valley of the shadowz

I still remember back when I first heard "underground hip-hop". It was so damn refreshing from all the crap that was smeared across modern radio. It seemed to me that the genre lost its way for a while and I was so happy that it had rediscovered an interesting and experimental sound again. Stuff like the Overcast LP from Atmosphere and Anti-Pop Consortium gave me new hope and pulled me back into an area that I had almost completely given up on.

Enter a couple of years ago and somehow I ran across US/Dutch group Shadow Huntaz. While the past few years had brought a HUGE deluge of indie-hop to the point where I was ready to throw up my hands again and walk away, this was another breath of fresh air. They had found the things that I wanted in my hip-hop world. Production that was fuckin crazy- I always grew bored so quickly with the same old beat repeated for an entire song. Also, voices and words that were not afraid to be unique. The type I got from the modern-classic Deltron 3030. What Gravediggaz should have been. Wu-Tang trapped in Blade Runner. Prefuse remixing Squarepusher?

The Huntaz are three American MCs (Breaf from Chicago, Dream from Atlanta, and Non from LA) and the Dutch production squad known as Funckarma. Together they create an dark and dirty apocolyptic vision that sounds like licking a greasy rust off a futuristic boiler room and finding smooth titanium underneath. Okay thats not true, thats more Autechre perhaps. But fans of Anticon, Lex, Warp, Skam and beyond are sure to hear something they like. I have been sitting on this CD for weeks, loving every second of it and still haven't come up with which tracks to share with the bloggosphere... I have it lowered down to 9 of 13. Here we go... three different flavas:

Shadow Huntaz - Rulez
Shadow Huntaz - Decisions
Shadow Huntaz - Pevic