Underground Hip-Hop

May I suggest the 'search' function?

Look top left.

I don't think anyone on here will have heard of the artists as underground as you mention, though.

Always wondered when the term "underground hip hop" basically became a coverall term for mostly white rappers who don't talk about guns over slightly awkward beats that don't bang in the car. Oh and go and download some Odd Future Wolf Gang

?

quite liked the recent Thavius Beck one. I can't bloody remember what it was called though. Also remember liking Mike Ladd's Welcome to the Afterfuture.

Cannibal ox

Oh this is ripe! Undie Rap! I can't think of a genre that is more deeply ensconced in The Black Hole of Cool (where things are too old to be hip but too new to be retro and just old enough to be embarrassing). Still, I truly believe that the best undie rap stuff was among the most thrilling and original music of the 00s and I'm only a little bit ashamed to admit that I still really like:

Antipop Consortium - Tragic Epilogue*
Antipop Consortium - Arrhythmia*
Atmosphere - Lucy/Ford
Boom Bip & Dose One - Circle
Buck 65 - Talkin' Honky Blues
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
cLOUDDEAD - Ten
Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus*
Deep Puddle Dynamics - The Taste of Rain: Why Kneel?
Infesticons - Gun Hill Road
Mike Ladd - Welcome to the Afterfuture
Madvillain - Madvialliany*
MF Doom - Mm Food
Quasimoto - The Further Adventures of Lord Quas
Restiform Bodies - TV Loves You Back
Aesop Rock - Labor Days
Sole - Bottle of Humans*
Sonic Sum - The Sanity Annex*
Why? - Oaklandazulasylum*
v/a - Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop

(*Personal favourites.)

non sarcastic reply alert

if you don't mind checking older stuff, kool keith is definitely worth your time if you dig funky offbeat stylez

his solo shit is mostly dud but that can be forgiven for bringing us ultramagnetic mcs, the cenobites and doctor octagon

you should check out godfather don and tim dog who appeard on lots of the above. godfather don was actually the other half of the cenobites

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p.s i don't think this is undie. just good non mainstream hiphop

I wasn't being sarcastic, honest! I still genuinely love this stuff. I was just acknowledging that it's pretty uncool right now. But I think when people start to re-discover it in a few years' time, they'll find lots of gems. Don't sleep on that Sonic Sum album!

Recently, "Rainmen" by Deep Puddle Dynamics popped up on my iTunes and I was honestly blown away. Amazing when you just forget about the existence of a whole sub-genre you were totally in love with for a while.

connect_icut said:

Antipop Consortium - Arrhythmia*

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i was obsessed with this for a while

connect_icut said:

I wasn't being sarcastic, honest! I still genuinely love this stuff. I was just acknowledging that it's pretty uncool right now. But I think when people start to re-discover it in a few years' time, they'll find lots of gems. Don't sleep on that Sonic Sum album!

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i was referring to other posts in the thread. i didn't think yours sounded sarcy.

re: antipop, love the tracks what am i? and disorientation

always wondered if they did more along those lines?

Oh man, as far as I'm concerned, everything on the first two APC albums is pure gold. But this is the number one jam for me:
http://bubblegumcage3.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/15-human-shield.mp3

Even the most recent album had its moments. I actually did a couple of (unofficial) remixes of a song from that one:
http://bubblegumcage3.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/02-apc-meets-fairport-convention-upcountry.mp3
http://bubblegumcage3.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/01-reflections-connect_icut-remix.mp3

Sorry for the shameless self promotion but I'm rather proud of those.

kool keiths solo stuff is way better than you listed. my favourites are:

Dr Dooom - First Come, First Served
Mathew
Sex Style

Lost Masters 1 and The Commi$$ioner 1 are amazing too.

overly familiar with this sort of thing.. listened to more than I needed to as a teen. particularly the good life cafe inspired, spacey LA stuff - project blowed, living legends, mass men, cve etc. It was the first internet rap afaik.. thing is, new 'internet' rap like odd future & lil b fulfill a similar promise of spacey production and lyrics, but less backpacky baggage. def better beats. the recent LA low end theory / brainfeeder scene has a thin connection with it, via daddy kev.

I think connecticut is right that its still too early to listen to it objectively.. but nonetheless i have a feeling I couldve invested my attention more wisely. certainly my mates all thought it was shit.

*edit - on second thoughts, no*

from the wider 90s / early 00s indie hip hop stuff, the only music that I still actively listen to & engage with is what El-P produced, can ox, fan dam etc, - because it's fantastic, and still sounds like the future.

Sensational

get
el-p fantastic damage
necro - i need drugs
mf doom - operation doomsday
va - the fondle em best of thing
va - rawkus soundbombing 1 and 2
non phixion - whatever their first album was called, i cant remember

I've been trying to get into Lil B but his style just doesn't appeal to me. I hate to be one of those bores who thinks that hip-hop died with the first Jay Z single but... well, I clearly am. Even though Lil B's style is very expansive and abstract, his flow and the beats are just too reminiscent of what I've hated about rap music over the last 15 years. Annoying because I kind of feel like he's an Important artist.

I've been listening to Restiform Bodies' TV Loves You Back a lot recently because I just found a used copy on vinyl. I can see a lot of people hating this: cliched critique of consumerism; misogyny masquerading as social commentary; generally sense of wackiness. But some of the tracks are just incredible - dense and intense but still with a poppy lightness of touch. I like it, anyway...

Immryr said:

kool keiths solo stuff is way better than you listed. my favourites are:

Dr Dooom - First Come, First Served
Mathew
Sex Style

Lost Masters 1 and The Commi$$ioner 1 are amazing too.

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woah, first time i've ever heard someone saying his solo output is better than the rest of his stuff. each to their own eh? agreed on doctor dooom tho, really good. couldn't get down with matthew or sex style apart from a couple of tracks each. lost masters has a few more nice ones and i've yet to hear the commi$$ioner. anyway, the guy is a true underground don. and will remain so for ever and ever.

also, i always wondered how the el-p fans felt about bigg jus' post co-flo stuff ? namely - bigg jus - black mamba serums and nephlim modulation systems (with orko the sykotik alien) - woe to the o land whose king is a child

he's released a couple others but i think these two were his best. i could never really find much written about this stuff in the media or even on forums (esp compared to the attention el-p still gets). it's definitely on the conscious/political/backpack (possibly?) side of things but, the music itself was original enough to be worth hearing even if the lyrical content didn't float yer boat. futuristic as fuck, and i'd say that if you're going to do political, you might as well do it this way. shit's hardcore.

p.s. i've tried hard to get into el-p's solo stuff as well as cannibal ox and i dunno, i just can't. most of it leaves me cold.. :slanted:

speaking for myself i have a lot of respect for big juss, black mumba serums got a good deal of walkman time from me, a few NMS tracks too. but his solo work had a very lo fi, demo-ish sound, production wise.. his attitude seemed more hermitic than el-p's too.. it certainly didn't make for an instantly rewarding experience, reflected in sales etc. but definitely I know ppl who hold him in v high regard.

With El-P for me it's always been about the production.. his raps give the picture more conceptual references, the sarky, paranoid attitude adds a lot of character, but in all honestly i mostly listen to the instrumentals. There's few producers who I rate as highly, in any genre.

thinking about indie art rap stuff - i never connected with anticon.. but dose one was actually a cool cat. I hope he's still creating.

daddek said:

i never connected with anticon.. but dose one was actually a cool cat. I hope he's still creating.

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Yeah, he just released some stuff with/based on works by Alan Moore.

Dug out Deep Puddle Dynamics, Them and Sonic Sum last night because of this thread and enjoyed them all.