Pan Amsterdam

About

Pan Amsterdam is a musical enigma wrapped in an enduring riddle. His creator is a jazz musician from Houston who’s found fame working with Detroit punk rock God, Iggy Pop, and British indie royalty, Metronomy, and now makes shapeshifting, adventurous hip hop out of the music’s spiritual home, New York. He’s an irreverent character born out of frustration and named after a misunderstanding, yet one who’s on the verge of releasing his fourth album of truth-slaying, genre-crossing rhymes and beats. So, who is Pan Amsterdam? Everything you want him to be. And more besides.

“I think like an improvisor,” the man behind Pan Amsterdam, the effervescent Leron Thomas, explains in a howl of laughter. “That’s how my albums pretty much move. It’s improvisation. Even now just me talking on tangents.”

Thomas is right; Pan Amsterdam has evolved out of myriad states of invention. Some practical, some thrust upon him and others just insanely creative detours undertaken because that’s the true role of an innovator.

He joins back with his favorite label Def Pressé to explore the more hardcore side of his personality as he has always admired that most about Def Pressé. "They let me do anything and everything I wanna do so long as it's on audio, and I need that freedom" he goes on in detail "Not everyone is from the same walk, and so what may verbally be perceived as vulgar to one group of people, may be very thoughtful and a poignant description of the times that we're presently in, so I'm glad that I'm a part of a label home that understands that"