Ashley Barnes, better known under her stage name Crystal Ash and formerly A.J., is an underground rapper and producer from Texas. In her early days of getting into creating music, she was very inspired by the electronic duo Daft Punk, particularly their soundtrack to the 2010 motion picture Tron. Before her name change to Crystal Ash, she would release music and collaborations under A.J. Earlier in her music career, around the middle of to late 2020 she would mainly lend features and production to other artists like frequent collaborators WhoIsJordan, 905emerald, and skawt, all of whom she would collaborate with several times more later on. She also joined the Usagi Collective along with 905emerald. In December 2020, she announced the tracklist for her project "Neptune", which included features from 905emerald, skawt, xofilo,JThousand, and several others. The album was released on her birthday in February 2021 and was seen as a complete 180 in terms of style, but a welcomed one. Producers included mostly herself and close production collaborator Off Lyne, among a few more. Two months later, in April 2021, she released another album titled "Encore", which were songs that were recorded shortly after she finished working on Neptune. It once again included features from skawt, xofilo, and JThousand, and new guests like WhoIsJordan as well as additional production from producers such as xofilo, Off Lyne, and inci0.

For the rest of spring 2021, she seemed to be slowing down on solo releases, aside from production and guest features for 905emerald and WhoIsJordan. However, later in the year, the collaboration album with producer Off Lyne titled "reboot" was released in July 2021. The album was mainly fully produced by both Crystal Ash and Off Lyne as well as having features from 905emerald, skawt, WhoIsJordan, xofilo, JThousand, and kiernann. Later in 2021, after featuring on and fully producing an EP by ldybyrdd titled Vortex, as well as collaborating with skawt on a few projects she released a few more singles for her upcoming 2022 album Crystal Ash, including Tracer, featuring xofilo and Queen featuring Ghoulavelli. Sometime in late 2021, she also joined and became a CEO of the collective NightOwls which was formed by JThousand and XandroR2. The collective would go on to last a year and a half and also had exclusive songs on a streaming page and SoundCloud from the members of the collective.

In February 2022 her next album titled "Crystal Ash" was released containing her production as well as production/features from skawt, XandroR2, Levi Ryan, WhoIsJordan, xofilo, and Off Lyne. It was another noticeable shift in style in some ways from her previous music. Throughout more of 2022, she lent more production and/or features to WhoIsJordan, 905emerald, Payden McKnight, and The Antihero Lunacy among others. In summer 2022, she released 9 loose singles on only SoundCloud for the time being which later were put into a compilation titled "Summer Songs, Vol. 1", arriving in August 2022. One of these singles, "looky here !!" later was revealed to be for an EP from her and skawt's duo group "NEON PSYCHOX". The EP was released 3 days earlier. Following after was a collaboration album with WhoIsJordan titled "WHOISA.J." and her next solo effort, "graveyards". graveyards was released in November 2022 and had two sides/styles. The first side contained more banger-oriented songs—which after an interlude track—became more introspective and emotional. At the end of 2022, she contributed to WhoIsJordan's next project "Divine Intervention", and also JThousand's album "Healing".

2023 saw Crystal Ash releasing an EP titled "PrisM" in February 2023 and then another EP fully produced by Oddwin titled "DEMON BLOOD PACK" the next month. She then kept up the momentum by releasing "NEON PSYCHOX PART 2" in April, her next EP with skawt. That month, she produced once again for Payden McKnight and several beats on WhoIsJordan's next album. During this time, she also founded the collective soulstars with skawt, after NightOwls was ended. Many members of the NightOwls collective joined as well as newcomers such as another close collaborator, The Antihero Lunacy. In the summer, she fully produced a skawt album titled "HELLFIRE". After making the name change from A.J. to Crystal Ash in July 2023, she released "reboot²", a sequel to her 2021 album that was produced by both her and Off Lyne. The album was the first release under the new stage name. Crystal Ash continued to release more singles and EPs in 2023 including a continuation of Summer Songs EP with the release of "Summer Songs, Vol. 2" and also releasing the sequel to PrisM, "PrisM² ◭". Later on, in December, she ended 2023 by dropping "outta bǫ̶̹̭͕̙͚̾͊unds̶͖̓̽" with omgitskodi, which featured a more ambient, new sound.

In 2024, Crystal Ash started January off by announcing "Crystal Ash² & THE_DIAMOND_CASTLE", the sequel to her 2022 release. She spent the rest of January and early February teasing the album by releasing snippets and the tracklist. On February 21, it was finally released. The album was sonically similar to outta bǫ̶̹̭͕̙͚̾͊unds̶͖̓̽ and featured more ambient and experimental production courtesy of Crystal Ash herself, alongside features and production from greenhorn, TF, Austin Skinner, Ceeto, kiernann, yungmichu, JThousand, MOFFLE, and Jonwg. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.