Music
Press
If The Name Speaks Volumes is any indication, The Bad News is a local underground hip-hop duo, with flow, smarts, ideas, and resources too limited to give them the appropriate shine. Here's hoping that a growing network of fans gets it past the proverbial dues-paying stage to the next level. - Time Out New York
Here's a cut from NY's own Dash Speaks , who crafts interesting rhymes and the beats that feed them. It's taken from his album, Geography , stems from a life-long desire to explore; it'd be like me having a blog where I talk to you about music... wait, nevermind. It's been out for a month, but I'm just getting into it based on the strength of "Tonight", and have a feeling I'll have to take a journey or three, discover some local geography. - Rock The Dub
Likeable and mellow, two adjectives rarely used to describe entertainers and, even less so, rappers. Yet somehow in a climate heavily-laden with bravado, Dash Speaks stays true to form, minding his Ps and Qs the whole way. With a penchant for boat shoes and politics, Dash makes quite the lyricist, but despite his poetic background, his biggest love is music. - Retail DJ
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After over a year of writing and production, Dash finally feels he’s created an album that is an extention of him as an artist, not just “some another rapper”…and I couldn’t agree more. Super fresh and original beats make for a great foundation to back up his clean, syncopated flows. - Welcome Hohme
Dash Speaks, who writes and produces everything (as he works through in the song 'Army Of Me') infuses electro-pop-world-music creating a sound that accelerates us into a musical geographic location yet discovered. - Tete au Tete
The Village Voice
Time Out New York
NME
FlavorPill
Thrill List
Wet, Not Dry
I Smell Like Money
Miss Omnimedia
Socially Superlative
NYC Go - Multiple
There is a sphere of hip hop that can be labeled “progressive”, with a lyrical foundation in intellect, and music a bit more experimental. Dash Speaks, a 24 year old “hip hop explorer”, lives in this world.
While some hip hop purists dismiss a “hipster” rap sound, there is something to be said for any sub-genre of hip hop that emerges to a level of being labeled. This particular sound is a kind of intellectual, often emotional, slightly experimental hip hop, often incorporating singing and electronica-based beats with an unspoken quest to be purposefully different than its hardcore, boom-bap cousin, has risen from the butt of jokes on hip hop blogs and message boards, to respectful heights, thanks to some high-profile efforts by folks like Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Wale and the like. For years, the question has been floated around whether or not this progressive approach to hip hop was the next coming, or simply an offshoot destined to flair out like others in the past (can you say, “horrorcore”?).
In an around New York City however, this type of sound is alive and well, and is producing an interesting assortment of new music for us to fish through. Some of it borders on the ridiculous, experimental for the sake of experimenting, while some has found its way out of the confines of the tri-state, and represent solid efforts at musical and lyrical newness that, while may need to be tweaked, are indicative of a new breed of MC. Independent, renaissance-minded, creative and smart. While the music business continues it’s (de?)evolution, it is this sort of artist that we predict will rule the musical landscape. We’re not there yet, but Dash Speaks might meet us there.
The spitter/singer/songwriting rocker-turned-poet-turned-rapper, who has performed alongside notables such as Lupe, Talib Kweli, Kid Cudi, Mickey Factz, Das Racist and Mike Posner, has returned to his New York roots from school daze spent is the now-buzzing state of Arizona, to craft, produce, record and perform Geography, an 11-track, freely distributed project released in February. This collection of songs, each “subtitled with a particular set of longitude and latitude degrees, to compliment the geographical theme, is led by “Tonight”, a loping well produced track with an ethereal vocal snippit dipping in and out,dancing among Dash’s rhythmic styling.
“My boys give me a hard time, say I’m on some hipster shit, I tell ‘em I’m not hip, I’m cool, there’s a difference”
Maybe. But either way, “Tonight” is enough of a smoothed out effort that should make you want to hear more, if you’re the type to dig this style of hip hop. Grimy, it is not, but as we mentioned, we suspect the audience for anti-grime is growing. If so, Dash should keep Speaking. - Birthplace Magazine
Discography
Geography (Album, 2.1.2010)
Geography: The Young Robots Remixes (Album, 5.17.2010)
The Listen To Speaks EP (EP, 2008)
The Name Speaks Volumes (Album, 2007)
The Revolution (Album, 2006)
It Wont Be Long (Album, 2005)
Photos
Bio
There are 194 countries in the world. Dash Speaks can name every one and tell you a little something about each. "When I was eight, my parents bought A set of encyclopedias. Every morning thereafter, I would read about a different part of the world. I used to want to be an explorer, and really, I still do." says the 24 year old, native New Yorker.
Dash's new album Geography is a testament to his childhood passion. Not only is the album thematically tied to exploration, adventure and the science of geography, but it also pushes the limits of hip hop to a place that it has never been before.
Dash Speaks has been writing songs and poetry since he was 9. When other kids his age were taking their musical cues from MTV, Dash was listening to music ranging from James Brown to Outkast to Portishead to Bob Dylan-- whom he still credits as his favorite rapper.
By 13, Dash was singing in a rock band. At 16, he began performing spoken word poetry in downtown cafes. In his senior year of high school, Dash switched his focus from poetry to hip hop. By the time he graduated from Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School, he had recorded dozens of rap songs.
After 3 months at the University of Arizona, Dash Speaks dropped out and returned home to New York City to pursue his music career. In 2005, he released his first album, followed by successive efforts in 2006 and 2007. The latter, The Name Speaks Volumes, was a collaborative effort with emcee NickName under the moniker the Bad News. It was nominated for an Independent Music Award for
Best Hip Hop album.
Since, Speaks has performed over one hundred shows with artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Kid Cudi, Mickey Factz, Das Racist, and Mike Posner at venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Hiro Ballroom, SOBs, and Southpaw and universities such as SUNY Albany, SUNY Plattsburgh, Fordham, Clark, Wesleyan, Lehigh, and the University of Wisconsin. He has continued to hone his natural lyrical and song-writing abilities, while teaching himself how to produce and DJ.
In 2009, Dash began working on Geography; an eleven track, self-produced electronic hip hop album. Upon its release in February of 2010, Dash wrote, "In the last year, I wrote, performed and produced Geography in attempt to make music that was truly and fully representative of me; the cool, the not so cool, the good, the bad, the smart, the silly, the confident, the vulnerable, the confused, the flawed, the talented. Nothing was held back, nothing omitted. Because of this, Geography is my most honest, most interesting, and best work to date."
So, how come you may have (until now) never heard of Speaks; this talented, well-seasoned and hungry emcee and producer? Dash puts it this way. "I spent so much time focusing on what I had in common with the rest of hip hop. I can rap with the best of them, write a great hook, I'm cool, good looking enough, why can't I fit in? Last year, I just came to a point where I stopped caring what everyone else in rap was doing around me, and decided to focus on the music that was in me. All of a sudden, I'm making love songs about plate tectonics and rapping about Magellan, and people are responding. I came to realize that I don't fit in into hip hop, I stand out, and that's a good thing."
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