Jimmy Fallon challenges hip-hop lover Daniel Radcliffe to rap Blackalicious’ tongue-twisting “Alphabet Aerobics.”

Today, Blackalicious is proud to announce the first public release of their classic Melodica EP. It comes complete with a bonus track “Changes”, which was recorded on Blackalcious’ first night in London when they went to sign a record deal with Mo’ Wax in ’93. Produced by DJ Shadow, Chief Xcel and James Lavelle (Mo’ Wax/UNKLE), the track was recorded and mixed all in one session. “Changes” was released only on the Japanese version of Melodica, making it one of the rarest tracks from the Blackalicious/Solesides vault. Additionally, Blackalicious will drop a brand new track, “Blacka” on July 31st. This will be the first song in a wave of long-anticipated new music from Blackalicious. The duo is also preparing to tour this Fall, more info on that later.

It’s one thing to make enduring records, another still to work with luminaries in multiple fields. Another thing still to treat the rhyme not only as a piece of poetry, but to play with the aesthetics of language in ways that represent the voice as a unique instrument in and of itself. Blackalicious do all of these things, and as evidenced by the reissue of 1993′s Melodica, they have been doing these things for years. Originally released exclusively on cassette, Melodica is being reissued digitally for the first time. It’s a vital document of the group’s progression towards their eventual position as lords of the West Coast Underground, Gift of Gab twisting his words with aplomb, his lyrics more carefree than his later work. Chief Xcel’s beats, meanwhile, tread the same funky, lighthearted waters as many of his left-field contemporaries, but everything on Melodica is coated in a murky scuzz that, somewhat conversely to logic, could place the EP alongside much of today’s weird, lo-fi hip-hop. As an added treat, Melodica contains “Changes,” an unreleased cut produced in part by one DJ Shadow, who joins forces with Blackalicious producer Chief Xcel to offer dusty drum loops and subtle, textured samples that would offer a glimpse into much of Shadow’s later work. In an era where hip-hop devolves into half-baked facsimile with alarming regularity, Melodica serves as a reminder that the true school will always triumph over the bullshit.

The new ILLUS album “FOR ADAM” is complete and with your help will be available soon. Make a Kickstarter pledge of $10 and get a copy of the brand new limited edition CD featuring Freddie Foxxx, Gift of Gab, Homeboy Sandman, J.J. Brown, Eternia, Craig G, Wordsworth, Reef the Lost Cauze, Block McCloud, Paul Dateh, DJ Johnny Juice (on the scratches!) and Erin Barra. Make your pledge at http://kck.st/ffL4NS and stay in touch at www.adamwallenta.com.

This video features behind the scene footage of ILLUS and HomeBoy Sandman recording at 5G Productions Studio in Brooklyn, NY. It also features an interview with super producers J.J. Brown and Dan Maier after the mastering process is completed for the new album.

Illus “FOR ADAM” Tracklisting:

1. Requiem For Adam (w/DJ Johnny Juice from Public Enemy on the cuts)
2. Unstoppable featuring Freddie Foxxx and Paul Dateh (w/DJ Johnny Juice from Public Enemy on the cuts)
3. Born Criminal
4. Free featuring Homeboy Sandman
5. Brighter Day featuring Craig G, Reef the Lost Cauze and Block McCloud
6. Better featuring Gift of Gab and Paul Dateh
7. Sons and Daughters featuring Eternia, Wordsworth and Erin Barra
8. R.I.F. featuring Paul Dateh
9. Make Some Noize

You may have caught this Target promo this season on any of the major networks, taken from the company’s free holiday album, The Christmas Gig. Check the video above, or download the whole compilation via Target’s website.

