Crag Malkovich

Malkovich was conceived on the Pacific island of New Caledonia by his father and his mother, then a bartender at a pub popular with escaped Nazis. She was in labor when Ayatollah Khomeini chased them from Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Malkovich was born extremely shortly thereafter in Christopher Columbus' hometown of Genoa, Italy, where he had his diapers changed regularly by Miss Italy 1978. Visa issues caused him to be ping-ponged through England, Iran, Italy, Syria and Libya, where Ronald Reagan almost bombed his elementary school, killing Colonel Qaddafi’s “daughter” instead. He moved to Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, where he spent thirteen years as an illegal immigrant, heard Ice Cube's Death Certificate album, rode the Northridge Earthquake, and formed BLX, a kind of pre-internet Odd Future with more grand larceny. He left NYC a week before the Twin Towers came down, London a week before the Tube bombings, and Istanbul a week before Kurds blew up the city square. He left Jamaica two days before Hurricane Gustav, and slept on a church floor in Louisiana and ate Red Cross gumbo for three days with 300 people after losing an important backpack in Hurricane Katrina. He flew over Russia to Malaysia five days before Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Russia. He landed in Thailand the same day King Bhumibol passed away, sending the country into partial shutdown. His father, a gem hunter who hates islands, was jailed in Switzerland for working illegally in a traveling circus after being kicked out of the London School of Economics, was one of the larger wholesale cassette bootleggers in Saudi Arabia for much of the 1980s, and currently lives in a converted brothel on an island in Malaysia. He once fell asleep on a train and woke up in Spain. His ex-best friend is a dirty cop in Belize City whose name came up during a Google search on Amnesty International's most wanted list. A Vietnamese Youtube gang once put a bounty on his head for 24 hours. He has a cousin in central Iran who has two wives. He lost his favorite hat in Hat Gai, Thailand, dodging rebels who blew up a local McDonalds. URB gave his first album Skeletons one and a half stars out of five. A kid from North Hollywood has lyrics from the same album tattooed on his chest. He impersonated dead North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il for an entire EP (listen). On January 1, 2012 he gave up his home and possessions to travel indefinitely until “something enormous happens”. Since then, he has been spending his life traveling the world to collaborate in person with talented producers he meets on Twitter. He recorded an album with Esa FunkPrez in Italy, Mute Speaker & DJ Squigz in Cambodia and Thailand, and began work on an album with Becoming Phill in Namibia before he was caught with an expired visa and deported after spending three nights in Namibian prison. His most recent album PreBoarding was mixed by DJ Spinna and premiered on Gilles Peterson’s BBC show. He has worked with House Shoes, Dibia$e, Computer Jay, P.U.D.G.E. and Prince Po of Organized Konfusion. DJ Premier, The Wake Up Show and The Source support his new album Great Expectations of which Hit The Floor Magazine says “genre-resuscitating… Malkovich is owning everyone in the current scene, and you better believe it.” He's working on a book based on Before The Chador, a collection of photos of his family in 1970s pre-revolution Iran which was featured on BBC, PBS and The Atlantic. Malkovich documents his journey through his multimedia travelogue #1BAG, as seen in Esquire and FHM.