Lee Bannon

Lee Bannon, born Fred Warmsley on September 22, 1987, is a hip-hop producer from Sacramento, California. His work is spread along the vast hip-hop scene and he has worked with the likes of Talib Kweli, The Alchemist, Big Shug, Planet Asia, Krondon, Phil Da Agony, Mitchy Slick, Strong Arm Steady, The Jacka, U-n-i, Consequence, Talib Kweli, Wu-tang clan’s Inspectah Deck, Curren$y, and Saigon. An anonymous source claiming to be a childhood friend of the producer describes his early forays into music, “When we were like 13 or 14, he got this Korg beat machine thing as a birthday present. We turned this old playhouse he had in his backyard into a little makeshift studio and he would make beats in there. This was around the time we were first hearing Madlib, MF DOOM, and Dilated Peoples.” Lee later met local DJ Alvin D who encouraged and mentored the producer further. Utilizing his connections, DJ Alvin D introduced Lee to a number of artists which in turn eventually led to beat placements with artists. Bannon's first solo project, Me & Marvin (2009) exclusively used Marvin Gaye samples "as a tribute to the 25th anniversary of the [untimely] passing of the beloved soul singer" and featured verses from S.O.L., Singapore Kane, Termanology, Skyzoo, Donny Goines, Torae, Reks, Supastah Snuk, Uptown Swuite, The Jacka, Kali, and C-Plus. He later released an instrumental album, "The Big Toy Box" (2009) and the Check-Point mixtape (2009) that included verses from U-N-I, Talib Kweli, Zion I, Sha Stimuli, Willie the Kid, Uptown Swuite, Trife Diesel, C-Plus, Saigon, Poor, Curt@!n$, S.O.L., The Jacka, Phil the Agony, Termanology, and Ea$y Money. In 2012 he released the Fantastic Plastic album featuring verses from yU of Diamond District, Chuck Inglish of The Cool Kids, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, S.O.L., Poor, Down Town James Brown, Chuuwee, Inspectah Deck, and Roc c. When asked about the title of the record, Lee explained, “think about everything in your life that is plastic. Even my deodorant has plastic, the headphones I’m using to engineer music has plastic, all my keyboards are plastic, I open a plastic bag to get my chips. Fantastic Plastic represents a world ruled by plastic. That’s it.” Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.