"It's cool to see things come full-circle. A year ago, nearly to the day, I walked out of my classroom and headed home for Winter Break. My only aim for that window of creative time was to put together the foundation for the best project possible to submit for Fake Four's Freecember series the following year," San Francisco/Bay Area rapper-producer OneWerd wrote within a recent press statement. Adding that he then, spent the next three weeks "experimenting with new production approaches, brain-storming, and collecting song ideas and working them out into lyrics." Upon completing eight genre-eschewing beats for what would ultimately, become his Alive EP, OneWerd reached out to a particular collection of artists he looked up to and admired to appear within Alive; this would end up including features from Denver emcee sole, Graves 33, Sleep of Oldominion, Ersatz Splynter, and Fake Four, Inc.'s own "anti-boss himself," Ceschi. OneWerd's Alive EP was released as part of Fake Four's Freecember 2017 series, along with Anonymous Inc. AKA Ceschi & David Ramos' Beta 1 EP, Oscar Goldman's Prevoid EP, and AllOne's Dusty Dossiers EP. It's also, of particular note that "all music and album art [was] produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by OneWerd, 4 cats, and excessive amounts of coffee."


Since the December 2017 release of his Alive EP on Fake Four, Inc. OneWerd has been steadily promoting the EP (which is how our paths crossed) and repping his own unique brand of "Intergalactic Mood Music, Extraterrestrial Hardcore Big Band, Symphonic Experimental Shoegaze Trap-step," fused with slightly more traditional Hip-Hop. If pressed, I would likely, describe the sound contained on OneWerd's Alive EP as something between Run The Jewels and Imagine Dragons with a sonic dash of TV On The Radio. Last month, OneWerd unleashed his first self-directed and edited music video for Alive EP solo cut "Inner Truths." OneWerd explained: "Inner Truths," the first visual treatment from Alive, is an examination of what it means to stay rooted in the face of external pressures to change or conform. I've often felt discouraged by the pressure to fit within an easily-marketable template in the music industry and this song is a reminder to myself to fight back against the voices that would dissuade you from speaking your own inner truths." OneWerd further detailed, he had a bit of behind-camera assistance from his friends The IMF and Jeff Stone for "Inner Truths," which was shot in various locations around his hometown of San Mateo, California. OneWerd's latest Alive EP is now available to stream or download from Fake Four, Inc.'s Bandcamp, along with the rest of their Freecember 2017 releases.