Dropping science on everything from pop and politics to Leia and Lando, Freestyle Fellowship charts the outer limits of underground hip-hop on new album The Promise.
It’s an interstellar return of sorts. Freestyle Fellowship‘s impressive wordsmiths — Aceyalone, Self Jupiter, Mikah 9 and P.E.A.C.E. — grew out of the legendary Project Blowed collective, the longest-running open-mic hip-hop workshop in history.
The group’s light-speed rhymes set the course for independent hip-hop that strayed from Southern California’s more popular G-funk, served up by the likes of Dre and Snoop. (Although they could dish that out too, especially on the mad banger “Bullies of the Block” from the classic Innercity Griots.)
Thankfully, time has caught up with the group, whose 20th anniversary release The Promise, out now from the respectable beat junkies at Decon Records, is a healthy reminder of what hip-hop can do when its rhyme machines boast big brains as well as balls.
For more on that score, check out kinetic new anthem “We Are” below, or catch the group in the flesh when Freestyle Fellowship’s West Coast tour starts Wednesday night in San Francisco and wraps Saturday in Seattle.
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