Cody ChesnuTT

Cody ChesnuTT showed early promise in the music industry. While still a teenager he appeared onstage in Atlanta, supporting performers his father managed. By his late twenties he fronted the Crosswalk and signed with Hollywood Records. His completed debut album Venus Loves a Melody never surfaced because the label dropped him. The Crosswalk dissolved shortly afterward. Discouraged, he retreated to his bedroom to write and record alone. Within two years he had finished enough material for a full release, issuing the thirty-six-track double album The Headphone Masterpiece in 2002. Later that year the Roots enlisted him for the reworking of his song “The Seed” titled “The Seed (2.0),” which appeared on their album Phrenology.

Although further releases had seemed likely, his next project arrived only as the December 2006 EP Black Skin No Value. His wife had given birth to two children, and he chose to devote time to fatherhood. As a result his second album, the richly produced yet organic Landing on a Hundred, surfaced only in October 2012 on One Little Indian and drew heavily from Marvin Gaye’s late-’60s and early-’70s work. In the following years he alternated between touring and family life. He returned in 2017 with the Anthony “Twilite Tone” Kahn-produced My Love Divine Degree, which balanced his original lo-fi approach against a dynamic and stylistically varied contemporary R&B sound. The single “Image of Love” was featured on that album.