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Interview: Chicago rapper Brian Fresco is hungry for more after excellent tape ‘Casanova’

Tucked east of downtown’s tourist-heavy and bustling Magnificent Mile is Seneca Playlot Park. Sandwiched between the Ritz Carlton and the Museum of Contemporary Art, the park is easy to miss, but to rapper Brian Fresco, who chose the spot for his interview with RedEye, this tiny park is crucial to the formation of Chicago music collective Savemoney.

“There were a lot of memories that happened here that pioneered the bond between most of Savemoney,” Fresco tells RedEye. “Between this, Oak Street Beach and Chicago Avenue in front of the McDonald’s, this is the park where we would come to sit and talk crazy to each other, rap, beatbox, freestyle, smoke and drink. It was a secluded place for us in high school.”

For Fresco, the 23-year-old Savemoney founding member, that safe space was formative to the man and artist he is today. Fresh off the release of his excellent 2016 mixtape “Casanova,” a project that goes toe-to-toe with Chicago’s best hip-hop releases of the year, Fresco’s ready for whatever is next. In an artistic community that includes the happy gospel of Chance the Rapper, the unrelentingly justice-minded Vic Mensa, the spitfire rapping of Joey Purp or the party-starting dance fusion of Towkio, Fresco’s music is harder to pin down, but “Casanova” proves he is finding his lane.

Born Brian Allen, the Bronzeville-based Fresco split his childhood living at the neighborhood’s now-demolished Ida B. Wells and the Near South Side’s Harold Ickes projects. He remembers, “Being a kid in the projects and having to go through the things that you go through, whether it’s having to protect yourself or just something as simple as obtaining some money to buy ice cream, I got to see things that kids normally wouldn’t see.”

He discovered music when he was in fourth grade at Beasley Academic Center, where he and his classmate (who would later become Savemoney rapper Kami) obsessed over Eminem’s 2002 album “The Eminem Show.” “That album is the reason I started rapping,” Fresco claims. “Back then, I would listen to a lot of my old school R&B things because of my parents. When they’d have their friends over, I’d be peeking out of my room when I’m not supposed to be just to hear the music.”

It was through Kami that he was introduced to what would become Savemoney. “Meeting guys like Joey, Kami, Vic and Chance, they showed me that it was bigger, that Chicago itself is bigger than just my small neighborhood. It’s prettier girls, it’s more fun parties, it’s safer parties,” Fresco said of his high school friends.

They would meet downtown because pretty much everyone went to different high schools: Chance the Rapper at Jones College Prep, Towkio at Lane Tech and Fresco at Simeon. As they’d hang out more, they’d begin to hone their musical abilities and follow their artistic curiosities. Fresco says, “The safer environments like the one I’m sitting in right now was a place that kind of plucked me out of my box. I was kind of stuck in between project to project, and I broke out of it by being downtown and being a part of Savemoney.”

“Meeting like-minded individuals where everybody was kind of creative and had their own type of vision and a different outlook on Chicago itself was surreal for me,” Fresco adds. “When people started taking notice of our music, it’s what made us start taking it seriously. At first, during freshman or sophomore [year], we’d just freestyle and beatbox, something fun to do after school to pass time.”

His other passion in high school was sports, playing football and even getting an offer from Wisconsin to play college ball, but he knew music was his true calling: “From crowdsurfing at a Kids These Days show and then coming to school and having to go to practice, it didn’t add up. Music was more fun,” he says. With Vic Mensa reaching initial success with Kids These Days and Chance the Rapper raising hype with 2012’s “10 Day” tape, more and more eyes were on Savemoney.

After high school, Fresco briefly attended college at Middle Tennessee State University but knew he had to go back to Chicago to pursue music. He explains, “I had a talk with Kami and then later Vic. They told me, ‘If we’re serious and you’re serious about music, you gotta be back in Chicago.’ ” So Fresco told his mom he was coming back after a year of school and went back to Chicago to work on what would become his debut mixtape, 2013’s “Mafioso.” That tape’s namesake, as Fresco explains, “is a gangster with mind elevation,” adding with a chuckle, “At that point in my life, I was watching way too many ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Scarface’ movies.” With tracks like the wordplay-heavy “Peace of Mind” and Savemoney classic “Steamer,” a posse cut that boasted Towkio, Kami, Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper showed immense promise and still holds up.

Following “Mafioso,” which was received favorably in the shadow of Chance the Rapper’s 2013 tape “Acid Rap,” Fresco’s life hit a series of curveballs. “Those two years [after ‘Mafioso’] were like a patch of me growing up. I had a kid, I was dealing with moving out of my parents’ house and almost falling back into the street life too heavy. I just had to get my focus on straight,” Fresco says. When things were looking bleak, he received a call to collaborate from prominent local rapper Tree, which became 2014’s EP “Soulmoney.” “I thank Tree to this day. He re-sparked that creative energy in me,” Fresco says.

Though the demands of providing for his family were still there, he made a decision to continue to focus just on music, writing songs that would end up on his follow-up tape “Casanova.” “Dandelion,” which on the mixtape is a near-eight minute epic of lush live pianos (courtesy of executive producer Trevor Welch) and emotional openness, was actually the first song he wrote. “I was just overwhelmed with my life, and I just let it all come through in the song,” he explains of the lines that are about running from his problems, being tired of hustling and having to write artist emails in the third person to make it seem like he had a manager. With all that in his mind, Fresco went for it: “I asked myself, how about I just let all of my creative juices go and make a song that’s eight minutes? What’s stopping me?” The result is one of the year’s most ambitious and successful Chicago songs.

While “Dandelion” is the project’s centerpiece, the rest of “Casanova” is just as rewarding. If you’re unfamiliar with Fresco, “Higher,” his incredibly danceable lead single with Chance the Rapper, is one you may have heard. A low-key contender for Chicago’s song of the summer, the track features pulsating synths, an earworm hook and production from Canadian electronic duo Blue Hawaii. It currently sits at over 600,000 plays on Soundcloud. Other jams include rave-up “Bussin,” the syrupy “Call” and the gospel-infused “Golden.” If every Savemoney artist has a type, Fresco’s the utility player: He can do everything. “I just wanted to capture the versatility and diverse taste. When I was a kid, I’d be in the projects with my Walkman where I’d have both 50 Cent and Nirvana CDs—I like everything,” Fresco says.

In a year when multiple Savemoney members are carving their niches in mainstream music, with Chance the Rapper continuing his dominance as the most successful independent rapper, Vic Mensa finding his calling as an avatar for social justice and Joey Purp proving why he’s one of the hottest new rappers in the world, Fresco doesn’t feel the need to catch up. “It’s not a race. Everyone is talented in their own way. I have my own lane and wave. We’re all friends.” Plus, Fresco’s not stopping with “Casanova.” Already at work with new stuff, he’s feeling better than ever. “I feel like I might give people a few projects in 2017. The creative zone I’m in is really crazy,” he says. If “Casanova” is just a taste of what’s to come, nothing’s stopping Fresco.

@joshhterry | jterry@redeyechicago.com