Prince Aries Biography

15 April 2011 One Comment

Aries Nuñez, known to the entertainment world as Prince Aries, has quite a few cards up his sleeve. Though his passion lies in music and his love for DJing, Aries became a fundamental player in the Bay Area’s new renaissance – promoter, graphic designer, TV show personality, and producer – with his multimedia background placing him a cut above the rest. When his groundbreaking show, Distortion 2 Static, got picked up by a local Bay Area television station after only two seasons on Public Access, he knew that he had his finger on the pulse of a movement that started simply as a way to share his love for Hip Hop.

A veritable jack-of-all-trades, Prince Aries has become an established name in the Bay as one of the city’s most well known personalities, becoming a sought after DJ, promoter, graphic designer, and producer. However, it was his talents as a VJ that garnered the hip-hop renaissance man his first notice. Originally from the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, Aries moved to the Bay Area in the mid-90s and shortly there after went about founding the Bay Area’s first hip-hop television program, Distortion 2 Static, which allowed Aries up-close-and-personal interaction with many of the artists that inform the music on Clean Ass Whip. Since starting the show, which fans can now watch on air or online, Aries has interviewed and featured artists including DJ Spinna, DJ Premier, The Pharcyde, Too $hort, Biz Markie, and many more.

It was also Aries’ move from the east to west coast that largely influenced much of the music and the overall concept and theme of Clean Ass Whip. “A majority of the songs on the mix are songs that were significant to a certain time in my life, when I first moved to the Bay Area,” says Prince Aries. “The sound and feel of West Coast music made a big impact on me.” Those influences shine through with the inclusion of songs like “We Roll Deep” by Conscious Daughters and the “I’m A Player Remix” from Too $hort, both of which easily pair with the newer songs, like the mixtape title track with DaVinci or “And We Mobb In That…” with LA rapper Bambu. The tape also features Aries’ own mix of “Distinguished Gentlemen,” from fellow SWTBRDS artist StreetMedia.

While many of today’s DJs can be found Google searching for their tracks, Aries went to the source for Clean Ass Whip, digging into his extensive vinyl collection, many of which are original pressings straight from the artists. “I’ve been collecting vinyl for some time now,” explains Aries. “Some of these songs I got from the artists themselves, and the newer songs can be tied into the work I’ve done with Distortion 2 Static, which is how I met a lot of these artists in the first place.”

Prince Aries’ Clean Ass Whip mixtape will be available for free download this May.

In addition to releasing official music videos for “Clean Ass Whip” and “And We Mobb In That…,” Prince Aries will be releasing a number of short videos leading up to release, each offering insight into Aries’ history as well as the new project. This first video features Aries discussing Walkman Day, and how the tradition first put him onto Too $hort and N.W.A.