A-James & The GranDDaDDy - Tacoma, WA
The Aperture - CD Review
By Pat Ferris

Stacy Emerson from the Tacoma Reporter invited me to be a guest speaker at the Pierce County Musician's Association meeting last month, and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of excited musicians.

Stacy and her association has done an outstanding job of creating a musicians network in the Pierce County (South of Seattle) area.  The group of artists that attended her weekly meeting seemed interested in promoting the arts, learning how to market themselves, and helping each other in a family sort of way.

The GranDDaDDy, as he goes by, was one of the artists that pulled me aside to ask me questions and promote his new CD.  The music is really the bottom line to the success equation, but presence goes a long way, and The GranDDaDDy literally got in my face, in a polite and businesslike, but firm manner, and made me address him directly and promise to listen to his CD.  I guess I'm always impressed by artists that believe enough in their music to have a passion about it, so I promised I'd take the time to listen to his CD and check out his website. 

Within the first week, The GranDDaDDy had sent me no less than three emails asking if I had listened to his CD yet and checked out his website!  Being behind on projects 99% of the time makes it difficult to get to all of the projects right away, but because of his persistence, I took the time to listen to the CD and check out his site in depth.  Their website, located at http://www.ajthegranddaddy.com is a totally professional looking page, complete with sound samples, video samples, and room to grow, reinforcing my original belief that this was a group that was dead serious about getting their message out to the world.  (WebTV and some other earlier browsers may experience difficulty on this website)

Their debut CD The Aperture combines electronic hip-hop music with A-James and The GranDDaDDy rapping over the top,  male and female backing vocals, and a DJ to bring you their own flavor of hip-hop, rap, and club music.  The Aperture has a fairly broad range of songs crossing many different genres, in The GranDDaDDy's words "Something for everybody..even people that don't like rap".  

The songs were reflective of life, but kept a positive message and was a pleasant change from the negative message so common in rap music.   If you're a fan of Sir MixALot and other west-coast rappers, check these guys out.    I'll give my endorsement on the CD for those of you that like rap.   Their CD has 17 original cuts plus the intro totaling over 70 minutes!

Stay tuned to these guys! A-James and The GranDDaDDy look like they are on their way!