     The Craft pretty much picks up where Blazing Arrow left off, weaving fourteen tracks together into one long musical opus. The sound of the album is largely diverse, thanks to the long list of musicians, vocalists, and guest emcees that participated in the album, yet maintains a beautiful sense of synergy as it plays throughout. Gab and Xcel are an evenly matched team, making it impossible to choose who is the “star” of the group. Gab proves himself as easily one of the most talented emcees in the game, almost never using the same style twice on the record. “Rhythm Sticks” reintroduces Blackalicious to the world, as Gab kicks alphabet aerobics, spelling the group’s name out over a full arrangement of snapping drums, guitars, flutes, and cuts from Xcel. He shows off again on “My Pad and Pen”, a two minute lyrical exercise that finds Gab building his flow with the beat, ending with a ridiculous climax that might make Eminem say “Damn”. But it’s not all style over substance; in fact, Gab uses his platform to broach various societal issues. “The Fall and Rise of Elliot Brown” is a “Deception” like narrative that begins with Gab portraying the character on a get-rich-or-die-trying mission, which ultimately lands him in prison, where he finds redemption. Chief Xcel’s gorgeous arrangement of pianos, percussion, bass, and horns wonderfully animates this tale of self-improvement. This leads into the conscious “Black Diamonds and Pearls”, which takes a page from Nas’ “If I Ruled The World”, where Gab examines some of the long-term effects of drug dealing. 

     But as mentioned before, all praises due are not just to Gab, as it’s Xcel’s backdrops that make Gift’s rhymes shine so bright. The musical spectrum of this record is so vast, that it’s virtually impossible to detect where Xcel will take you next, celebrating a diverse mix of sounds and styles. “Powers” plays almost like a surf rock song, as Gab flexes his vocal chops with mostly sung lyrics. “Lotus Flower” is a glob of cosmic slop complete with a hook from George Clinton, while Gab tries out his early Common-esque “voice-crack flow”. The smoothed out “Automatique” is also notable, as Floetry lend their airy vocals to this mellow head-nodder. 

     There’s really only one stinker on this album, “Ego Sonic Wardrums”, which finds Gab and Freestyle Fellowship’s PEACE getting their Indian war chants on, and Xcel’s frantic track doesn’t help much either. But by the time the last track hits, The Craft, you quickly forget about the album’s sole misstep. As a whole, this LP further solidifies Blackalicious as a positive force to be reckoned with, heavy on both substance and style.

Polished is one good description of Blazing Arrow, in the sense that Chief Xcel and Gift of Gab have connected all the loose ends that left Nia somewhat conceptually tangled, the 17 songs are blazed and segued gracefully, successfully binding the unlearned new-jack to (most of) the know-it-all hard-rocks. This is slick, sturdy, and solid, yet at times perhaps too slick for its own good.

Don’t get your attitude all up in a twist though, because Gab is still nice as fuck on the mic and Xcel is still wickedly underappreciated as a producer, and together actually make great strides as a matured group throughout Blazing Arrow. Penning the complicated and subtle, Gab’s gift is truly exposed on the wild “Chemical Calestenics”, the wilder “Release” and the touching “Nowhere Fast”; the latter exemplifying a neo-soul strut that characterizes much of this album’s conscious. It’s something indicative of their growing up as men, both in the rap world and real world; but something that could also divide fans. Granted, nothing is taken lightly on Blazing Arrow, granted again, most of the hooks are crooned and sung (quite beautifully and tastefully at that) backed by a warm ambience that brings people like Gil Scott Heron (“First In Flight”), Ben Harper (“Brain Washers”), Jaguar Wright (“Aural Pleasure”), and Saul Williams  out the box for interesting collaborations. Is that MTV I hear knocking on the door? Probably. It’s the dawning of an age and with this dawn marks a change, accept it and grow along with your artists, decline and live in the past. It’s on you.

Chief Xcel: Blackalicious recorded on CD is Chief Xcel and the Gift of Gab. Blackalicious live, when we touring is Chief Xcel, Gift of Gab, Versatile, Joyo Velarde and Lateef the Truth Speaker. Quannum is DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, Lateef, Gift of Gab and myself. But within that, various groups formed:  Blackalicious; Latyrx, which is Lateef and Lyrics Born; Maroons, which is myself and Lateef.

HHSite: So what you trying to do, you trying to confuse us or something?

Chief: (Laughs) We’re just….all you got to know is who the key players are.

HHSite: So far, your entire unit has managed to stick together, unlike so many other organizations. What continues to make you inseparable?

Chief: Just the love of music. We’ve had a friendship that has standed the test of time and we have a common passion for creativity.

Gift of Gab: Our common love for the art and our hunger to innovate and create. Quannum is five different energies that come together to make one, and we feed off of each other’s excitement.

HHSite: On the East Coast, is your name and music almost as popular as it is in CALI?

Chief: New York is actually our third biggest market. It used to be our second, but now LA is our second biggest market. The thing that you have to realize is that the music is a universal thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Oakland or Sidney, Australia. People appreciate good music wherever you are. So, we’re just striving to make it universal and bring it to the people around the globe.

