What and why is Dead Fresh?

The name Dead Fresh started as some words that got stuck in my head for a while. I then moved them from there into my file filled with the random, beautiful and dumb collection of words, names, puns and phrases that I squirrel away for rainy days.

Many of these words end their time with me as the name of one of my fantasy basketball teams. While this may seem like an ignoble end, I think naming fake sports teams can be art. Here’s some of my best: Snore Vidal, Calm Johnson, Clyde Scoringale, Steve Never, Cronch, Slam Francisco, Dog Barkley, Mob Ford, Ham Juice, Shady Perry, Tres Bad, Yung Rummy, Kim Jong Chill, Diamond Lobster Silk, Cat Videos, Ghost Brotocol, Deep Jesus, Whateverly Brothers, Clams O’Houlihan, Yolo Baggins, The Skullfire of Aberdeen, The Double Dragoons, Pretzeppelin, Hangover Lecter, Wario Batali. 

At first this was all Dead Fresh was going to be. Turns out, it had more to give. 

While flashbacks can be a lazy storytelling tool, I’m rusty so let me have this one. I grew up with a mom who owned a bookstore before becoming a teacher and a sociologist dad who loved the Beatles and Bob Dylan but also let me listen obsessively to his copies of Run DMC’s Raising Hell and Kraftwerk’s “Tour De France.” This led, more directly than I realized at the time, to working as a freelance journalist, columnist, reviewer and blogger for magazines and alt-weeklies. While I’d write about almost anything they’d pay me poorly for, my focus was mostly on music and along the way I got the chance to interview people like Bjork, Chuck D, Ice-T, Jack White, Sonic Youth, The xx, De La Soul, MIA, Antony & the Johnsons, Devin the Dude, Dizzee Rascal, Tortoise, Roy Hargrove, Feist, Animal Collective, Dropkick Murphys, Wolf Parade, Death Cab for Cutie and multiple members of Wu-Tang. 

I called Raekwon once and he did an interview from the backseat of someone’s truck and told me a metaphor about pants so confounding and wise I had to rewind the tape five times to get it. Ice Cube called me one day and said “Yo, is this Brandon?” and it made me so giddy I forgot to give him shit about the horrible movie he was promoting at the time. 

After more than a decade of muttering to myself that “this doesn’t seem like a sustainable job”, I jumped ship and got into advertising to do content and copywriting. Though it’s still not entirely clear what “content” actually is, advertising has been challenging and ever-changing and a field filled with interesting, creative and smart people. It also pays an adult wage, which is nice. It’s sharpened my writing and made me better at being concise, but given that “long copy” in advertising is basically anything over two sentences, I may need to play myself back into shape here. 

But always in the background was the desire to start writing again for readers instead of clients, brands, audiences and demographics. Inevitably I wondered if I had a book in me, but I’m happy to report that the answer so far still seems to be no. However, I definitely have a newsletter in me. I wrote a weekly music column Montreal’s Hour called Seven Night Stand for five years and fucking loved every minute of it. In some respects, I never stopped writing that column, on Twitter and Instagram and in group chats and work slacks. A music critic ronin, a masterless lost soul wandering the platforms peddling my wares for free. 

While this will be filled with music, it will probably also include but not be limited to writing, film, tv, food, art, ads, pop culture, social issues and media. Look for recommendations, analysis, commentary and, eventually, interviews with interesting people. With all of this floating around up there, the name Dead Fresh kept coming back. It said something about how I wanted to write about culture and creativity and the very specific ways these things come and go so quickly these days. 

As with any great name, you have to do some due diligence to figure out where you got it and if you can use it. Apparently there’s a California streetwear brand and a defunct Irish sunglasses company that used the name. All good there. More bizarre is the Urban Dictionary definition that says it’s “used as a sort of "counter-anglicism" to mirror other Quebecois slang,” which was certainly news to any of the actual Quebecois I mentioned it to. 

The most probable origin is, of course, a lifetime of listening to hip hop. Though I’m not an officially accredited rap scholar, for me it might begin with the 1989 jam “D.E.F. = Doug E. Fresh” (“Cause they call me Doug E. Fresh/They know I'm DEF and the initials of my name is D.E.F”). The phrase “fresh to def” starts popping up a bit later in verses by Kriss Kross, Dame Dash, Lupe Fiasco and Memphis Bleek (who drops it on a killer Sauce Money song.) 

The morph into “fresh to death” seems to be the work of Jay-Z, who first uses it on his debut album (“Fresh to death in Moschino, coach bag”) and then later in two songs off The Black Album, including the chorus of “Change Clothes.” Inspiring others as he does, you then start to hear it in early Kanye, Lil Wayne, Future, in a Birdman verse on the “Make it Rain” remix, plus Kevin Gates, Run the Jewels, Juice Wrld and even rap pioneer Lana Del Rey. Maybe because of that last one, it soon flips to “dead fresh” in lyrics by Migos, Gucci Mane, Young Thug, A$AP Rocky, Outkast and Gunna, plus multiple song titles, more recently by legendary Halifax rapper Tachichi. 

This long, winding road to answering what is Dead Fresh is also probably the best answer to the why is Dead Fresh question. Because it makes clear that I’m as curious, open and engaged as ever in making and sharing these entertaining maps to places that I think might interest us.  

I can’t end without mentioning the killer logo and design done by the lovely and talented Jenn McIntyre, with an assist from our daughter on the clearly iconic Dead Fresh ghost illustration. 

Thanks for reading everyone. This is probably going to be great.