Kruse

Hailing from Salem, OR, underground rap producer Kruse launched his career by supplying beats to the Living Legends, the West Coast underground fixtures he regarded as idols. His light, smooth jazz-infused work surfaced on the group’s 2005 album Classic as well as on LL solo releases such as Sunspot Jonz’s Back in Black (2006) and Luckyiam’s Most Likely to Succeed (2007). Under the name A. Kruse, he offered an early taste of his own rapping on the 2006 EP Raw Materials, then followed a year later with the full-length True Stories, which highlighted both his production craft and his plainspoken accounts of everyday existence and hardship.