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California Institute of the Arts

Emmanuel "Def Sound" Ricketts

Pronouns: The Herb Alpert School of Music

Faculty, Experimental Pop

Emmanuel "Def Sound" Ricketts Headshot
Email address: ericketts@calarts.edu
Office address:
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, California 91355
Degrees:
Personal website: Website

Def Sound is an Afro-Caribbean multi-hyphenate artist (parents from Belize & Panama) born and based in South Central LA. Def (mom given name Emmanuel Ricketts) is a non binary (pronouns they/them) Grammy Award considered contemporary hip-hop artist, producer, poet, and award winning academic.

Def’s work as a poet has been included in Saul Williams’ Anthology CHORUS, while their music has been featured in Season 4 of ABC’s Grownish, LA WEEKLY, LA Record, The L.A. Times, The Frieze Art Fair, LACMA’s Poetry series POETRY In Color, the art exhibition The Black Index curated by Bridget Cooks, the Emmy Nominated Television series Music Diaries, and the Emmy winning Artbound on KCET.