John Richard Austin II (born September 26, 1973), better known by his stage name Ras Kass, is an American rapper from Carson, California. Ras Kass took his stage name from the legendary Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV, whose name was Ras Kassa Mircha before he was crowned as an emperor.
Austin earned a feature in the "Hip Hop Quotable" section of The Source magazine in 1994 with a verse from his independently-released single "Remain Anonymous", and he subsequently signed to Priority/EMI Records. He released his debut album, Soul on Ice, in a1996. It received good reviews, as did its 1998 follow-up Rasassination. Although his intended third album became shelved, several singles from the album received radio airplay. It was around this time that Austin became a member of the group The HRSMN alongside Kurupt, Killah Priest and Canibus. Austin was incarcerated for nineteen months in 2004 and 2005 for a D.U.I. charge. In October 2007, Austin was released from his contract from Priority, but was incarcerated for violating his parole before being able to sign to another label. He was released at the end of May 2009. He used Kickstarter to fund the release of his album A.D.I.D.A.S. (All Day I Dream About Spittin), a collaborative album with DJ Rhettmatic, in 2011. He released his third album Barmageddon in 2013, which received a sequel titled Barmageddon 2.0 the following year. He collaborated with Apollo Brown for the 2014 release Blasphemy. In 2016, he released his fifth studio album, Intellectual Property: SOI2, a sequel to his debut album. |
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Grizzly BeatzGrizzly Beatz is an American Hip Hop Producer from Los Angeles, CA. He has produced for Curren$y, Dizzy Wright, Hopsin, Gatorade, Chief Kamachi, Nike, Activision and more. |