Akil Dasan is a teacher/guitarist/singer/emcee/b-boy/poet/beatboxer and overall music aficionado. His talents will astound you if not for quality for sheer quantity alone. If you’re thinking something along the lines of ‘hang on, I’ve seen that there face before,’ you may well have. Akil was first brought to my attention via the flop (but surprisingly doper than any other talent contest) TV Show ‘The Road To Stardom With Missy Elliott’ back in 2005. Basically Akil and a few others were representing the Hip Hop faction of the show. It was clear that Akil and another contestant, Jessica Betts, were the most talented. Though it was also clear that the show’s judges worried about Dasan’s lack of potential commercial appeal…

Read More After The Jump….

However, despite not winning, the show turned out to be a great stepping stone for the amazing musician. Appearing in commercials, opening up for some major acts and now merging with two other talented artists to form ‘The Crowd’, Akil is rising up the music industry food-chain slowly but surely.

It’s a hard task to pin something down in order to fully display this man’s talents to you guys. Where to start with a guy that has such great credentials? He’s been involved with so many great projects that portray various skills so I can only encourage you to youtube, google, facebook him your self. Nobody wants to see an endless list of audio or video footage regardless of how dope they are. So hopefully the video I have chosen will do him justice. It’s the best all-round introduction and display of his musical talent that I could find.

Akil Dasan Plays New YorkCLICK IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

In some respects it’s hard not to sympathise a little with a man like Akil. He is Hip Hop. He represents near enough everything Hip Hop is. Yet it’s hard to look past the ‘dope busker on the street’ vibe you get when listening to his music. No he’s most likely never going to blow and be a world super star. But does that make him any less entertaining? He’s the type of artist that will always sound better live than on a CD. Why, because CD’s take away from the natural sound of a pure musician’s music. A guitar with a backing soundtrack will simply not sound as fresh.

Kevin Michael – We All Want The Same Thing (Acoustic) (Feat.Akil Dasan)

To give you a heads up on some of the work he’s done:
Check youtube for some spoken word he took part in for ‘Urbintel’.
Featured on a Kevin Michael Ep. In fact watch the youtube videos of the duo performing live at ‘Karmaloop’. Peep the Acoustic versions of each track, it sounds so much crisper.
His official facebook HERE
His official Myspace, which if you’re lucky his solo EP can be found. HERE

Check for info on ‘The Crowd’ in my next post.

Peace