Errol Holden is back with his debut album, “Joe Frog: Episode One.”
Mass Appeal Records announced the release of Joe Frog: Episode One, the debut album by rising New York MC, Errol Holden. Along with his debut album, Errol also released a video for “85’s Astonishment.”
Joe Frog: Episode One, which is titled after Holden’s father, examines family, addiction, and consequences, and pays tribute to the man who he was unable to see for 19 years due to addiction, fractured family dynamics and incarceration. With a unique style of narration completely his own, Errol’s urgency and precise observations helped him make an immediate impact, evidenced by his jaw-dropping Bars On I-95 Freestyle.
“Music has shown me that you don’t have to do bad. Nobody knew my real name until I started rapping,” shares Errol Holden. “I didn’t want to glamorize my past, and bring that to this.” Now, the rising artist is making an impression solely with his bars, and his debut project, Joe Frog: Episode One, for Nas’ Mass Appeal Records presents a brilliant example of his deeply personal, highly potent art.
“I give a face to people that are faceless,” he asserts. “These are human beings identified by the drug they’re using. I choose to expose the complexities of the human being, not the addiction. Why’d they get high? Why’d someone like me get into the street and do what I was doing? The difference is the intimacy, level of detail, and humanity I bring to this.”
After decades hustling on rooftops and navigating the badlands of Harlem and The Bronx. In between hustling and incarceration, Errol released a handful of self-released projects, which he presented to customers directly through social media, including direct messages to his burgeoning fanbase. One of those self-released projects immediately caught the attention of Mike “Heron” Herard; a veteran music executive and producer who has served as A&R for the release of Big L’s Platinum album The Big Picture and produced the album’s smash single “Flamboyant,” which spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard’s Rap singles chart; helped oversee the scene-defining Soundbombing album trilogy and brought trendsetting acts such as Slaughterhouse (Joe Budden, Royce 5’9’, Joell Ortiz & KXNG Crooked), and Griselda (Westside Gunn, Benny The Butcher & Conway The Machine) and Conway The Machine to Shady Records.
With Heron’s guidance and additional advocacy from well-respected media and music executive Noah Callahan-Bever (who also designed the project’s graphic cover art), Errol Holden left the streets in his rearview and found solace in writing his life in verse.
Errol Holden is now putting life into one-of-a-kind music and building a legacy with his name. That legacy starts with the release of Joe Frog: Episode One.
