The return of our highly-coveted Best Kept Fresh series is finally here.

For those of you new to our site, Best Kept Fresh is a compilation/mix of some of the dopest, fresh new hip hop from a variety of artists.

This mix is lovingly curated every two weeks by our music staff, and then thrown into the grinder by homie of the site, DJ Tramlife.

This mix features a variety of dope artists — some familiar, some new.

Check out the tracklist for Best Kept Fresh Vol. 101, and hit the link to download.

1. Steddy P – Bettermakeroom / SO SIC
2. PHIL – The High
3. Fatal Lucciauno – Reflection ft. The Good Sin
4. Mally and The Sundance Kid – Shine
5. Living Legends – Trojan Horse
6. Roc Doogie – Micro Management
7. Soulcrate Music – See Today (Medium Zach Remix)
8. Exile – Oh Word (Keep On Rising) ft. Fashawn
9. Tensei – For The Love ft. Adad, Yaw, & Denmark
10. Blacastan – Just Don’t Know ft. Reef The Lost Cauze
11. Madbeast – Days Go By

“The rap era’s outta control, brother’s sellin their soul To go gold / Going, going, gone — another rapper sold,” the song declares. The New York natives made no qualms about their beef with rap’s rising status as a mainstream genre, calling out rappers for, ”thinkin about a pop record / somethin made for the station  …. To go platinum and clock mad green AKA, a sellout — the rap definition.”

EPMD’s groundbreaking single “Crossover” from 1992′s Business Never Personal, attacked radio friendly artists for their “pop” sound. What came to be known as one of the group’s biggest commercial successes — ironically, netting them considerable radio airplay — was, at its core, a rebuke of rappers of the era “selling out”, and only the beginning of an ongoing war between hip hop’s waning core aesthetics and the push to sell more records.

Prior to the release of “Crossover”, NWA told us to “F*ck the Police” and around the same time of the EPMD release we were given classics like The Chronic, Bizarre Ride II, Can I Borrow a Dollar amongst many others. At that point, hip hop was more than music. It was a voice for a population that was otherwise muted — it was about identity. “Crossover” attempted to preserve that part of hip hop that many seemed to be willing to trade in for the prospect of creating a hit record.

Although the bounce of the bass lines, the flowing samples, and witty lyrics were undeniable, the content of rap music at the time wasn’t universally relateable. Raw depictions of inner-city struggle and mounting racial tensions gave way to dance records, developing rappers into a less-threatening type of artist. Mainstream success came quick for the likes of Vanilla Ice, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and MC Hammer as they lined up to trade in funky beats and descriptive lyrics for catchy hooks and gaudy fashion trends. They each fit the bill of an artist mainstream America was willing to showcase.

EPMD clearly depicts an era where the rap landscape is quickly losing its identity. Fast forward 20 years to our current situation and it’s hard not to say “I told you so”. With the majority of today’s mainstream rappers embodying the group’s vision of “rap sellouts” and the dominance of “hip pop”, crossover artists have become commonplace — just as Sermon and Smith prophecized in 1992.

Even narratives of the inner-city streets filled with drugs, gang violence, and prostitution are no less acceptable than a Quentin Tarantino film. These issues continue to plague communities but the generic, upbeat sounds of popular hip hop artists have passed them along as just entertainment.

Hip hop has all but lost its footing as a stage for social commentary and creative individuality. We live in an era where folks view Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) as just an actor and people have the nerve to look at Stankonia as Outkast’s debut (you see the damnedest things on YouTube). When MTV dubs its 10 hottest rappers on the premise of “swag” — we have a serious issue. Mainstream artists have flooded us with the same messages of sex, murder, partying, and fortune, created in a world where the contextual identity of these themes have eroded almost completely.

Don’t look now, but we’ve turned this corner once before. This entire ordeal is reminiscent of jazz, and its fall from the artistic genius of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery, and Thelonius Monk to the watered-down, easy listening of — jazz aficionados may want to look away — something called “smooth jazz”.  The whole turn of events is eerily similar.

Granted, we all think about making money, who doesn’t? But, is nothing priceless? Seeing the state of hip hop change over the years and the intent to sell dominating over quality music has gone a long way toward damaging the credibility of the genre and culture. Even some artists who started off underground have done their best groundhog impressions and are now beating us over the head with music that isn’t worth the free download we get it as. We have DJs who don’t DJ (or do much of anything, for that matter), and rappers who “party rock” in lieu of rocking the mic.

“Crossover” is a hip hop prophecy of biblical proportions. Like many things in this world, the message is not often heeded until years later. Maybe hip hop as most of us knew it is forever lost to the prospect of fame with little talent or little effort. Or, maybe we have another run of that real hip hop sound making its way to the masses. But for now, I’m with PMD, “I’ll stick to underground — keep the crossover.”

He’s the front man for one of the longest-running rap crews in Minnesota history, Kanser, and has lately gotten some attention on the festival circuit with his live-band hip hop group, More Than Lights. But Big Zach is more than that, you can often find him posting flyers around town or coming out to support the next generation of rappers. An embodiment of what it means to be an MC, Zach has been one of the most prolific hosts in the state, mentor to many younger rappers, part of crews and live bands, and had an accomplished solo career. With such a long bout of involvement in the scene, Big Zach could probably write a book on the subject — and he just has.

