Composer/producer Perquisite was born in Amsterdam in the spring of 1982 and started to create beats at age 14. Having played the cello since his early youth, he has always been involved with and inspired by all kinds of music, ranging from classical and 60’s music to Hip Hop and Jazz. His musical journey led him to traveling through the U.S. on his own as a youngster and when he came back to Holland he established his own record label Unexpected Records in March 2001. In October of that same year he released his debut, the ‘Outta Nowhere EP’. This 7-track EP, which featured Jazz saxophonist Benjamin Herman became known as a little gem in the Hip-Hop/Nu Jazz-movement. The follow-up to this EP, the ‘Double Vision EP’, which featured Jazz clarinetist David Kweksilber, was released in October 2002 and consisted of 7 even more twisted and relaxing instrumental tunes.

After his two instrumental EP’s, Perquisite started to work together with producers Omar Rey & Ane1 and MC’s Pete Philly, Cee Major & Kain Slim. They called themselves North West Metropolis. Tracks of their EP ‘Expressions’ were included on compilation-albums in France and Spain and received airplay on several radio-stations throughout the world. After this successful collaboration, Perquisite and Pete Philly (Aruba, 1980) decided to join forces to form the producer/MC-duo Pete Philly & Perquisite.

After 6 years of working together Pete Philly & Perquisite decided to end their collaboration. Perquisite now started to work fulltime on his first full-length solo album which he called ‘Across’. For this installment he decided to work with 12 different Dutch vocalists, among them Janne Schra (Schradinova), Torre Florim (De Staat), Tjeerd Bomhof a.k.a. Dazzled Kid (Voicst), GMB and Jenny Lane. In terms of sound Perquisite explored a lot of new musical directions on the album and broke out of the hiphop-genre towards Soul, Indie and even singer-songwriter. In a 5 out of 5 star review, Jazz Magazine called the album an “impressive debut album from someone we’re gonna have a lot of joy from in the near future”. The album release took place in a packed Melkweg, Amsterdam and the album was released October 15th 2010 on Unexpected Records. Right now Perquisite has embarked on a club tour through Holland in which he not only brings his new 6-piece live band but also several guest vocalists of the album.

Photo by Thom Hoffman