American composer
Musical artist
Adrian Younge (born May 7, 1978[3]) is an American composer, arranger and music producer based in the Los Angeles area.
Background
Younge grew up in Fontana, California. His father is a lawyer and Younge himself earned a Juris Doctor degree from the American College of Law in Orange County.[4] Younge has worked as a lawyer and law professor—having taught entertainment law at his alma mater.[5][6][7] Early in his career, Younge worked for the legal department of MTV.[8]
Music career
Younge edits and scores films.[9] He played bass and keyboards in a band during the late 1990s, and began composing after sampling records with an MPC. He quickly learned to play several instruments and experimented with analog recordings which resulted in the Italian influenced Venice Dawn, which he released on EP. In 2009, his soundtrack for the film Black Dynamite[10] was released on the Wax Poetics label.[11] In 2011 Younge revived and expanded Venice Dawn into a longer work called Something about April. In 2013 he released Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics[12] and Twelve Reasons to Die with Ghostface Killah.[13] Younge also operates a vinyl record store in Los Angeles called Artform Studio.[9] Younge, along with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, produced Kendrick Lamar's "untitled 06" song featuring CeeLo Green, which was later reworked into the track "Questions" from the 2018 album The Midnight Hour. Younge and Ali also co-founded the Jazz Is Dead record label in 2017.
In 2021, Younge released the album The American Negro, as well as produced the podcast "Invisible Blackness".[14] Both projects were launched during Black History Month and each seeks to highlight the systemic racism that African Americans have endured in the United States and the psychological toll that results. The podcast features speakers such as Chuck D, Ladybug Mecca, Keyon Harrold and Michael Jai White.[15][16]