Now he can add published author to his list of accomplishments with his new book, Headspin, Headshots & History: Growing Up In Twin Cities Hip Hop, which was published this past December by No Static Records. We talked with Zach to get the story behind the book, and what it meant to be such a big part of hip hop in Minnesota.

“I started writing it about five and a half years ago, but I never had no training, I never had no writing classes or any training, and I didn’t do that well in high school, so my grammar was pretty terrible. But three or four years ago, a young dude named Josh Holmgren hollered at me, he was asking me hella questions about the hip hop scene, and I told him I had a book written. Josh took it and started editing it, Josh didn’t go to school for book editing or English or anything, but he could hook it up a lot more than I had it hooked up. Then we worked on it, we worked on it, we worked on it, and we finally got it together. It was a long process, just because we didn’t know what we were doing.”

Hip hop in the Twin Cities has blossomed into one of the most unique rap scenes in the nation, and happens to be one of the most encouraging zones for independent musicians. This atmosphere has cultivated artists who push the envelope and perfect the craft, but there is also an incredibly rich history behind the scene as we see it today. Aside from an article here or there, hip hop in the Twin Cities has been relatively undocumented, which is where Zach’s first-hand accounts come into play.

“At this point in 2011, a lot of kids, a lot of younger artists look at us like we’re pioneers, we’re legendary artists,” Zach tells me about his place in the world of Twin Cities culture. “We’re old rappers who’ve been around, but in the early nineties, groups like Kanser and groups like Heiruspecs, groups like Oddjobs, were the original enlarging fanbase to older rappers such as Musab and Urban Atmosphere and The Abstract Pack. So not only do we have the status fifteen years later as veterans from the hip hop scene, in truth though we were some of the original fans.”

Though some of the very early pioneers on the scene came around before Big Zach’s time, the book touches on every aspect of hip hop in Minnesota, from its seasoned veterans to newcomers, and never fails to give a fair viewpoint, even when personal beef and mishaps might have soured relationships. However, Headspin, Headshots & History is much more than a history book. With a keen sense for storytelling and a knack for getting himself into wild situations, Zach has riveting and hilarious stories to tell about every rapper to grace the Minnesota music scene, and he enlivens each chapter with a few first-hand accounts that will keep you glued to the pages.

“I was like, I’m gonna write it from completely my perspective so I can tie in dumb stories about my life to keep it entertaining,” the Kanser rapper tells me. “Such as the one night there was this underground hip hop rap battle in this warehouse and on the bus ride there my homeboy got jacked for a bag of weed on the bus, which really happened and I think I took it out of the book, but to add a little personality to it, and then I can tell it from my perspective.”

In addition to the relatively-neglected history of hip hop, Zach delves into an even more-undocumented culture: The Minnesota graffiti scene. He pays homage to the most legendary writers in the city, and gives a solid background to something deeply ingrained in hip hop culture.

“When I was a teenager I grew up taking graffiti photos around the Twin Cities, but all my pictures got stolen in a drug raid years ago, and this kid name Philly from South Side paid for my photos to get re-developed,” he says. “I kept the negatives, so we were able to get picture in the book too.”

Anyone could dig around on the Internet and piece together a timeline of the Twin Cities’ hip hop history, but it takes someone who has completely devoted their lives to hip hop culture to write a book this deep and on-point. As you read the book, you see Minnesota hip hop shift and change and continue to blossom into a beautiful thing. But you also experience Big Zach mature in a real way — both as an artist and as a person — and you see him make relationships and help do his part to build the scene. This first-person account makes the book not just a history textbook, but a retelling that reads like a novel.

“For my story, one of the key people in my evolution was Ant, who later on became the producer/DJ for Atmosphere,” Zach says. “His story is a big part of the book, and I focus on more of the popular rappers. There’s a lot about Slug and people, even though there’s not a lot of background about him, just things about his career in the early days. There are stories of Brother Ali, and a lot of stories from Doomtree. I focused on more of the popular rappers so people would be interested in reading it, so that they would read about the 200 other characters that they might not have ever heard of who are just as important in our hip hop.”

There are even a few lessons to be learned between its pages. With his eternally-positive mentality, Zach drops plenty of wisdom, whether it’s through a brush with heaven on a festival mushroom trip or a brush with death in a close-call car accident. There are a couple key points that he makes about hip hop that stick out and cut deep to the heart of hip hop here and everywhere.

“I know race issues can be touchy, but we have a beautiful hip hop scene in Minnesota, and a lot of the audiences happen to be not from the city and happen to be Caucasian, which is beautiful. But if you’re part of that, say you’re from the suburbs, you’re a richer kid and you just happen to be white and you’re super into hip hop, that’s fresh, that’s dope, I just want you to read and find out that twenty years ago the scene was all inner-city African Americans. That’s where it came from. Also I want to tell a lot of stories of where stuff came from. There were a couple rappers who were pioneers at the beginning that your average Minnesota rap band doesn’t know about that passed away early or before their time, I want them to know about their stories and that they helped everybody.”

The book is an overdue treat for fans of hip hop in Minnesota, and diehard fans and newcomers alike will struggle to put it down. You’re guaranteed to learn a thing or two about your favorite rapper, and hear plenty of stories from your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper: Big Zach. It’s a blessing that the stories of how the Minnesota hip hop scene developed have been finally captured and preserved, and the next generation of rappers and fans are sure to be inspired. Do yourself a favor and get your hands on this book, and discover the rich history and depth behind one of the most vibrant independent hip hop scenes around.

