Doseone
For 15 years, Oakland's Adam "Doseone" Drucker has been spearheading the unfound sound, lassoing it, and wrestling it to the ground. Through hard work and hand craft, the rapper/producer/poet has built up a body of work of both striking quality and impressive quantity, rising through the ranks of '90s battle rap to become a celebrated solo artist and collaborator. Whether crushing genre through flagship projects like Themselves, cLOUDDEAD, and Subtle, or carving out his own brand of strange pop via self-produced albums like G Is For Deep, the Anticon cofounder remains endlessly inspired and utterly fearless.
Though born in Napa, Idaho, Dose honed his mile-a-minute wit and rapidly expanding imagination while splitting time between his parents' respective homes in New York and New Jersey. He relocated to Philly in his late teens, and then attended college in Cincinnati. There, he made it to the final round of the annual Scribble Jam competition, battling a then unknown Eminem, but the experience left him wanting something more. A year later, in 1998, he got it. At school, he'd begun experimenting with a pair of locals calling themselves WHY? and Odd Nosdam. Their freewheeling Greenthink group would morph into the much lauded psych-hop of cLOUDDEAD.
Meanwhile, a series of fortuitous tape trades resulted in the landmark collaborative project, Deep Puddle Dynamics, which brought together several soon-to-be titans of the indie rap world (Dose, Sole, Alias, Jel, DJ Abilities, Atmosphere) and inspired the growing family of musicians to start their own label, Anticon. In the process, Dose discovered his beat-making better half in Jeffrey "Jel" Logan and their partnership was unveiled with 1999's seminal Themselves debut, Them. As their collective star began to rise in the hip-hop underground, the crew moved west, to Oakland, to mine out a place of their own.
Happy coincidence would introduce Dose to Dax Pierson, the Berkeley-based keyboardist whose vision inspired the creation of the Subtle sextet. Taking pages from Can and This Heat, they'd shape their otherworldly, rap-addled post-rock from extended improvised jams, and go on to create a triptych of LPs whose vivid and expansive sound was matched by Dose's lyrics—an ornate set of characters and concepts embodying a mythology equal parts Buckminster Fuller, Dylan Thomas, and The Neverending Story. Similarly, the transatlantic 13&God was born, comprising Themselves and German plinkerpopists the Notwist.
As the dynamic voice of all of these and a live performer with a flair for the theatrical, Dose has gone on to collaborate with everyone from avant-rock mogul Mike Patton and TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe (collectively the Nevermen), to Watchmen author Alan Moore and members of Mogwai (the Unearthing LP box set). Meanwhile, his solo output has run the gamut from left field rap (Hemispheres) to spoken poetry (Soft Skulls) to books of illustrated verse (The Pelt). Experiments with animation have led to a cartoon called Mars Safari, a potential series produced by Cartoon Network. Working closely with creator Ghostshrip (Adventure Time), Dose is doing voices, music and sound effects in the funniest of company: Dana Snyder (Aqua Teen Hunger Force), Steve Little (East Bound & Down) and Carl Jones (Boondocks).
