PumpkinHead

Born Robert Alan Diaz on September 17, 1975, in Brooklyn, NY, Pumpkinhead emerged as an underground rapper whose wide-ranging connections included a notable partnership with producer Marco Polo. Their joint effort yielded the widely praised full-length Orange Moon Over Brooklyn, issued in 2005. His first solo recordings appeared in the late 1990s on the Brooklyn independent imprint Makin' Records, beginning with the 12-inch single Dynamic in 1997 and its remix edition the following year. The same label later hosted his debut full-length solo project, The Old Testament, which arrived in 2001. Around the turn of the century he maintained ties to several crews, among them Brooklyn Academy, O.B.S., and Skeme Team, and contributed to multiple releases, most prominently the 2003 Brooklyn Academy anthology The Academy Awards -- A Greatest Hits Collection, Vol. 1: The Classics. In 2002 Third Earth Music put out his seven-track mini-album Beautiful Mind, and a few years afterward Soulspazm Records released the Marco Polo collaboration Orange Moon Over Brooklyn. He established his own imprint, Red Army Inc., in 2004 and subsequently issued a series of mix albums through it. Another joint full-length with Brooklyn Academy, Bored of Education, surfaced in 2008 on Gold Dust Media.