Headspin, Headshots & History: Growing Up In Twin Cities Hip Hop can be purchased at nostaticrecords.com, in-store at Electric Fetus or Mindstate, or you can catch Big Zach hustling around the South Side with a backpack full of ‘em.

Presenting Ricky Shabazz and the Boom Bap Boys.

Sitting between two clowns on a wet bench, a man with an umbrella drinks a cup of coffee. He stands, and when the men in makeup follow him, he turns, throwing his coffee at one, and punching the other in the face. Soul Khan starts rapping. Shirt bloody, he’s running through a park fending off crazed clowns with his bare hands and a crow bar. Capturing it all, safely behind the lens, is Nick Heller, director and CEO of the production company responsible for some of the most provocative new music videos on the ‘net. But don’t mistake the young video producer for his wily guise; Ricky Shabazz and the Boom Bap Boys is just the brand name.

“A general misconception is that I am Ricky Shabazz. I am not. Ricky Shabazz is a character I made up, and I am just one of his Boom Bap Boys. I consider anyone who has ever worked on one of my projects to be a Boom Bap Boy (or Gal) as well.”

Ricky Shabazz productions began during Heller’s junior year at Emerson College when he bought a Canon 7D video camera and started making no-budget video shorts. Shooting his early videos in the Boston neighborhoods in which he lived, Heller turned toward music videos after graduating in the Spring of 2011, and has since moved to Brooklyn, New York. Initially unsure how to approach music artists, Heller caught a break when C-Rayz Walz, a legendary freestyle rapper from the Bronx, looked past his lack of music video experience and collaborated on a video for Walz’s song “Destroy.”

Since then, Ricky Shabazz and the Boom Bap Boys has become a household name in the underground hip hop scene. Aside from dropping a mixtape titled Free Shabazz (presented by Fameless Fam and UGHH.com), Heller has worked with an assortment of rap acts in the past two years including Apathy, Juan Deuce, Falside, Fresh Daily, Ceschi, The Doppelgangaz, Reks, Soul Kahn, R.A. the Rugged Man, Homeboy Sandman, and Moe Pope.

“I started to fall back from doing short films because rather than paying to make my own video, I was now getting paid to do other people’s videos that would get far more views with [the artists’] popularity. I don’t think I could have gotten my name out otherwise.”

Aside from being Heller’s favorite type of music, hip-hop is a genre well represented in the cyber world. The wide variety of websites and blogs act as promotional forums for his often-shocking visuals, allowing Ricky Shabazz videos to go viral. Be it a half-naked girl chained up by Moe Pope and his band of droog-esque zombies (“Grateful Dead of Night”) or bloody images of open-heart surgery looming above the car Juan Deuce drives around in “Guts”; Heller likes to “push the boundaries of appropriateness,” he tells me. Taking full advantage of the censor-free nature of the Internet, Heller shows off his creative latitude, steadily creating the edgy, artistic videos for which he’s known.

The video for “Stop What Ya Doin” by Apathy featuring Celth Titled begins with a striking black and white shot of the song’s producer, DJ Premier, introducing the track while casually smoking a cigarette. Later in the video, Heller cuts to another black and white shot in which periodic backward footage seems to show Premier inhaling and exhaling smoke to the rhythm of the vinyl scratch. Backward shots, bizarre color filtration, and drastic cuts and camera movements are common to many Ricky Shabazz productions.

“The best is when I hear a song and I can visualize a treatment within seconds after,” he explains. “I don’t necessarily even need to be a fan of the song to be inspired immediately. When an idea doesn’t come to me miraculously, I like to sit down with the artist and hear more about the deeper meaning of the song. Hearing their interpretation will normally prompt me to take it in my own direction.”

Artists who have worked with Heller say he’s a brilliant young talent and very easy to work with. Homeboy Sandman, who has collaborated with Heller on a few projects including videos for his songs “The Essence” and “Strange Planet”, says Heller thinks outside of the box and has a knack for telling a story with visuals in unexpected ways.

“Shooting a music video with Nick Heller feels a lot more like shooting a short film than it does like shooting a music video,” Boy Sand told me about the experience. “Making the ‘Strange Planet’ vid was a ball. It was Heller who came up with the idea of using the wolves looking for the egg as symbolism of Nazi Germany. And Nazi Germany being representative of the type of madness happening on this planet.”

Through his keen sense of visual narrative, fans of film and music alike have come to love and identify with Ricky Shabazz productions. With a quickly-growing Twitter following and video views reaching toward the millions, Heller no longer depends on artist popularity to promote his company. In fact, the notoriety of Ricky Shabazz and the Boom Bap Boys has inverted Heller’s role in the hip-hop community.

“I get a lot more satisfaction out of doing a video that really helps an unknown talent than doing a video for a bigger act that is destined to get a shit ton of views no matter what,” he says about the role reversal. “If the video is dope, people will see it.”

http://rickyshabazz.com/

http://nicolasheller.com/.

Record Store Day celebrates the heritage of local music communities surrounding over 700 independent record stores in the U.S. and thousands worldwide. The event started in 2007 with the original idea devised by Chris Brown (an independent record store employee), and officially founded by Michael Kurtz and Carrie Colliton, among others. Throughout the years, the event has evolved to be marked by superstar performances, special album releases, and meet and greets with artists.

