Kerwin Young (he/him/his) is a multi-award-winning concert and media composer, recording producer, arranger/orchestrator, multi-instrumentalist, naturalist, horticulturist, and global ambassador in the field of sonic arts and sciences. Since 1989, the music of Kerwin Young has been at the forefront of world popular culture. Kerwin Young has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical, popular, multimedia, Eastern and Western musical systems.
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A member of Public Enemy's infamous production team, "The Bomb Squad", Kerwin co-produced several of the group's albums and solo projects. Kerwin was accepted into the PE fold in 1987. He has produced and collaborated with other iconic Hip-Hop artists as Ice Cube, Eric B & Rakim, Mobb Deep, the 2 Live Crew, MF Doom, and Busta Rhymes; on some of their most successful albums. Kerwin has collaborated with illuminated musical icons as George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Roy Haynes, Bobby Brown, Tevin Campbell, and Janet Jackson; producing songs for posthumous albums by Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix.
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During his early years, Kerwin worked alongside DJ Tommie Allen as a New York nightclub and radio disc jockey, at Long Island's Spectrum Cafe in East Meadow, and on the 107.5 FM station, WBLS.
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Since 1989, Young has composed and produced original songs and scores for feature films, television series, documentaries, commercials, weekly news, and web series. Among Young's credits are: Do the Right Thing, Green Card, Sister Act 2, Street Fighter, He Got Game, New York Undercover, Euphoria, The Midnight Club, and Power Book III: Raising Kanan.
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Central to his body of work, Kerwin Young has composed distinct series of works which reflect his individual compositional concepts and personal ideas, among them a series which brings his ancestral heritage into symphonic performances. Symphonies have a significant role in Kerwin Young’s creative output since 2000. His latest symphony, Symphony No. 9 “Opening the Chamber” is the last chapter of an epic, 3-hour pentalogy that took twenty-three years to complete. In 2024, Kerwin composed The Five Elements, the world’s first ever Hip-Hop concerto commissioned by the Association of American Voices and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Other recent works include Battle on the Great Green and Symphony No. 8 “End of Reign”, both epic orchestral works. His classical repertoire includes concerti, orchestral fantasies, arias, ballet suites, choral works, chamber, wind band, and jazz big-band works.
His concert works have been commissioned and performed by American Voices, Opera Memphis, the Chautauqua Opera Company, the Albany (NY) Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, DC Youth Orchestra, Inscape Chamber Orchestra, Music From China, ROCO, Del Sol String Quartet, Tesla Quartet, and the Hausmann Quartet.
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The U.S. Department of State and Meridian International have a unique program called Next Level. It's a Hip-Hop Ambassador program modeled after the U.S. Jazz Ambassador program initiated by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in 1956. In 2017, as part of Next Level, Kerwin served as Hip-Hop Ambassador to Egypt. Since then, he's been serving as the Performing Rights Associate for Next Level, sharing entrepreneurial skills and information regarding intellectual property with international artists. His expertise and years of experience are shared year-round, with artists in Africa, the Americas, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, and Europe. His work extends beyond the scope of Hip-Hop, making him a global ambassador across the entire spectrum of music and sonic arts.
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Kerwin Young earned a B.M. and M.M. in music composition at the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, where he studied with Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Jazz Messenger legend, Bobby Watson. ​​