CRASHprez

Michael Penn II, known to the world as CRASHprez, is a Washington, D.C.-born, P.G. County, Maryland-bred 21-year old MC, journalist, activist, and writer-til-death. His musical life began in an after-school music program in 2007, soon moving the basement of his home at the age of 14 under the alias MDP. Equipped with a USB microphone as a Christmas gift and several pirated programs on the family home computer, he self-recorded demos on his own and learned to produce from friends.

This early work culminated in the release of his first mixtape in May 2009. It was scatterbrained, monotone, and overtly opinionated… but it was one of the first things Penn could call his own.

Since that moment, Penn has released 12 projects; six have been under the name CRASHprez. The name originates from a moment during the summer of 2010 when he almost passed out from dehydration at a poetry event in Baltimore (earning him the CRASH) and a nickname from the nurse at his elementary school who always made sure to encourage him (earning him the prez). CRASHprez is a navigation of the dance between the dangers of Black skin and the bliss of a youthful existence that is gone before we truly savor the experiences it provides. 

This tightrope mentality is demonstrated in a sound CRASH defines as “self-aware paranoid Black Power trap shit”. Sarcasm and dark humor frolic in the soundbeds of an eclectic cast-and-crew from the DMV and the Midwest. The mission is to dispose of the boundaries of what can be classified as hip-hop, while interrogating the human existence from the perspective of a suburban Black boy in the United States of America who struggles with everything in the world being so fucked up and so beautiful. 

Aggression is necessary, laughter is medication, and everyone is welcome to suffer together in hopes of finding the light we all deserve.