Stephen Michael Feigenbaum,
Early life
Feigenbaum was raised in
Massachusetts, where he spent summers studying classical music at
Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.
He spent six years at
Yale University studying music. He was inspired upon hearing
Kanye West's 2010 album,
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, realizing the potential of combining classical music with modern pop and hip hop.
Career
2016-2018: "Yeethoven"
Feigenbaum developed his stage name combining the names of composer
Johannes Brahms and the town of Lenox, Massachusetts, where he studied classical music.
Feigenbaum began receiving attention in 2016, co-creating and arranging music for a live orchestra event called "Yeethoven", a project that combines and compares the works of
Kanye West and
Beethoven.
This project captured the attention of
Time,
Pitchfork,
and artists like
Vic Mensa and producer Mike Dean. Impressed by the work, Dean invited Feigenbaum to help produce for several Kanye West projects in 2018, including
Nas'
Nasir and
Teyana Taylor's
The Album.
2019-2023: Solo work and work with Isomontrosity
In the subsequent years, Feigenbaum released a series of three projects under
Island Records;
Everybody's Cool but Me in 2019,
Cancel the Party in 2020, and
World on Fire in 2021. The song "Deep Reverence" by Big Sean received a nomination for Best Rap Performance at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, bringing Feigenbaum his first
Grammy Awards nomination.
His fourth project, which he dubbed his "debut album", was released independently in 2022 and is titled
WDYWTBWYGU (an acronym of
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up), and features
KayCyy,
Ant Clemons,
Mr Hudson, 070 Shake, among others. In mid-2022, he joined 070 Shake as the opener for her nationwide tour for her second studio album,
You Can't Kill Me.
At the end of the year, he released the debut album from Isomonstrosity, a collaborative group with Ellen Reid and Yuga Cohler, performed by International Contemporary Ensemble then chopped and rearranged with vocals added by artists including Danny Brown, Kacy Hill, and Empress Of. Released on the Brassland label, The FADER said it was "quite possibly the platonic ideal of a pandemic album."
A live orchestral version of the album WDYWTBWYGU was released on February 10, 2023 (titled Chamber WDYWTBWYGU), followed later that year on August 25, 2023, with Johan's Childhood Chamber Nostalgia Album, an orchestral instrumental album.
Discography
Studio albums
-
WDYWTBWYGU (2022)
-
Johan's Childhood Chamber Nostalgia Album (2023)
-
I Guess We'll Find Out (2024)
With Isomonstrosity
Mixtapes
-
Everybody's Cool but Me (2019)
-
Cancel the Party (2020)
-
World on Fire (2021)
Extended plays
-
Chamber Johan (2021)
-
Wilds (2017)
External links
