Tom Cruz

Producer/Beat God Tom Cruz, nee’ Shaka Girvan, works through a naturalistic futurism not unlike 80’s/90’s dancehall producers, Jeremy Harding and Sly & Robbie, or in some other instances Kraftwerk or Devo. His extensive track record shows sharp incline in the maturation of technique and diligence. However, anyone who was aware of his work knew he was a prodigy. Cruz’s nascent strong connection to classic melody and deep innate understanding of the ever evolving fluid tangent of today/tomorrow’s rap combined with Carribean Human ROOT rhythms and an overall ambitious competitive spirit make him impossible to (hahaha) BEAT. Defend Music is ecstatic to welcome a young man refined by experience but simply just beginning the Golden Age of the command of his craft. 1/3 of the performers, all of the beats, and the general aesthetic mastermind of legendary cult rap super-trio, Supreeme, TC is also the key co-conspirator and artistic development guru behind the blossoming of Houston’s own PARTY+LYRICAL MC DU JOUR Fat Tony, helving helmed ALL of the production duties on RABDARGAB and Smart Ass Black Boy..

Aside from his valor on the track and versatility with completely raw compositions and sampling, he isn’t an introverted silent computer beat-maker dude, He gets hands on. At heart, Cruz is a visionary but not the type that obsesses over the nature of his own myth but more so one who acts on and facilitates the myth, aesthetic, context, timing, and narrative of the artist he is producing at any given moment. I would describe the music he makes primarily as Dramatic/Melodramatic Epic Pop Rap Romanticism. Perhaps, it was his second generation Jamaican upbringing in Eastpoint Atlanta, GA with cultured parents who showed him a wealth of films and literature despite often having to do it by candlelight that imbued Shaka with this sense of the compulsory & the evocative.