was listening to.

Yizzo is a genuine group of artists with big dreams and a whole lot of dedication. The members all have diverse skill sets to bring to the table. They’re slowly but surely on the rise and their vision is clear. In four years they built an enterprise and a name for themselves, and they only hope to keep that going in their future ventures. - Marlena Scott