Brooklynite Izzy Man Talks Recent Album ‘Genesis’

Hip-hop music moves in Brooklyn. It walks on the streets I grew up on, flowed thru the air between my curly pre-teen up-do, and boom bapped in the hallways of my school.  From I.S. 318 near Marcy where Sean Carter’s face adorns the first floor all the way to Brooklyn Tech, repping the Engineers alongside alums Talib Kweli and Jarobi White of A Tribe Called Quest, hip-hop moves in Brooklyn.

I’ll never forget the day I met Jarobi at his Taco Tuesdays event while waiting in line for his fresh home made tacos, chatting with other Tech alumni. It turns out one of the Technites I was chatting with was another hip-hop artist IZZY MAN, who was playing photographer for the night.  I spent some time learning more about this jack-of-all-trades, and found out that IZZY MAN lives and breathes art.  He begins his day finding inspiration from the weather, from instagram, from poetry, and it helps that he surrounds himself with alot of talented and artistic people that push his creativity.  He was born after Asian-American hip-hop artists MC Jin and Dumbfoundead (Parker) but he is more than just another “Asian” artist.

“Being Asian is something that’s just a part of me. To be known as an Asian rapper is just redundant. I dont want to be a great Asian Artist.  I just want to a great artist, period. I just want to be the best I can be as a rapper, musician, producer, performer.  No one looks at Chad Hugo and says ‘Oh, you’re that dope Filipino producer with Pharrell Williams.’  They’d just go ‘Oh, you’re a dope artist.’  I just want to be dope,” says IZZY MAN.

Using his communication and creative skills in the advertising industry, alot of his charisma carries over from his day job to his passion of music on the stage.  He performs with his live band THE PLAN, consisting of Jon Bell, the mastermind of Brooklyn’s The Landing, guitar virtuoso Adrian Bridges, Japanese bassist Ryota Sugawara, and the soulful Nancy Yi on vocals.  His recent debut album “GENESIS” consists of these artists and many more as IZZY MAN is all about collaboration.  In fact, in the week of the release of GENESIS, he was booked to be interviewed on New York college radio WBMB The Buzz, approached by music promotion agencies, and has multiple music videos in pre-production. IZZY MAN is also planning to release a stand-alone instrumental album since he’s received various requests for the music itself; a testament to the music production, mixing, performance, and mastering by IZZY MAN, his guitarist Adrian Bridges, and his engineer Jeremy Seigel (YUNG SUN).
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The single “Only At The Top” starts off with IZZY MAN and his rap roots with the lines “Back in the day when I represented TECH (BROOKLYN) I left my tape red until my tape bled/ recording HOT97 on a black cassette/ Flex droppin bombs with the homie Angie Martinez.”  The first track, which also is the title track “Genesis” has him declaring that “We all start the same the beginning” that we need to “stop setting the bar low/you ain’t a star yo/this is not growth/ but it’s a start though.”  It personally makes me want to find my inner superhero so that I can do what Nintendon’t.

IZZY MAN’s “GENESIS” is very much about beginnings.  It’s about his first experience finding creativity and exploring new worlds on his cousin’s Sega Genesis playing classics like Altered Beast (which you can find sampled thru the track “Beast”, my personal favorite). It’s about his beginning in slam poetry, finding himself spiritually with God. It’s about his first steps into his musical journey where he asks all of us to create.

It doesn’t hurt that his first taste of music was being featured on Talib Kweli’s Blacksmith Community Mixtape, rockin’ the first annual McDonald’s BBoy Royale, and warming up the stage at The Roots Picnic.  You can find all of this info here.

To catch his album release on Spotify, check it out here.  My personal favorite overall is “Beast.”