J. Dash, a Jacksonville, Florida native, already performed Mozart compositions on piano by the time he turned eight. At thirteen he joined a band, later shifting focus to production and rapping. He issued his debut album, Odyssey of a Corporate Looney Tune, in 2006, followed the next year by Something Else: Music for the Color Blind. Several years afterward the latter set’s “WOP” (as in “without prejudice”), a club-rap track driven by bright synthesizer sounds, began circulating widely enough that he decided to rework it. The revised recording appeared on his 2012 album Tabloid Truth. In 2013 an official video and countless unofficial clips pushed the single back onto Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it climbed into the Top 15 and also crossed over to the mainstream Hot 100. Throughout this period the University of Florida graduate continued working as a computer engineer while keeping his birth name private.