While the star-studded nature of these big-name promotions draw crowds to the all-but-abandoned brick-and-mortar businesses, the buzz seems to fall on the side of gimmick rather than grandeur. What’s meant as a way to promote the day that was created for the purpose of re-engaging the youth culture with physical record stores has been buried under the weight of its own promotion. Something is lost in the translation.

It’s as if record stores are a ghost town where people arrive en masse once a year for a special performance, only to vaporize into dust as the clock strikes midnight.

The central intent is to promote the local music shops in lieu of the digitized and commercialized 21st century music era that’s dominated by downloads, iTunes, and YouTube. Unfotunately, in a lot of ways, appearances by the likes of Metallica, Bob Dylan, Erykah Badu and a slew of others seem to overshadow that meaning. While these artists may candidly support the prospect of independent record stores, the truth is that they represent cogs in the same system that mauled these stores in the first place.

Of course, it’s not every day that you walk into your local shop and catch a performance from Jerry Lee Lewis or have a run in with Chuck D, but building a single serving of celebrity-fueled hype negates the intent of creating a lasting connection with these customers – many fans seem to miss the point.

Record stores are cultural staples that represent more than simply an outdated technology. Instead, they represent the tangible connection between music and fans – something that’s all but lost in this digital era. And in local communities, they serve as platforms for local talent. Record Store Day is about what these shops have done for music as a culture, as the mainline for new and old music before radio and music television dictated our tastes. Indie shops offer an opportunity for discovery without filters, a place for local and national acts to reach fans on the street level.

The most important part of the day is the relationship between store and consumer, and that intimate feeling of the hands-on search for albums exclusive to a singular setting. Nowhere else can consumers connect with their music on such a visceral level. Not over the internet, nor at one of the corporate giants that buries a single copy of Dr Dre’s The Chronic under a mountain of Drake’s latest offering. It’s times you walk into a record shop searching for one particular album and you walk out with five others that define this magic. There are times you hear about live performances on random nights that are standing room only to see an indie artist that you may not be able to catch elsewhere. For an industry that is known to mould artists for mainstream appeal, the independent artists use these places — or once did — as outlets to display their content without compromise. It was the original safehouse for underground integrity.

The essence of RSD can be found at shops in small towns or big cities where they open their doors out of a love for music. A sense of trust is established between the shop and community because they are ran by fellow music junkies. These people act as the wisemen of our respective music communities, whom we depend on for something new or classic. From the southern shops with the bluesy rock vibes, to the west coast shops that cater to the indie crowd (i.e. hipsters), they each offer up an unexplored scene for some, and a sense of nostalgia for others that cannot be romanticized.

To celebrate Record Store Day is to champion the spread of music as an organic art, rather than a commercialized commodity. A single day shouldn’t be the only time that we look around and recognize the importance of independent music shops in our community. It’s something that’s easy to forget in the era of digital music, where music runs rampant and MP3s are strewn about like litter on the sidewalk. But, preserving these cornerstones of music is important because it represents what’s important about music. It represents the literal, physical bond between music maker and music listener. It represents passion.

And that’s something we can’t afford to lose.

Unfortunately, Record Store Day just reeks of desperation. Most shop owners would probably tell you that — it’s just about all they can do to revive their business for a single weekend, and it’s all they can muster to stay afloat financially. But, let’s not let this pivotal portion of music culture fall by the wayside. Do your part to help preserve independent record stores around the globe.

Use this April 21 not as a singular day of observance, but rather, as the start to a tradition of buying locally and supporting music shops that enable the flow of new music when other routes remain — or remained — obstructed.

Happy digging.

This whole hologram business has caused quite an uproar, and more than one shout of, “hip hop isn’t dead!” Somehow, a poorly-animated projection of Tupac, sixteen years after his death, rhyming “years” and “tears” for just over four minutes has completely and utterly usurped any and all other performances that took place within the hip hop sphere.

People have pretty much forgotten about Eminem taking the stage with Dre to remind everyone who got him famous, or 50 Cent trying to revive irrelevant hits like “In Da Club”, let alone the real living reunion that took place between El-P, Mr. Len, and Bigg Jus of Company Flow. Although El tweeted about the legendary and pioneering underground rap group, saying “yes, Co Flow is gonna try and nock[sic] out some new songs. had too much fun doing these shows not to give it a whirl,” it seems to have fallen entirely on deaf ears.

It can’t be a sense of nostalgia that has engendered Coachella fans so entirely; I doubt there was anyone there old enough to have seen Pac perform before his death. The audience was so caught up in the idolatry that they forgot the three large notes they paid to watch a glorified video recording.

Beyond the unnaturalness of the hologram itself, there a couple other parts of the act that make my skin crawl. Maybe it’s a gimmicky stab at a new generation of Tupac fans, or trying to jump-start Interscope’s profits by reviving dead rappers and their catalogues.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this whole ordeal is the hologram’s implications for future concerts. It is almost certain we are going to see more of this, but what is next? Kurt Cobain at Lollapalooza? A recreation of Woodstock with its original lineup, all recreated in CGI? My prediction is that every major artist will soon have a digital hologram version made of themselves that can be beamed around the world for a fraction of touring costs.

In fact, the company that made the Tupac hologram confirmed this intention, saying, “I can say it’s affordable in the sense that if we had to bring entertainers around world and create concerts across the country, we could put [artists] in every venue in the country.” It won’t be too long before you go to your neighborhood concert venue to see a digital performance of your favorite group, joining people around the country watching the exact same performance while the real artists rest comfortably at home.

