Kenny Fresh, probably making moves
For people who aren’t already familiar with you, Fresh Selects and haven’t already downloaded Illmaculate x Calvin Valentine’s The Green Tape, tell us a little a bit about the site.
I started it in the summer of 2008 as just kind of a passion project of sorts… I had been working for a great label & website, Waajeed’s Bling47.com, for about 3 years at the time & I thought it’d be a cool way to take what I had learned there & build something of my own from it.
Really I just wanted to create something that would enable the artists that I was fortunate enough to be working with to have some better exposure online. And this was right around when rap blogs seemed to be really taking off & getting a lot of attention & influence – but most of the biggest ones seemed to all be doing it the same way – a bunch of posts a day, all talking about all the same artists that were already on blogs, etc. And it seemed like there weren’t too many sites that were really fucking with artists unless they were already known, had the right publicist or fit into a certain narrow category. So I remember starting mine with a certain naive vendetta of sorts – like I was gonna change all that by doing it my way (original, more closely curated content at a much slower pace, mostly up-and-coming artists, etc.) or something… haha.
But once things got rolling, I soon realized how necessary the bigger sites were & how their format was actually beneficial to what I was trying to do. So I was able to figure out my own niche from there & actually ended up getting a lot of great support from the already more established sites.
The site was really only up & active for about a year but I felt like I was able to get a lot done in that time – or at least a lot more than I had initially set out to. So I’m looking fwd to keeping that momentum going with this re-launch.
Why did you decide to take the page down?
Maaaan… thats a LONG story. A lot has happened in the year & a half since it was last officially up.
There were a lot of different reasons – most of them involving progress & waiting on different business deals & the legal red tape that involves.
But at the end of it all I just wanted to destroy & rebuild to grow.
What can people expect with the relaunch?
This time around, I’m treating FRSH SLCTS more like a an art gallery & a digital record label than I am a traditional music blog
There will still be a few posts w/ other people’s releases that I curate – singles & video premieres, etc.
But for the most part it’ll be all original content that I executive produced & help put together in one way or another – whether it be full-length albums like The Green Tape or videos & live sets from the concert series I threw last year, podcast mixes, etc.
You can also expect a lot of capital letters without many vowels.
Don’t ask me why.
My Name is…
Kenny… or KNNY if you’re feeling artsy.
I am… Yup.
I like it when….the beat go dundun-dundun? I dunno – are Sisqo references cool again yet?
One thing I wish the Northwest would share with the world is…The easy answer is all the artists I’ve been working with & their music. Showcasing Portland to the the rest of the world (& also itself) has always been a focus of my work, & as of right now, about 8 out of the first 10 or so full-length releases I have slated at the moment are from Portland.
But besides that, I think other cities could (& some already have) learned a lot from our indie rock scene – the community that exists there & also some of the really cool companies that have been formed out of that & how they run their shit. There’s a lot of great ideas going around there & a good amount of them to be working. That whole movement is something I’m still trying to learn more about myself.
Our smug glasses, flannel & beard game is also pretty topnotch as well. But I don’t think that needs to be shared any more that it already has.
One thing I wish the world would share with the Northwest is… Ahh… so much. There’s infinite amounts of music that I wish more people here were aware of here – and there’s a lot things business & presentation-wise that I still feel that we are behind the curve on, i.e. being aware of relevant emerging artists, design aesthetics, and just overall more professionalism in the creation & presentation of the music. Most of which I’m sure it something that I’d feel was an issue is most other US cities our size – but we seem to be such a progressive and digitally-savvy city in most other regards that it can get frustrating that it doesn’t carry over into those areas. This is a subject I usually get a lotta shit for when I speak too openly about it in public, & my vision for the city can be a pretty narrow one, so I get it – but its still a discussion I’d like to have at some point. All in all though – I’m just trying to do my part.
Something I have coming up is… Waajeed vs. Fresh Selects – a full-length album fully produced by Waajeed featuring most of the artists I work with through FRSH SLCTS
This is exciting because…It’s the first time I’ve ever been hands-on with an album from inception to execution, which is something I’ve always wanted to do but never thought I was ready (& I’m probably still not!). And its an honor to make it happen w/ Waajeed as he’s one of my favorite producers & also someone who gave me my start in music – so the “everything coming full circle” vs. “taking it to next step” aspect to it is something that means a lot to me.
Thanks man!
Follow Kenny Fresh on Twitter, @FRESHselects