Goin' Hard

SouthBound may already have the year’s best local hip-hop release in May’s Seasons Change EP, but they’re not done grinding yet. The brotherly duo of Robert “Lowkey” and Michael “Sandman” Hein have the pieces in place for two LPs and a collaborative album with some of the city’s finest young talent, all to be released in the next 12 months.

“My brother’s in the Navy in Florida but he’s coming home next month for a couple weeks, and we’ll shoot some videos while he’s in town,” offers Lowkey of finishing Vice Verses, which should be out before the winter. Currently in its mastering stages, the album was meant to be released in 2008 but got shelved when SouthBound’s former label went through some legal troubles.

“I’m really shooting right now for that to come out spring of 2010," he says. "I want my brother to have time to get situated. When he gets back for those two weeks, you know, we’ll be in the studio and making songs and shit, but shit changes. You might not use a certain song, or we might get some new beats or new ideas floating around.”

Holding fans over in the meantime is an Internet re-release of 2006’s Rapid Ric-produced Come Up and next month’s League of Extraordinary Gs, which Sandman and Lowkey put together with fellow southsiders COD and Round Rock do-it-alls Dred Skott.

“It’s kind of a blessing in disguise,” Lowkey admits when asked of Vice Verses' much-delayed release. “We were mad that we didn’t release it. We had a lot of people waiting for it; we had a little buzz going on. Our not releasing Vice Verses kind of killed the shit we had going, but it’s good that we can get all our ducks in a row and just knock ‘em out.”