Chad Warden - Fructose (2014)

Artist: Chad Warden
Album: Fructose
Location: Austin, Texas
Genres: Instrumental Hip Hop, Cloud Rap
Year Released: 2014-11-01
Date Re-Found / Posted: 2023-09-08
Format(s) Released: Bandcamp

Explanation:

I'm not sure how I should start this. This isn't an easy post for me to write. I'll start off with how I know the artist. Chad Warden, more commonly known as Reverend JKN was a rapper and producer based out of Austin, Texas.

I had first heard of him back in 2015 when he dropped Fringe. I saw it mentioned in a Reddit comment, checked it out and liked it. Didn't really much follow JKN after that. I added all his stuff to RYM of course, but never checked it out further. I like his rap stuff and aside from Fringe he didn't make any. He sort of slipped through the cracks in my radar.

My second time listening to him was in 2020 when I was going through old artists I had added. Remembered he had his instrumental Chad Warden project and decided then would be a good time to listen. I couldn’t find it and subsequently discovered all his social media down. I added it to my 'look-for' list and was eventually going to try and hunt it down.

Occasionally from thereafter I would get a PM on RYM for someone looking for Fringe but that was about it. I believe I must have sent out 10-12 copies of the record to various searchers in the course since I first heard it.

I still listen to Fringe occasionally. If it ever came up in shuffle, I wouldn't skip it. It was an excellent rap album.

There wasn't much else I could have written about until October 24, 2022, when I received a PM from a new RYM user. I won't quote it, but this user identified himself as JKN's brother and explained the disappearance.

Simply put, for reasons I won't be listening, JKN passed away in August of 2019. He was survived by his brother and family. The brother informed me that he was looking for JKN's old music, JKN having deleted it all before his passing.

This changed a lot of things. Of course, I sent him Fringe but his brother was looking for the Chad Warden tapes. As far as I know he reached out to other people too.

So I began looking for the Chad Warden tapes. His brother ended up locating a bunch of them with the help of other people. To help preserve them he uploaded the tapes to his Soundcloud, where I will link below. I managed to track down the Fringe instrumentals (titled TNOAPAU3DSDTYOCATDOYE) and sent it.

For a long while, Fructose was the sole missing tape to his collection and then one day, by a complete long-shot I managed to find a copy. It's only 128kbps but who cares? We have it. I've sent it to him, and he's completed the collection.

I can't imagine having to go through that but I'm very glad he got his brother's music back. It meant the world to him.

To celebrate the recovery of the final tape I will be posting up a link to Fructose here. It's a cloudy beat tape that matches with the cover. Very lush, vibrant sounds all slurred together. It may be corny to say but I should have listened to it earlier.

Rest in peace, Reverend JKN. Hope you're making beats and bars wherever you may be.

Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUvamQ0aTBMWlIjSXBmd1RKWUJNUDJkNVc2Zy02NTRRcmVLNVlWQjFDc2R0enh5TFNIYnpQTQ==
Password: ripjkn