Legions of mostly obscured hip-hop artists continue to pride themselves on their adherence to the so-called true school. Typically this means enthusiastic renderings of DJ Premier-styled boom bap teeming with constant shout-out’s to DJs, B-boys, and graffiti writers. Locals Mike Flo and Alpha 2020 resemble this description to the point that when they aren’t sounding a little too much like Dilated Peoples, they’re dredging up old memories of Houston’s K-Otix trying to be A Tribe Called Quest. Nonetheless, Introducing Mike and Ike (Soul2020) packs a proficient wallop as it spars with the proverbial wack MC and ultimately champions its tried-and-true fight plan: “find a sample, chop it, and loop it.” Sporting what they’ve dubbed “garage rap,” WildCard and Sach transform past glories into futuristic mutations with the admission that “I used to break but now I bend.” As former members of the Arctectonics rap group and punk rock outfit Engine No.9, these Smokejumpers embody the DIY aesthetics of California’s Living Legends crew as the duo poetically trods on as “slaves to the shadows in a silicon paradise.” An iconoclast of the most surly nature, Dubb Sicks spins Bukowski-esque tales of a Sunrise Alcoholic hellbent on railing against what the Odessa native calls a “Nazi conspiracy.” While “Story of a Filthy Pig” breaks down the psychology of a racist cop, “Conservative Terrorist Threats” advances “the voice of people who can’t rise up when they fall.” Announcing that “we ain’t trying to kill you, we just want to see you in that ICU a second term,” twin brothers Sandman and Lowkey of SouthBound tear through a DJ Rapid Ric-mixed mosaic on The Come Up (2 Da Bone), made up of instrumentals including N.W.A’s “Boyz N the Hood,” Wu Tang Clan’s “CREAM,” and Lil Hawk’s “You Already Know.”
This article appears in July 7 • 2006.