Artist

Frizzo

Frizzo (Nathaniel Ross Haselton): Yreka-raised, Metro Detroit street rapper and filmmaker. Criminal Record (2004), The Frizzo Show, Darling Nikki, Manix and the TCK Crew.

Oregano

Nathaniel Ross Haselton was born May 13, 1983, in San Bernardino, California, and grew up from age three in Yreka, a small town about 25 miles from the Oregon border. The name came from a bad idea in sixth grade: he bagged up oregano and tried to sell it to other kids as weed. The kids told, the teachers called the cops, and from then on his nickname was Oregano. His homeboy Art from Oakland flipped it on the basketball court, “Oregano” to “Oregafro” to “Fro.” Once Snoop had everybody talking in “izzle,” Fro became Frizzo.

Rap, not hip hop

When he was 14, his mother and stepfather split up while he was at a friend's house for the weekend. He came home to an empty house. After a few weeks in Karuk Tribe housing, his mom moved the family out to Oro Fino Road in Scott Valley, deep in the boonies. The closest neighbors were one-percenter bikers living in a wooden shack with a pot-bellied pig and a bulldog. His mother worked four jobs. Frizzo spent his days running the mountains with a .22 and a pit bull, or ditching school to catch the bus 15 miles back to Yreka to skate and get high with his neighborhood. He had started rapping at 13, freestyling with the homies and recording demos on a karaoke machine over the B-side instrumentals of Cypress Hill and MC Hammer singles, with no idea how records were actually made.

Frizzo is clear that none of it was hip hop. “I was into RAP, R-A-P,” he says. While the rest of the country pictured LL Cool J and Run-DMC, Yreka was listening to Brotha Lynch Hung, E-40 and Master P. That street rap was its own culture.

Michigan

At 15 he moved to Michigan with his mom and sister, after the man he calls grandpa, his mother's foster father and a Chrysler engineer in Auburn Hills, offered to help. They filled a U-Haul, drove I-80 east and landed on Baldwin Road north of Pontiac, about a mile from Jimmy Hoffa's house. He lasted six months at Lake Orion High School before he was expelled for not showing up. He worked at a car wash in downtown Lake Orion and ran with kids who were more like him. “We were little criminals,” he says, “and I'm not even going to lie about it.”

At 18, living in Shelby Township on Dequindre Road, he met a neighbor who was a DJ with a home studio built around a Roland MC-303. It was his first real look at how music was made. He was working 40 hours a week at the Kroger on 25 Mile for about $180 while the people around him lived in McMansions. He spent his $400 tax return on a Korg Electribe EM-1. Then 9/11 happened, and not long after, a speeding driver destroyed his parked car, his only way to get to work.

Hitchhiking west

He packed a duffel bag with the Electribe, his rhyme book and some clothes, wrote “WEST” on a piece of cardboard and hitchhiked back to California. It took four days of rides with truckers. In Yreka he reconnected with his best friend Ken and a rapper from Del Paso Heights in North Sacramento, and they started recording at the home studio of Tio in the Karuk housing, which they called the Smokehouse Studios. Tio, who first rapped as Gangsta Leene and now goes by Maccniph, is still active and is the first cousin of Sacramento rapper Foe Loco. That summer they cut songs like “Summatime” and put tapes out in the streets, the soundtrack of the neighborhood.

Dayton

When that fell apart, a Greyhound took him to his father's place in Dayton, Ohio. He spent a winter running fiber-optic cable on power lines and nights holed up in his room making beats, saving for a Digidesign Digi 002 with Pro Tools. A fight with his father ended in a felonious assault charge and probation. While he served it he worked temp jobs, including one throwing 80-pound frozen blocks of cow brains into a hydroflaker for eight hours a day at a pepperoni plant.

Criminal Record

Off probation, he moved back to Metro Detroit, into his mother's basement in Romeo, and worked auto parts factories in Shelby Township. With the Digi 002, the Electribe and a B2 microphone, he taught himself recording, mixing and mastering at a time when Pro Tools wouldn't even export an MP3. He bought T-RAX mastering software to finish the record, found Disc Makers in a Musician's Friend catalog and pressed 100 copies of his first album, Criminal Record (2004). He sold it for $5 outside Uptown Liquor in Romeo. He once tried selling it straight to customers browsing the racks at the FYE in Lakeside Mall, until someone told the manager and he was thrown out.

Number one in Michigan

On MySpace, “When We See You,” Frizzo's song with Gangsta Leene, ranked #1 by plays on the Michigan rap chart on December 16, 2005, ahead of Insane Clown Posse at #2 and Shady/Aftermath at #3, and it held the top spot consistently.

In its November 8–14, 2006 issue, the Detroit Metro Times ran a listing for him: “Cali roots make for some gangsta ass Detroit music. Check this dudes music and life story for some REAL relief from the misrepresentation of Hip Hop in pop culture.”

MySpace Michigan rap chart, December 16, 2005, with Frizzo at number one — MySpace Michigan rap chart, December 16, 2005

Detroit Metro Times listing for Frizzo, November 2006 — Detroit Metro Times, November 8–14, 2006

Manix

After the Metro Times listing, author Jason Ola heard the music and became a friend and supporter. Ola had known Manix and Eminem long before either was famous, and it was likely he who put Manix onto Frizzo. Manix started commenting on Frizzo's photos of old Yo! MTV Raps trading cards, then introduced himself: “I'm Eminem's first producer.” The next Sunday Manix was in the driveway pulling an Ensoniq ASR-X out of his truck. They became close friends, trading beats and learning each other's gear, and filmed a short documentary in Manix's old neighborhood at 9 Mile and Van Dyke. Frizzo is still Manix's publisher. After Manix died, Frizzo remixed his beats for the posthumous album Frizzo Presents: Manix Reborn, including a new version of the “Biterphobia” beat from the Soul Intent tapes.

Darling Nikki

The video for “Official,” filmed in Romeo, led to acting. Kharisman Brown reached out about a role in Darling Nikki: The Movie (2008), directed by Detroit filmmaker Shawn Woodard and starring Fredro Starr of Onyx and Noel G of Training Day. Frizzo told him he wasn't an actor. Brown said “Official” showed exactly what they wanted: a Detroit white boy with swagger. He played Jesse James, then appeared in Politics As Usual (2011) and Love Is Not Enough (2019). See his IMDb page.

The Frizzo Show

Flipping channels one night, he saw an ad for television production classes at CMNTV in Troy: $70 and 11 weeks for full use of the studio and a slot on cable. He got certified and launched The Frizzo Show with graffiti and stand-up comedy, then turned it into a showcase for music videos sent in by independent artists from across the country. It ran from about 2011 to 2015, until he burned out. He was working full time, heading into his thirties and doing more for others than for himself.

Documenting Detroit

From 2009 to 2016 he filmed Detroit graffiti for his YouTube channel, officialfrizzo, at Eastern Market, the Grand River Creative Corridor, Southwest Detroit and the Legends of Detroit wall behind Michigan Central Station. One day a van full of kids pulled up at that wall and one jumped out yelling “I know this guy!” Half an hour later he was in a trap house in Southwest Detroit with the TCK Crew, and soon he was filming them painting the neighborhood. Like him, they were from California.

Now

He founded Haselton Media Group in 2008. A stroke at 35 changed how he looks at everything. Music is now one more tool in his media business, something he knows how to turn into money. He doesn't rap anymore. “Most of my rapping was just a young man's catharsis,” he says, “saying what he needed to say without being interrupted. The music is there if the world cares enough to listen.”