As the first major festival to embrace this technology that can unite fans with rap icons of yesteryear (and MCs who would rather sit on their couch), it seems clear that Coachella has taken a groundbreaking step toward simultaneously advancing and preserving hip hop culture.

Yes, Coachella has done right by hip hop fans once again. And by hip hop fans, I mean teenage hipsters who pay their respects to the classics by listening to “California Love” in the car with their friends, and who are, “really into Mac Miller lately.”

The point is this: Coachella has proven once again why it is routinely the among the worst of the big-name music festivals for fans of hip hop. Each year it panders to the hoards of scenesters intrigued by the edginess of hip hop without any real interest the art form, and a number of flat-brimmed bros, by stocking the festival with a few recognizable hip hop acts. Sadly, the entire gesture is only a thinly-veiled grab for more ticket sales and a lunge towards trendiness. It doesn’t at all seem to be a sincere effort to incorporate hip hop in any real or meaningful sense.

This year at Coachella is nothing new with respect to the festival’s hip hop offerings. It seems like all you need to score a spot on stage is a trending video, just ask A$AP Rocky, Azealia Banks, or even Childish Gambino. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve bumped “212” as much as the next guy, but at $300 a ticket, don’t festival-goers deserve acts with at least one album under their belt? There are a few noteworthy hip hop acts – performances by Death Grips and The Gaslamp Killer, along with the a fore mentioned Company Flow reunion – that make it almost worth the sticker price. But not quite, and true hip hop fans aren’t going to be placated by a few flash-in-the-pan artists and veterans rehashing the same songs they’ve been beating on for nearly two decades.

Most Coachella acts – from other genres — don’t follow this formula. Indie veterans like Radiohead and The Shins who consistently produce new and relevant music, and newer-but-established artists like Bon Iver and the Black Keys, make the festival much more enjoyable for fans of indie rock. However, when it comes to hip hop, it’s either the newest one-hit-wonders, or mainstream artists from fifteen years ago. Would Blink-182 or Christina Aguilera make the cut? Probably not, so why Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and the Grand Theft Auto-esque reincarnation of Tupac? Maybe the hipster’s love for irony is to blame.

So was hip hop alive at Coachella this year? About as much as Tupac was alive while “he” performed on stage. Save a few glimmers of talent in a few up-and-coming acts who still have to prove themselves in the ring and overlooked veterans, Coachella fell flat by any hip hop aficionado’s standards – just like every year. Me, I’ll just catch my leg of The Money Store tour, watch “End to End Burners” a couple times, and blow my $300 on Rusto and real hip hop.

What do you think sets you apart from other rappers?

Tonedeff: To really pinpoint it is difficult because I’ve always felt different from the general consensus on what rappers should be. I don’t know how to approach music the traditional way that I feel like most rappers do. I feel like most rappers especially nowadays are more concerned with their image and their Facebook followers than they are with the actual music. I know for a fact that as a producer, and as a designer and a writer, to put all this stuff together I have a different view on music, and how emceeing in itself as an art form should be approached than most other rappers do.

Do you think being independent and maintaining the DIY ethic that you’ve established for yourself helps in maintaining a purer sound?

Yeah I definitely do, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to phone it in and do what everybody else is doing, and it does take a lot of artistic integrity and belief in what you’re doing, and the feeling that what you’re doing is right, to wave off some opportunities. To do what I do, it takes a lot of commitment, and I will tell you it’s definitely difficult. It’s ten times harder to stick to your guns than it is to follow somebody else’s. So in terms of the music, yeah, you’ve got the full range of creative freedom, but I feel like nowadays, and I really need to stop saying nowadays, but in the modern blog era of rap, it’s real easy to set up shop and put out your own zipfile album and push it on people through social networks, but to what end. With QN5, it was a movement that was set out so that other people could follow along with us and put out this new hip hop, opening doors to the things we could do. It allowed us to stay on one path, and really push ourselves in order to keep generating as opposed to jackin’ instrumentals from whatever’s poppin’ right now, instead of playing fucking johnny-come-lately on every trend that comes about. So in terms of purity, yeah, for sure, the indie grind definitely helps with that, but it’s also very difficult to maintain when you do have a goal with what you’re doing.

Do you have any advice for new artists trying to make it independently?

Yeah, move out of New York, go to the Midwest, go to the Northwest, you’ll be fine. There’s just nothing here anymore, the East Coast is done, it’s like a plague of locusts has just eaten all the fuckin’ natural materials, all the natural resources have been consumed, there’s nothing left here, the fields are barren. Go to the Midwest and go to the Northwest and you will sell records.

You’ve been independently releasing your music for almost fifteen years and rapping for twenty; do you have any highlights that stick out?

