Poetic, poignant, and emotionally stirring, MC, producer, bassist, and drummer gNotes—pronounced strictly “notes”—grew up in Seattle amid the early-’90s grunge explosion that first sparked his drive to create music. Born Sean Dwyer, he picked up acoustic guitar at age ten, then expanded into bass and drums while cycling through punk and garage bands during middle and high school. Once Dr. Dre, the architect of G-funk and one of Dwyer’s key influences, pushed the style into the pop mainstream, hip-hop supplanted every other genre as his primary outlet. Near the millennium’s turn, Dwyer enrolled at Boston College on a football scholarship yet quickly embedded himself in the city’s hip-hop and spoken-word communities, shifting his focus toward music and literature until he earned an education degree in 2004. That same senior year he met fellow student Canyon Cody, who was seeking an emerging artist to launch a label; the pair promptly founded Gnawledge Records. Its inaugural project, Broken Spoke, arrived in 2004 as gNotes’ debut, released under Dwyer’s legal name. He resurfaced in 2006 with the instrumental set Inthrumental, performing live bass and drums while demonstrating MPC technique, then delivered the fuller LP Rhymes and Beats the following year.
