Adrian Younge | Artist

Adrian Younge is an American composer, arranger and music producer born 1978 in Fontana, California. Younge earned a Juris Doctor degree from the American College of Law in Orange County and, following in his father's footsteps, worked as a lawyer and law professor—having taught entertainment law at his alma mater. Early in his career, Younge worked for the legal department of MTV. Alongside his legal career, he played bass and keyboards in a band during the late 1990s, and began composing and sampling records with a rudimentary MPC. He quickly learned to play several instruments and experimented with analog recordings which resulted in the Italian influenced Venice Dawn, which he released on EP In 2000. His excellent soundtrack for the film Black Dynamite was released on the Wax Poetics label 2009. In 2011 Younge revived and expanded Venice Dawn into a longer work called Something about April. In 2013 he released Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics and Twelve Reasons to Die with Ghostface Killah. He has since gone on to release over twenty-five studio albums to-date, including soundtracks, collaborations and a series of retro Jazz/Soul releases under the title Jazz is Dead. Standout releases include Venice Dawn, Twelve Reasons to Die, the soundtracks Black Dynamite and Luke Cage, and Jazz is Dead 005. Younge's most recent release was the powerful work The American Negro, which was launched during Black History Month to highlight the systematic racism that African Americans have endured. Younge also operates a vinyl record store in Los Angeles called Artform Studio, plus he co-founded Jazz is Dead records in 2017, together with Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who was formerly with the hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest.

Artist Website: linearlabsmusic.com/adrian-younge

Featured Albums: Adrian Younge

Related Artists: Venice Dawn, Ghostface Killah, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Doug Carn