VOCAB ~ Biography * Musical Bio: song #1 on “First n Foremost…” album On February 6th, 1983 in Toronto Canada, Sean Harvey (a.k.a. Vocab) was born. Both his mother and father had emigrated separately from Jamaica and were introduced through a mutual friend. Vocab’s father (Carl Harvey) was a guitar player for a number of different bands, (among them, Grammy winning Toots and the Maytals). His father’s hectic schedule as a performer conflicted with his mothers’ idea of stability, both emotionally and financially. The relationship was short lived. After Vocab’s first birthday, contact with his father was limited to visitation which dwindled as he got older. In the absence of his father, the young boy (like so many other kids in his demographic) was forced to look elsewhere for male role models. With his mother constantly working and little or no adult supervision after school, Vo found himself with a lot of time to kill and not much to kill it with. So, he did what most young kids did that were stuck in the big city with nothing to do; he hit the streets. Running with a group of older kids, Sean saw more than his share of fights, stabbings and the occasional parties getting shot up. He frequently spent time talking to the fathers of his friends who’d already been through the system. With his mothers’ strict rules, the adolescent decided young that he wasn’t going to succumb to the same pitfalls it seemed so many of his friends were doomed. It wasn’t rap that he used to elevate him from his circumstances. It was his first love, basketball. But, when his NBA hoop dreams turned out to be just that, his love for hip-hop was the one constant from his childhood to adult years. As young as 8, Sean and his cousin Chris would make mixtapes using three ghetto blasters, one to record and the other aimed directly at the speakers of the first. In middle and high school he made mix cd’s for his friends under the moniker “Ridgeway’s finest: DJ F**k You.” Rapping never entered his mind as a possibility until years later. After moving out to Portland (P-Town) with his mother, the 15 year old young man from Toronto (T-dot) found himself in extremely unfamiliar surroundings. The quick change from an extremely multicultural east coast city to a predominantly white side of town and attending a mostly white school was a culture shock, to say the least. It wasn’t until the summer after his junior year at Lincoln High, when he was first introduced to writing raps. His best friend from Toronto, Bentley, flew to Portland to spend the summer with Cab and his family. When Cab would get home from summer school Bentley would have at least three verses written. One of the last days of Bentley’s trip, he challenged Vocab to write a verse. Vocab attentively agreed, and in about 30 minutes the verse was finished and Cab had found his calling. For the next year and a half Vocab put himself through a (game like) rap training course. Going back through his classic CD’s and dissecting everything from rappers word play to melodies. He taught himself how to count bars, write hooks, set up punch lines, create rhyme schemes and do everything else he admired about his favorite rappers (check out Vocab’s Top 10 list to see who this consists of). He didn’t write his second verse until he graduated from high school and felt confident in his ability as an MC. He floated from party to party with friends’ freestyling in ciphers and battling his fare share of what he refers to as “party rappers.” He quickly became bored with the house party rap scene and was approached by a street pimp/pioneer local rapper known as Todd G, who ended up offering Vocab a chance to spit a verse on his solo album “Bail Money.” After his first studio experience he realized that making quality hits and not battling would be his way into the rap game. The second step into his career came when he “hooked” with the local indie label known as Ghetto Rise Records. There he got much needed studio experience as well as on stage live performances. After a year and a half though, from what he calls a “creative disagreement,” Vocab become a free agent. While in limbo, he hit the city hard and laced guest appearances on a pletheren of different projects; including Hi-Rollerz “The Drop Point” album and combined mixtape, “The Pimp My Ride” mixtape from the Refectory, and S.P.’s (Slow Polk) “How I Woulda Said It” vol. 1 & 2. Just to name a few. After several months of grind work, it finally paid off when an old friend of his, Everett “E. Makovich” Clifton, approached him about being the first artist on his new label Constent Entertainment (its bout the music). Immediately Vocab was back in the studio taking a second crack at his first album. Due to the creative freedom and business structure provided by Constent Entertainment (www.constent.com), Vocab quickly felt at home in the highly ambitious environment. Finally, a person as well as a company shared and understood his vision for both quality music and business integrity. Combined with industry standard production and Vocab’s melodic lyricism (which happens to be the name of Vocab’s second album; expected to be released in spring of 2007) they set out to create one of the most defiant hip-hop albums, not to be held to the constraints of mainstream rap. Eight months later the critically acclaimed album, "First n Foremost…" Classic Edition (Vinyl CD Included) was finished and slated to hit stores (March 1st 2006). The first of many classics features production by Auditory, The Alumni, ASAP, Dominique Blaze and many others along with guest appearances by Young FaDell, Lil Fats, UC (Uncommon), and I Double S. So, if your tired of listening to the same old bullsh_t and you need some content in your music, but you don’t want to sacrifice the beat or the flow. Peep out Vocab’s debut album, First n Foremost... “Im so defiant when Im rhyming cause the flows designed to hit you in the head and leave you open minded…” -VOCAB