Sean Forbes

Sean Forbes

Sean Forbes (born February 5, 1982 in Detroit) is a Deaf American hip-hop artist. Sean became deaf from spinal meningitis when he was just a few months old. The cause was never officially diagnosed but Sean has said that they (the doctors) had suspected spinal meningitis. Sean's parents bought him a drum set when he was 5 years old and he started writing songs and playing guitar when he was 10. Sean grew up playing music with his siblings. His dad, Scott Forbes, is in a Detroit country-rock band called The Forbes Brothers. Sean's mom is a pianist. "They played everything from The Rolling stones to The Beatles, all big band music and stuff like that." Sean attended R.I.T./NTID where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in multi-disciplinary studies focusing on management, accounting, and communications. Eminem was one of the first people to actually see one of Forbes' music videos. Sean's long-time producer and collaborator is Jake Bass, and together they have penned over 100 songs, many of which they perform live. Sean had Oscar award-winning actress Marlee Matlin co-star in his music video for the song "Let's Mambo." "Rapping is just something that I do because you don't want to hear me sing."Sean is a co-founder of D-PAN, The Deaf Professional Arts Network, a nonprofit organization that has been making music accessible to the Deaf and hard of hearing community by creating American Sign Language interpretation music videos of popular songs. D-PAN has created videos for John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Eminem, White Stripes, Owl City, Carly Rae Jepsen, The Clark Sisters, Imagine Dragons, and more. In 2012, Sean released a full-length CD/DVD album titled "Perfect Imperfection" and toured the world to promote the record. His travels included trips to Israel, Norway, England, Australia, New Zealand, France, in addition to touring the United States and Canada. In 2015 Sean founded DPAN.TV The Sign Language Channel furthering his goal of making entertainment more accessible for the Deaf and hard of hearing community he produced news and entertainment programs that make content accessible in sign language, voiceovers, music, and captions. In 2018 Sean performed with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra featuring deaf musicians Evelyn Glennie, and Mandy Harvey. On February 21, 2020 Sean released a new album called "Little Victories" and within the week hit #1 on the iTunes and Amazon hip-hop charts and #1 on Amazon for digital sales.

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Sean Forbes »