Wallpaper is the enigmatic onstage existence of Oakland music addict Eric Frederic. In another life, he fronts a prog-rock powerhouse (indie stalwarts Facing New York), but in this one, he's a pop-pushing kingpin as interested in art as artifice.
The Wallpaper project began in early 2005 as tweaked satire, Frederic funneling his earliest influences (P-Funk, New Jack, East Bay rap) into two EPs of diced, digital beats and lyrics caricaturing the pop vernacular. But as the Hyphy hip-hop movement crested in Frederic's backyard, something changed. "I saw that classic Bay Area sound resurfacing," he says, "that same psychedelic, drippy, care-free, funky approach that reigned from Sly Stone to Digital Underground." He needed to pay tribute, and in a hail of house parties and homemade discs, Wallpaper was reborn as Ricky Reed, Frederic's disco-smashing doppelganger.
This glitz 'n' grit champion of the groove has since become a gilded name in the underground, wooing crowds with a computerized croon, live reinventions of R&B classics, and tales of excess in the Information Age. Live, Wallpaper is joined by Arjun Singh on drums. They have blown spots alongside such notables as Subtle, Darondo, LA Riots, Electric Soft Parade, and Nino Moschella.
