SEEN (US)

Are you the type of person who enjoys hard-hitting hip-hop beats and sharp lyrics, but you are turned off by the overabundance of gangsta lyrics and images. Well, if you want hip-hop that the entire family can enjoy, SEEN is your artist. He makes positive hip-hop and R&B music that's not preachy or corny, and he calls it Soul-Hop.

SEEN is an MC/songwriter who refers to his music as "Soul-Hop" because it is intentionally positive, yet unpreachy; melodic, yet bottom heavy; family-friendly, yet uncorny. He has been recording exceptional music (that never made it to the marketplace) for almost two decades, so songwriting comes natural to him. Millennium Gentleman is full of great music like "You Did It", which is a tribute to teachers, and "Long Way 2 Go", which is a realistic introspective look about the grind of reaching your dreams. Songs like "Go For It" and "Don't Stop" are powerful enough to encourage any thug, and clean enough to get play around your most devout church mothers. Songs like "Do That" and "Medicine Music" are just plain fun for the dance floor, while tunes like "Secrets" and "We Can Make It" reveal the heart and emotions of a man who has experienced some real challenges in the paths that he's taken in life. What sets SEEN apart is his honesty. He had a small taste of the street life as a youth, but he spent most of his adult years as a counselor, teacher, and a school administrator. Those years that he spent as a teacher showed him that if someone is going to learn something, there has to be an example to demonstrate the lesson. For Hip-Hop in this Millennium, if we want change, that example has got to be SEEN.

I play live with a band (drums, bass, keyboards, and sometimes a DJ). We've been playing little gigs around the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area. We're looking to really hit the road this Spring and Summer. I love playing live because the songs become organic, and we get to feed off of the energy of the audience. My favorite moment from playing live while recording Millennium Gentleman was last summer at The African-American Heritage Festival in Baltimore. We got a lot of love from the people, so the stage manager held up both of his palms to tell me 10 more minutes. This was after they had told us before our set that under no circumstances should we go over the 20 minutes allotted to us; so when I saw the sign, I thought he was telling me to stop the music. I ended the set, professionally of course, but quicker than the stage manager and all of the stage help had wanted. When I talked to them afterwards, they said that they were enjoying it so much that they just wanted us to keep going.

Talib Kweli, Common, Nas, Kirk Franklin, Tupac, Donnie Hathaway, Teddy Pendergrass

Keyboards, bass, drums, microphones, amps, cords, etc.