I haven’t quite done the math but it’s been a really long fucking time. Longer than I care to admit. Growing up it was just such a different climate, hip hop hadn’t really been accepted into the mainstream yet. I remember getting suspended for fuckin’ freestyling in the cafeteria, pounding on the tables and wearing a fucking baseball cap or wearing baggy jeans, that was like a problem. Real hip hop heads have been around forever, we all kind of went through that same experience which is why I feel like a lot of us have a hard time letting go of that era, the golden era and all that kind of music, because it was such an integral part of their childhood, and their development as men, and into their own personal outlook on life, and it’s so difficult to let go, that soundtrack of their lives. That’s definitely tied into my experience, just being young and any time that there was anything with hip hop, a dude rhyming on a song, it was just so fuckin’ incredible and inspiring. There was a radio station in Chicago that would play hip hop joints but it was only after midnight, so I had to stay up late, I had to get the headphones jacked in the old speakers and shit and the old stereo trying to listen to rap music. It was so seldom, they would never play it on the radio. When I moved to Miami it was the same sort of deal, in Miami there was no boom bap hip hop, it was all Miami bass and all that kind of shit, which is cool, and I have a lot of respect for it now that I’ve lived there, but I had to really dig for it. There was a station called WDNA that used to play something called the Saturday Night Funk Box with a dude named Rhythm Rocker and he used to play all these East Coast and West Coast hip hop joints that nobody ever heard before, and he broke a lot of records down there in Miami. He was really responsible for the first surge of underground hip hop in Miami during that time period. I just remember how fresh it was, hell, going to see Beat Street in the movie theatre as a kid, and when the movie Juice came out there was a whole fuckin’ Miami hip hop convention in the movie theatre, everybody went to the same theatre at the same time and battled up front. There was just an energy to it that is long, long gone. In terms of my career, yeah, the Arsenio Hall Show was amazing, playing Lollapalooza was amazing, touring Europe a couple times, the QN5 Megashows, I’ve been very fortunate, playing Rock Steady for eight thousand people, I’ve been fortunate enough to be in this music and to have made it as far as I have, but there’s still plenty to go, so I don’t want to get too nostalgic.

What are your thoughts on the state of hip hop in 2011?

I think it’s real fertile right now, I feel like there’s a younger generation of kids that are just getting into it now that are just figuring out who they are and what the voice is. Unfortunately I feel like the majority, I’d say a good ninety percent of them are just pulling from whatever’s on the radio because that’s all they know. They’re not being presented with all the options in terms of what you can do, ten percent are digging deep and really doing their history on hip hop and really looking at the people that set the watermarks over the years, presented so many different styles. When the new kids start looking at that and seeing oh shit, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, which is what I feel like a lot of people are doing right now, we can build on this and go forward with it. I feel like there’s a lot of regurgitation right now, even some of the younger kids, they’re dope, but you can tell they can rap, they just rap like I’ve heard already. There’s not a lot of people doing a lot of new shit, and that’s a little disconcerting, but again they’re young, they’ll figure it out, it’s just gonna take a little bit of time, and I hope motherfuckers can pull their pants up.

Have there been any new developments for QN5 lately, or any plans for the future?

Yeah, I’m refocusing the label, limiting the scale of it. We got a little over-ambitious in 2010, we were trying to do ten albums in a year. Things happen and we ended up doing six, and it was so strenuous and financially draining, and it got to a point where I was just like okay, I started this label to release my own records and here I am, it’s been this long and I’ve only really released one. I had to take a step back and really look at what I was doing for my own career. When I started out and started releasing records I really felt like I had a good strong buzz going, I was getting a lot of coverage from magazines and media and radio and all that. I put out my record and I was like all right, well I don’t have eighty g’s to promote this record so I’ll have to find another way to get a movement going, so I started putting out my friend’s records, and now it’s seven years later. All this time has passed and I hadn’t been able to focus on myself, so now that everybody’s records are out I feel free to work on my own music again. This past year I’ve been focusing on my own work and writing a lot more, and I feel energized, and I have so many great projects that I can’t wait to tell folks about, and I’m getting all that shit done. So the label QN5 itself, I’m refocusing it on Tonedeff right now. Don’t be surprised if you see a couple more records come out, definitely gonna do Asterisk 5, waiting to see what the deal is with Pack’s new record, I know he’s just starting to work on that now. Definitely refocusing the label on myself.

Is it difficult to balance all the stuff that you do, as multi-talented as you are?

Yeah it’s a nightmare, an absolute nightmare. It’s the stupidest thing I probably could have done. In all honesty it was worth it in the sense where we were able to put our foot in the ass of a lot of bullshit music that was coming out and a lot of people trying to discredit us, and we proved everybody wrong, but at the same time it’s extremely stressful. I’ve had some horrible horrible nights, some horrible weeks and months I wouldn’t wish on anybody. If there are any artists out there who are looking to do the whole collective joint, come out with nine people and there’s usually a focal guy doing all the work in the background, don’t do it. You’re gonna end up as the workhorse and you’re gonna trot your fuckin’ hooves off, they’re gonna be bloody stumps and you’re not gonna be able to move. Definitely wouldn’t do it again, but I’m glad I did it.

What have been some roadblocks or triumphs of the process?

In terms of roadblocks, we’ve been wanting to put the record together for years, and time, space, and life get in the way. When Kno and I first decided to work on the record it was 2004, and it was just an idea, it was literally just an idea, like hey we should do a project together like an EP. Over time I started working on my own record and they started working on their stuff, and as you know Cunninlyguists have like five albums and four mixtapes, they’re extremely productive. Meanwhile I was working on my own record and putting out everyone else’s stuff so there was a few years there where literally nothing got done for the record. It wasn’t until about ’07 that I had an epiphany and it finally came to me as to what the record was gonna be and what it should be, and we turned it into a concept record, and the word really began then. For all the shit that people have given us, my favorite euphemism for it is “the underground Detox”, the work really only began a few years ago. I feel like the time passed made it a better record, and I’m super-duper excited about it.

