Don Shimoda is a Southern California native whose flows are heavily influenced by Gangster Rap and East Coast sounds. His stage name “Don Shimoda” is a tribute to Shimoda’s favourite characters from Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan and Richard Bach’s Illusions.
Don Shimoda’s bars are a blend of wit, introspections, life lessons, spirituality, storytelling, and streams of consciousness, as he puts it.
When it comes to rap artists and emcees, he has been influenced by a lot of different archetypes, some of which are MF DOOM, J Cole, Jedi Mind Tricks, and Ghostface Killah. Shimoda’s production is typically a boisterous boom bap beat to a SoCal summer song, examining the disparities in cadences between the two polarising coasts.
Believe it or not, Shimoda’s first single, “Burn Em’ Up” was actually written as he was debating whether or not to continue Hip-Hop, and he realised that he had a lot to offer, while others have forgotten the core principles and foundations of the genre.
His new single “Inner Sanctum” is about “the realization of self and the spiritual experience that comes with it“, according to the rapper himself, and it features another talented rap artist by the name of Ben Beal.
Listen to the single here:
#Peace.Love.InnerSanctum
