Brian Fresco • Casanova
If you have had your head in the sand for the last few months it'd be understandable if you're unfamiliar with the new state of the hip-hop game which finds Chicago front and center. Should you not be spending your time buried on North Avenue though, you've probably noticed that Chicago's SaveMoney collective, long a fixture locally, has asserted it's hold on the game at large, continuing once again with the deliverance once again of a long-awaited full-length, this time from Brian Fresco in the form of his magnum opus, Casanova.
Three years or more in the making depending on who you ask, this project is the one we've all been waiting for since Fresco burst onto the scene back in 2012 with Mafioso, itself part of the first wave that gave rise to the collective at large. While this full-length boasts features from the likes of Chance The Rapper, Dally Auston, BJ The Chicago Kid and GLC, it is personal journey through and through that speaks to Fresco's careful sense for the diagonal while dealing with a host of angular issues directly in his periphery. Fresco is his music, perhaps moreso than anyone in or out of SaveMoney and it's that innate agency in the words he uses, the phrasing he delivers and the story he tells that underlines the reason to listen. While many from the city can make conjectures on what is or might be, he has been there and seen it, a product of the Ida B. Wells housing projects on the city's south side and a hustler at heart, Casanova serves to take listeners into a side of the city that Chance and Vic haven't traversed in awhile, one that is the story of many from here. It's also hot as hell. We couldn't be prouder of Brian, having seen firsthand the kind of work he's put in here. Come out and celebrate at his headlining show this week at Portage Theater and keep an eye out both for plenty more from Fresco and a review coming very soon.