What does the name “Chico and the Man” mean? Is it part of the concept?

The name of the project is definitely integral to a part of the concept, I really tried to make this record as multi-layered as possible so you can read into things more than one way, so when people finally hear the record they’ll understand why it’s called that. The original idea was that Tonedeff is the Latin dude and Kno is the white guy so it’s Chico and the Man, that was the original joke. Then when the concept for the record finally hit it was like wait a minute, we really really need to revisit that because this could be something entirely different and nobody would ever see it coming, that’s what we’re doing.

Has the record been intentionally mystified, with the scavenger hunt and everything?

Oh I thought it was pretty obvious. No I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s shrouded in mystique; the clues are to help bring our fans into the world of the record. It is a concept album, and the clues are all there to give the album some context, I do know that most people are gonna hear it blind for the first time, they’re gonna be completely ignorant to any of the clues, they’re not gonnna have any context, they’re gonna hear it fresh for the first time and the record has to speak for itself. But for the hardcore Blue Schoolers, the Auralarians, and QN5 fans in general that really want the finite, granular details, that’s who the clues are for. The clues aren’t our way of promoting the record; the clues are our way of giving the hardcores the level of detail and context that they want, without giving too much away.

How is the studio chemistry between you and Kno? Is it like the sitcom?

We work really similarly on our own, Kno is in Atlanta right now, he was in Kentucky, I’m in New York, so we really only ever see each other on tour. Normally he makes something on his own and he sends it to me, I write with a very slow process because I’m extremely meticulous and I have a really high attention to detail just like he does, so we’re constantly just tweaking things down to the wire until the very moment something gets released. We’ve been in situations where songs are being remastered four times over, half an hour before we drop them. We work very similarly, he’s a perfectionist, he’s been known and he’s done this to me where you write to a beat, you send him your stuff, you mix down all your vocals, you send it to him, and it comes back with a completely different beat that’s ten times better than what the original was. You just gotta trust him. In terms of working on this particular project when we first discussed it he said “Tone, you’re an instrument here and I just need you to trust me. No matter what, I just need you to trust me.” And I’m fine with that because I have full faith and confidence in Kno as a musician, I personally believe that he is the best hip hop producer making music right now. Whatever direction he points me in, I trust that we’re gonna get there. My job is basically to bring levity to the lyricism and to push it as far as I can to the best of my ability on a writing level while he just handles the music, and I really think people are going to be extremely floored when they hear what we have done.

What do you want listeners to take away from the new album?

When people are finished listening to the record, I want people to hit rewind, listen to it again in its entirety in full, and when they’re done with it again to hit rewind and listen to its entirety in full, and when they’re done with that, hit rewind, listen to it in its entirety in full, and then form an opinion and then discuss it. What they’ll be able to take away from it is that we can do things with hip hop that maybe they didn’t see coming, on all levels, from a written level, from a musical level, you can make art through this music. All they’ll take away from it is fuck, there’s so many opportunities.

You and the rest of QN5 are known for being unique and pushing boundaries, are there new experiments and directions that you have in mind for the future?

Yeah definitely, like I said earlier I’ve refocused on my career again, kind of fell off the map for a bit there. I just released Cold Killed Collected, it’s a collection of everything I did from 2005 to 2010, singles, radio interviews, collabs, I collected it all into a 45 track collection and that’s available now. That was the first step for me to remind folks that Archetype was 2005, this is where I am now. I’m already working on the follow-up to Archetype, and I have some more music that I’m working on as well. I guess I can break it here; I’m working on an all-sung album. For anybody reading this who hasn’t been following my career over the years, it is not a surprise and it is not a shock, every album that I’ve ever done I’ve sung all over it and I’ve always included a fully-sung song on every release I’ve ever done. This is me expressing myself in this format, and a lot of these songs I’ve had written since I was right out of high school, and I’ve just been sitting on them and marinating with them, but I think it’s time to put ‘em out and show people that I’m more than just the fast rapping guy.

What other QN5 releases can we look forward to coming up?

The next thing and the only thing people need to pay attention to is Chico and the Man. Tonedeff and Kno, Chico and the Man, if they wanna follow along and get more context on the record, check out the Chico and the Man Twitter, or QN5.com, there’ll be all the details, behind the scenes, all that kind of mess happening. But right now that’s pretty much it; QN5.com is the base of everything, if you haven’t been to our website, it is hands-down the best label website ever, everything’s there, music, lyrics, videos, you can talk to the artists, so that’s pretty much it. December 13, Chico and the Man.

Any last thoughts or shout outs?

Shout out to the whole QN5 collective, shout out to all the Blue Schoolers, shout out to my mom, shout out to my dad because without them fucking I wouldn’t exist. Shout out to all the artists out there that are pushing the music forward.

The ranks have been in need of a fresh injection of new talented rappers that are capable of reviving the league’s allure for fans of brutal back-and-forth bars. Cue the latest round of Grind Time battles, posted in the late Summer and early Fall. While many of the battles contained the likes of league veterans such as DirtBag Dan and TheSaurus, it also birthed either the emergence or re-invention of new, hungry battlers that will carry Grind Time into the next era.

We poured over hours of Grind Time footage to find our favorite battlers we think will be making a big mark in the scene in the very near future.

