When most people think of southern hip-hop, the first word that comes to mind is crunk. Its understandable isn’t it? The south, Atlanta, GA in particular, is the home of: The King of Crunk, Lil Jon; The Prince of Crunk Lil Scrappy; and the Princess of Crunk and B, Ciara. That’s a lot of crunk. But slowly and quietly, new artists are emerging from the underground to counter the overwhelming growth of the crunk movement, artists such as the newly formed Renegadez.
On a trip to the Big Apple, NYC, in the summer of 2002, Jaimon Jones a.k.a. the Digital Master (DM), and Curtison Jones a.k.a Son1, decided that they wanted to take their long time hobby the next level and create an album to release in the Atlanta metro area. Later that year Jaimon would begin attending classes at The University of Georgia where he would room with another music enthusiast, Chris Mallory. The two instantly hit it off and began making tracks together. In the tradition of the Neptunes, The Hit Men and other beat making collaborators. The two nicknamed themselves “The Renegadez”.
Meanwhile, Trevor a.k.a Thousand Gramz had just begun his college career at UGA as well. Originally, Gramz intended to attend UGA to play basketball, but after the program lost money do to scandal, Gramz’ hoop dreams faded. It turned out that fate had other plans for Gramz. During his sophmore year Gramz was introduced to Jaimon and Chris through mutual friend and member of D-Squad, Bab. Upon learning of The Renegadez beat-making skills, Gramz revealed his love for the mic and instantly began working with the Renegade beatsmiths.
Miles away in the” A”, Son was still recording and compiling beats for an upcoming solo project with producer Tresor Hugo. On a weekend trip home from school, Jaimon brought with him a cd with some of Gramz’ latest songs, one of which was, “Ashes to Ashes”, which would become the opening song for their future shows. Jaimon introduced the two mc’s and a few months later and the crew banded together under the Renegade umbrella and the rest, as they say, is history.
