THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Fat Mike (NOFX), Sam King (Get Dead) and independent hip-hop artist Ceschi Ramos aka Codefendants recently released their debut album This Is Crime Wave on Mike’s Fat Wreck Chords imprint Bottles To The Ground.
Accompanying the album is the short film written by Fat Mike that was serialized across the group’s five music videos, culminating with the music video for Fast Ones which featured legendary rapper The DOC and his first new verse in over 19 years.
Codefendants are the breath of fresh air and the steel-toe-cap kick in the nuts music has needed for too long. It all started when King’s graffiti crew were giving tattoos and making flash art to raise money to help rapper Ramos when he was incarcerated. Months later, they met at the Gilman Street Project in Berkeley. They bonded, talking about their love of hip-hop and punk rock over a bottle of Jameson. They didn’t know it yet, but they had just started Codefendants.
They began recording songs two years later in Los Angeles with Fat Mike as producer. Soon after Fatty joined, they decided to make an album that sounded like nothing else — a completely genre-fluid album — a cross between hip hop, new-wave, flamenco, and The Beatles. And thus a whole new genre — Crime Wave — was born.”