1. P.C. (Punchline Champion)

Hometown: Asbury Park, New Jersey

Division: South

Website: http://www.facebook.com/punchline.champion

Twitter: n/a

Quotables: “I said I hope you ball with that 9 like Rondo/Cause when I’m stormin I leave families mourning like Alonzo” (versus Anymal)

“I said you ain’t got that work, got that coka holmes/You ain’t grippin them tens so if he ever say he got rid of his grams that mean he put her in a nursing home” (versus Anymal)

2. Paranormal

Hometown: Trenton, NJ

Division: East

Website: http://www.youtube.com/ezactrenton

Twitter: @ParanormalEzac

Quotables: “My bars are endless/Your head must be 14 karats because it’s neckless” (versus Kage)

“I shoulda known that the judges woulda been like ‘Yeah uh, Paranormal went out swingin, he got it in 3, but you know, I’ve known Kage since I was 8 so I’m gonna go with OT” (versus Kage)

3. Kollision

Hometown: Utica, NY

Division: East

Website: n/a

Twitter: n/a

Quotables: “And you say you’ll catch a body bustin all of them slugs? / Bitch, you wouldn’t catch your bitch if she was fallin in love” (versus Mic Muscle)

“I got jerked last event to put my shit to oh and two / But now I’m stealin you and your clone, taking the double you” (versus Mic Muscle)

4. Lex D(iamond)

Hometown: Inland Empire, CA

Division: West (LA)

Website: http://lexd.bandcamp.com/

Twitter: @Lex909

Quotables: “Consider me a strong hater / It’s because you have no delivery while you’re not greater because Penn is only good on paper” (versus Dj Penn)

“Consider me a strong hater / It’s because you have no delivery while you’re not greater because Penn is only good on paper” (versus Dj Penn)

5. Ivan Da Great

Hometown: Syracuse, NY

Division: East (NYC)

Website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ivan-da-great/

Twitter: n/a

Quotables: “You won’t make moves in the Q so we blowin up like C4 / Baltimore was never shit — that’s why they nicknamed it B-more” (versus PT)

“I wanna call him racist, but I gotta put that to rest / All his white friends like him cause he knows how to act black the best” (versus Kollision)

Wax dropped a video this week from his upcoming project Eviction Notice which is set to drop November 28th. Check out the video for “Too Loud” produced by EOM, it was directed by Casey Chan.

2.) KRS-One – Just Like That

It’s been a real long time coming but KRS-One is about to drop his twentieth album in 2012. The video for “Just Like That” is surely a good taste for what he has in store.

3.) Final Outlaw ft. Homeboy Sandman – Outlaw

Inspired by the X-Men character comes the joint “Onslaught” by Final Outlaw featuring the Homeboy Sandman. If you guys used to read comics and know the story of the character you’ll understand the song, kind of an internal battle with yourself.
Final Outlaw ft. Homeboy Sandman – Onslaught

4.) Chris Faust ft. ScienZe & John Q. – American Villain

Soon Chris Faust will be dropping the Villain project. Here is the joint “American Villain” featuring ScienZe and John Q, which is QuESt’s alter-ego, which gives you a nice preview of what’s to come.
Chris Faust “American Villain” featuring Scienze & John Q (prod. Dujeous) by FAUST

5.) Notes To Self ft. Evidence – Nobody

Here’s a cut called “Nobody” by the Toronto group Notes to Self featuring Evidence off their upcoming project, Used To Be Dark (Recoil).
Nobody [RECOIL Remix] with Evidence by NotestoSelf

If you missed last week’s “You Need This Music” check it out here, and if you think that I missed anything this week or have any feedback, feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on Twitter at @EvanBlackMusic, peace.

1.) Donny Goines – Success Served Cold

This week Donny Goines dropped his Success Served Cold project. It has a long list of features from the likes of Just Blaze, Statik selektah, Brother Ali, XV, Laws and many more. This album is definitely worth a download and a listen. Find more from Donny Goines at Success Served Cold.

Download: Donny Goines – Success Served Cold

2.) Elite ft. J. Cole – World Premier

Off Elite’s recent mixtape Awaken which you can download here. Stream/download the track “World Premier” featuring J. Cole off the project below.

Elite ft. J. Cole – World Premier

3.) Murs ft. Locksmith – S.K.I.B.E.A.T.Z [Prod. Ski Beatz]

Let’s just be honest, Ski Beatz has been all over the place. Murs album with Ski Love and Rockets Vol 1: The Transformation is available now and Locksmith’s Embedded with Ski drops November 15th. Here’s a video for “S.K.I.B.E.A.T.Z” off Murs’ album featuring Lock.

Murs “S-K-I-B-E-A-T-Z” ft. Locksmith [MUSIC VIDEO] from DD172 on Vimeo.

4.) Blu ft. U-God – DoinNothin’

Blu hit us up with a video this week for “DoinNothin’” featuring U-God of Wu-Tang off Blu’s NoYork! project.

BLU – DOINNOTHIN’ FT. UGOD (PRODUCED BY FLYING LOTUS) from david m. helman on Vimeo.

5.) Tanya Morgan – Whatever That’s Mine [Prod. Von Pea]

This week “Whatever That’s Mine” by Tanya Morgan dropped. The track is produced by Von Pea and it’s off the group’s upcoming new EP which we’re anticipating over here.
Tanya Morgan – Whatever That’s Mine

If you missed last week’s “You Need This Music” check it out here, and if you think that I missed anything this week or have any feedback, feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on Twitter at @EvanBlackMusic, peace.