Meet the Band: Casey Veggies
Planting the Seeds: Rapper Casey Veggies was once a shooting guard for his high school basketball team. He began making songs for fun and posting them to his Myspace page. He soon started taking his talent more seriously and released the mixtape Greatly Customized Vol. 1. Veggies would go on to become one of the founding members of the popular hip-hop collective Odd Future, a group fronted by the popular Tyler, the Creator. Veggies had an amicable split with the group after he graduated high school, stating that he had a different vision for what he wanted to do with his career.
Harvesting the Crops: As he’s moved forward, Veggies has often found himself working alongside some of the bigger names in hip-hop, including Mac Miller, Kendrick Lamar and Dom Kennedy to name a few. “Getting to meet Jay Z [was one of the highlights],” he says. “I got to chill with him and play some tracks. That was pretty dope.” In addition to Jay Z, Veggies cites Kanye West and Q-tip the Abstract from A Tribe Called Quest as his biggest influences. After his 2013 mixtape Life Changes, Veggies inked a deal with Vested In Culture and Epic Records. He released his first album, Live & Grow, in September of last year; it features appearances from the likes of Dom Kennedy, Dej Loaf, YG, BJ the Chicago Kid, Tyler, the Creator — and even Veggies’ parents. “They’ve had a big influence on me as both an artist and a person,” Veggies says. “They’ve always encouraged me to just be who I am and I’ve always done that.”
