Biography
Bent Joshua was born in the mid-’90s and always had an interest in self-expression. Growing up in the state of New Jersey, from a young age he always loved to tell his family stories, often ones he would conjure up from an unbounded vivid imagination. His parents frequently recall the times he would put on impromptu plays at the family dinner table with everyone watching attentively. Like most who write with their left-hands, he had a knack for creativity, primarily story-telling. He enjoyed art class as a child, but could never seem to get comfortable holding the scissors that were made for right-hander
After a few years of being your average kid, which involved playing copious amounts of video games and running around having snowball fights and shooting water guns depending on the season, he began to take piano lessons at the age of 10. It was here where he began to find the channel to express himself musically. Simultaneously, he loved to read, especially the sports section of the local newspaper. While learning sheet music he was also learning more and more about language and at the age of 11 wrote his first few poems in language arts class. He would continue to play piano and read the sports section of the daily newspaper, but wouldn’t revisit writing poetry for some years.
Bent Joshua was born in the mid-’90s and always had an interest in self-expression. Growing up in the state of New Jersey, from a young age he always loved to tell his family stories, often ones he would conjure up from an unbounded vivid imagination. His parents frequently recall the times he would put on impromptu plays at the family dinner table with everyone watching attentively. Like most who write with their left-hands, he had a knack for creativity, primarily story-telling. He enjoyed art class as a child, but could never seem to get comfortable holding the scissors that were made for right-handers.
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It wasn’t until late middle school that his musical palate started to get a taste for Rap and Hip-Hop. In the 8th grade, he remembers when on the school bus the bus driver would always have on the station Hot 97. One day the station played “Day ‘n’ Nite” by Kid Cudi and he was instantly captivated by that song when he heard it. What caught his ear was how different it sounded compared to the other Rap music played on the radio. It sounds cliche, but from that moment on he began to start seeking out Rap music on his own.
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After high school, at age 18 Bent Joshua went off to college. In the process, he lost the hobbies that were a large part of his life, playing basketball and playing the piano. Inspired by watching spoken word artists on YouTube in the summer before he matriculated at college, especially the YouTuber “Suli Breaks”, he ended up trying his hand at writing a poem one fall Friday night for the first time since he was 11 years old. But unlike back then, this poem was to be spoken and not read. On a night when most college freshmen were searching for the nearest party, he was working on his first spoken word poem. He loved it, he got lost in the process. In hindsight, the poem was far from perfect, but at that moment, he had picked up a new hobby that would be there for him to visit when stressed and restless.
For the next 6 years, from 2013-to-2019, he would become an avid writer of poetry and he realized that he had a way with words and that his poetry was an extension of who he was. Wordplay and playful puns were a constant in his communication with friends from back in the late middle school years and writing poetry felt like putting together all of that verbal dialogue into a packaged theme for him to share with not only the world but most importantly himself. Concurrently, in this period of time he had been listening to a lot of rap artists. Some of his influences in this time were Ace Hood, A$AP Rocky, Joyner Lucas, Juice WRLD, Hopsin, Kid Cudi, Kid Ink, Lil Wayne, Logic, Mac Miller, Moosh & Twist, NF, and Wale. However, he always saw his poetry as separate from rap music. It never really occurred to him to try to rap, even though throughout the years he had heard from family and friends that his poetry had a rhythm to it. They would say it’s “almost like a rap” or “acapella”, but he took pride in his poetry being different from rap. For one it was meant to be read, not just performed and heard, and for two, well rap just felt a bit out of character. Bent Joshua did not see himself as a rapper, although things would change as he aged.
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A little under 5 years after starting his hobby of writing spoken word poetry, in 2018, he wrote what was to be considered the closest poem to rap he had written. He liked it, and in the back of his mind felt this could be the beginning of a new direction. Several months later, for the first time, he jokingly recorded on a tape recorder himself rapping freestyle to some cool beats he found on YouTube. He thought the flows were decent, but it was something he did more in jest rather than being serious. However, everything changed after this fun experiment, when in the summer of 2019 he had found out one of his college friends had uploaded a beat on SoundCloud that they had created. This friend of his, Greenfield Project, knew he enjoyed writing poetry so Bent Joshua felt comfortable asking him if he could try to write lyrics to the beat and then try to rap over it. It ended up working out and soon after the two of them would go on to do many more songs together, uploading them onto SoundCloud (without being mixed and mastered) over the next two years.
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It was throughout these two years where Bent Joshua began to grow his confidence as a rapper. To take the next step in this pursuit he wanted to do a high-quality project. In order to help make that dream a possibility he used beats from @thezachmichael of Elizabeth Records and found producer @ZackSymes of Wonderland Recording Studios (located in Chattanooga, TN) for mixing and mastering. And thanks to those connections, here we’re in early 2022 fresh off the release of his first EP, the "Own Drum EP". Bent Joshua is excited for you to check it out and to continue to make and release more music, he has only just begun.