Steven F Johnson

Throughout his journey and development in music, Steve Johnson has explored the marriage between Jazz, Hip-hop, Gospel and ambient sounds. Self-taught, Steve began creating as a means of dealing with an overactive imagination. As a child he was intrigued by the different sounds that simple household objects made when struck with a spoon or fork, highlighting percussion and ostinato basslines as major themes in his music. Steve later experimented with Marching Band and Wind ensemble sounds; avoiding samples and arranging his horn and string lines himself instead of sampling them. Steve’s influences are Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Pete Rock, and Jay Dilla. In the 1990’s Steve began to venture more into sampling, mixing his own arrangements with various pieces of unique sounds. After finding it cumbersome to meet dependable collaborators, a Hip-hop instrumentalist was born