defprez is a rap group consisting of Defcee, CRASHprez, and knowsthetime. This project started from a simple exercise in immediacy: three friends on a weekend in 2018, pulling records to flip and cutting songs in a bedroom closet. We’d been close for nearly a decade, but impulse sparked our first substantial collaboration as a collective. Now, we give you It’s Always a Time Like This: a capsule of our past few years, and an offering of deep reverence for music and our brotherhood. We worked to unravel grief, revel in memories, and make sense of all our mess. This is a moment in sync, leaning on our process to complete the cypher in the throes of the unknown. From here, we diverge into who we’ll need to be.  

Jasmine A Barber, also known as the rapper J Bambii, is an artist, educator, tarot reader, and cartoon-lover from the Southside of Chicago. She is the founder and creator of The Brown Skin Lady Show & the community healing initiative called “Come Together”. Jasmine has also released a tape called “RETROGRADE” under her alias. She is currently working on another body of music & more community focused events.