Music:
Prince, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, The Cure, the Clipse, D'Angelo, Notorious BIG, Sade, Mark Farina, Saafir, John Lee Hooker, Bjork, the Sugarcubes, Twista, Boards of Canada, Big Juss, The Cinematic Orchestra, Mac Dre, Michael Jackson, Stereolab, Curtis Mayfield, Project Pat, Ministry, MF Grimm, Massive Attack, Destiny's Child, The Modern Jazz Quartet, David Banner, Alicia Keys, Metallica, St. Germaine, Kool Keith, the Police, Cody Chestnut, Dead Kennedys, Thelonious Monk, Lil Wayne, Freestyle Fellowship, Broadcast, the Juggaknots, Tortoise, KRS-One, Four Tet, Alliyah, Public Enemy, Squarepusher, Angie Stone, Fleetwood Mac, Jodeci, Descendants, Miles Davis, Supercat, Nirvana, Common, Radiohead, E-40, Jill Scott, Wu-Tang Clan, Peter Tosh, Madonna, Jay-Z, Meaty Ogre, Stevie Wonder, Daft Punk, N.W.A, Derrick Carter, Kanye West, Portishead, Al Green, Typical Cats, 4Hero, basically every hit song from the 80's and every classic hip hop song from the 90's
Movies:
Hitchcock's classics , French films like Amelie and the Red, White and Blue Three Colors Trilogy, new school kung fu like Hero, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon , anything to do with the mafia, The Big Labowski , Walk the Line, High Fidelity , Punch Drunk Love, 12 Monkeys, JFK , 25th Hour, Pan's Labyrinth, Ghostbusters, Swingers, Heat
Television:
South Park, The Apprentice, the Sopranos, Ali G
Books:
Fingerprints of the Gods and other books by Graham Hancock, Brave New World, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, anything by Vonnegut, Studs Terkel, The Picasso Biography that Norman Mailer wrote, Savage Inequalaties and other books by Jonothan Kozol
Heroes:
My labelmates Mestizo, Dr. Jones, Mike Gao, Dan One, Meaty Ogre, Jash, Robust, Typical Cats, Qwel, Qwazaar, Outerlimitz, Denizen Kane, Rift Napalm, DJWL and Dallas Jackson - word up
Offwhyte (born Ryan Fernandez on August 22, 1977 in Pell City, Alabama) is an American rapper. He has released several projects under the hip hop label Galapagos4, of which he is a founding member. He resides in Los Angeles, California although he launched his musical career within the underground hip hop scene of Chicago, IL. He is known also as Offwheezy.
Career
Offwhyte's most recent release is Mainstay, his third full-length album, a work filled with charismatic philosophies, potent verbal imagery, and a wide range of musical styles.
Offwhyte started performing in the late 1990s, spitting raps at hip hop parties and open mic poetry nights. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago with his long-time friend Jeff Kuglich. There they met a graffiti writer and painter, JASH of Chicagos legendary DC5 crew. The three developed a friendship that would become the foundation of Galapagos4 records.
Squints by Offwhyte was released in February 2000. It was the second CD on the fledgling Galapagos4 label. Urb Magazine hailed it as "ingenius" and the Village Voice described it as "free-floating intelligence ". Hip hop heads took quick notice to Offwheezy's lyrical dexterity and untamed production skills. The classic CD has been repressed several times and is considered to be the album that broke the monotony of Chicago "battle rap" that was prominent in the scene at that time.
His second album, The Fifth Sun, was released in November 2002. The album was licensed for foreign distriubtion by British electronica label Peacefrog, and Galapagos4 followed its release with their first European tour. The Fifth Sun gained airplay on BBC Radio 1 and on many other radio stations across Europe. Offwhyte has since embarked on several European tours and lived in Zurich, Switzerland briefly in 2004 to record the Crossing the Potomac EP with DJ Reezm and Justin Sayne.
Ethnicity
A Filipino-American born in Pell City, Alabama, Offwhyte's birth certificate was marked "white". This is because in Alabama in the 1970s there were only two classifications of race on a birth certificate: white and black. Offwhyte has not yet sought to get this formality corrected.
