Listen to a couple tracks here on myspace

Download the 9 track EP for $1 dollar here at Def Jux website

You can pick up the album at any of their shows this summer or at Fifth Element.

Download the first track free here

Preorder the album here

Each pre-order will come wrapped in limited edition silver candy bar mylar and include a bonus sticker and poster designed by Burlesque Design in Minneapolis. You will also receive a DVD that includes over an hour of live performance and behind the scenes footage from the MM..Food Drive Tour.

The new album comes with a sticker, signed poster, instrumental cd, 36 pages of Sage’s thoughts… Preorder the new album HERE.

Soul Position, consisting of Blueprint and RJD2, released Things Go Better with RJ and Al, in March, 2006.  The album includes bitter lyrics from Blueprint about big labels and girls.  The production by RJD2 is as good as it always is.  You can check out some tracks on their myspace page here.  

After much discussion about the production style of underground versus popular hip hop songs, the defhiphop staff did a little research. Underground artists like MF Doom, Madlib, and Felt (Producer Ant) seem to have a style that is hard to describe, but is very different from the highly structured mainstream hip hop production. The defhiphop staff found an NPR review of Madlib’s album The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, which is an album that represents the extreme unstructured style that underground hip hop songs often contain.

Oliver Wang describes hip hop artist Madlib’s style on NPR saying “Afterall, what’s brilliant isn’t what’s said so much as how it’s said. The stutter step pace of the album, the frenetic beats that Madlib splices and loops… Compared to the hyper strategized formulas of other hip hop albums, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas isn’t a tidy package; neat, but innert. Through his alter ego, Madlib puts his creative process on display as a cackling stream of consciousness that only relents long enough for you to catch your breath before plunging you back into the murky giddy depths of his psyche.” Listen to Oliver Wang’s full review of Madlib’s style here.

After discovering Cool Calm Pete’s album Lost, the members of defhiphop were desperate to find more tracks with CCP’s cool calm flow.  We found his group Babbletron’s album Mechanical Royalty from 2003.  The group consists of Jaymanila, DJ Pre, and Cool Calm Pete.  You may catch a bio on Babbletron here.   You can also watch the video for Cool Calm Pete’s unreleased single here.

X Clan, the afrocentric group popular in the “golden era” of hip hop in the early 1990s, will release Return From Mecca on February 3, 2007. Brother J, of the X Clan states, “My mission is to serve the people with what they deserve; a positive message in a negative time. If I did this album with no music the content should still stimulate evolution in hip writers.” This focus on a conscious message, combined with an eclectic range of production sounds, makes it an album worth listening to. The whole album is streamed on their myspace page here.

If you live in New York, they are having a CD Release Party on Wednesday at SOB’s.

Pigeon John, underground rapper from LA, released And The Summertime Pool Party, in September of 2006. The album has a silly left coast vibe to it with very original production using samples from sources OTHER than James Brown. Pigeon John’s lyrics are down-to-earth with tracks like Money Back Guarantee and I Lost My Job Again about taking girls on modest dates and losing an evidently day job. The album also has an amazing track with guest spot Brother Ali and another track with J-Live and RJD2. The album is an acquired taste and gets better with each listen.

This album, released in July, 2005, is an album you must listen to. Residing in Queens, NY, this Korean former member of Babbletron raps calmly and produces his music using samples from Asian soul and funk records from the 1960s and 1970s. You may listen to a stream of the album here for free. You may also find a biography on CCP at Embedded Music here.

Really like Cool Calm Pete? Buy his album for $8.99 here: Lost