HHSite: You seem to stem away from larger distribution companies, but do you feel satisfied within the limiting boundaries of the underground?

Chief: We don’t really like to get into the classifications of underground, overground, or commercial. These are economic terms. We’re just focusing on making good music. In terms of distribution, we want our music to hit as many people as it possibly can, because we making this for the world to hear! So whatever is best for the music or whatever is most appropriate for the music.

HHSite: On your new album, Nia, I think the format is extremely refreshing, with the speeches, skits, poetry, etc. Outside of the music world, who are some of the influences that shaped the direction of this album?

Chief: Family, God….we could go on. Our lives are really consumed with music. As far as outside of music, it’s just the day to day inspirations. Stuff like my little sister going off to College. For Gab, seeing his sisters come to the show and see him rock for the first time. Things like that just kinda inspires us and add fuel to the fire.

HHSite: Musically now, the album’s definitely filled with Soul. But there are so many more musical influences I’m sure that made this the true hip-hop LP that it is.

Chief: It’s really vast, really vast! Everything from Fela Kuti to Bob Marley.

Gift: To Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder.

Chief: To Aretha Franklin.

Gift: Mantronix.

Chief: Eric B & Rakim, NWA…With us, if it’s good music, it’s good music.

HHSite: So, no boundaries whatsoever?

Gift: It could be folk, opera…. If it’s dope and worth being appreciated, that’s all that really matters.

Chief: On that note, there’s an incredible folk record by this group called Chicago Women’s Freedom Rap Band. It’s dope! No boundaries, no boundaries. There’s country records out there, that got grooves on them that are phat!

HHSite: You’ll also used in some of the interludes, certain figures like Nikki Giovanni, and I think Kwame Ture?

Chief: Yeah it was (Kwame Ture), yeah that’s good man you’re like the first person to notice. That’s dope!

HHSite: “Cliff Hanger”. Everything about this song is truly unique, wide-open and far out there even. It’s such an electrifying groove too.

Gift: That was a song DJ Shadow produced for the album, and a lot of times people focus on being real. Good. You’re supposed to make music about your life, but the thing some people don’t realize, you don’t have to be. You could use your imagination. This is art! This is creativity! There’s no limits. You can make up fictional stories and make good songs. We wanted to do something like that. He played me the track, and we just wanted to tell a fictional story, something that you could really get into, something that was really visual, almost as if you’re watching a movie. It was really fun. When you’re zoning like that, you don’t have any limitations. The cup could start walking, the walls could start breathing.

HHSite: Before a your album even hit the stores, I noticed a jam-packed audience at your show reciting rhyme for rhyme on almost every performed song off the Nia release.

Chief: Last night was special for us – cause it was like our first, proper LA Blackalicious show. It was cool, we been looking forward to coming down here for a long time. LA was really the first reason to really break Blackalicious. It was people like Julio G, Mike Nardon, Sway & Tech, The Beat Junkies, so we got love for LA, we wanted to really come out and give all of our energy.

HHSite: You mentioned you’re trying to reach the world, but since you’re independent, what steps are you taking to accomplish this task?

Chief: The first important step that we took was in 1991 when we formed Soulsides. We didn’t want to be in a position where we were just making demos and going around to labels, trying to get a deal. This transcended into Quannum, a bigger company with a much larger vision for music for all of the artists involved. So, we’re going to get the music out there via the Internet, or via a video. In fact, we just finished the video for “Deception”, which we are very proud of.

HHSite: Tell me this, demographically it seems like a closer a group or artist like your self identifies with hip-hop as the art-form created, the following seems to be 95% white and 5% others. How “blackalicious” are you to black people?

Gift: We’re black people so we speak from a perspective of black men going through the black experience.

Chief: “That’s the whole thing, we just wanted to make good music from our perspective. With our records, we sayin’ take your shoes off, wipe your shoes on the front door mat, and with that we welcome everybody into our home. But first and foremost, you must respect the rules of our house. This is our music, from our perspective. We welcome everybody.

HHSite: Again, this isn’t an isolated question to you only. This could be directed to a number of groups in hip-hop. Why is it that in the audience Black people seem to be the minority? When it comes to real hip-hop, why are we hiding?

Chief: We’re out on the road and we see it! We ask ourselves that question everyday! It’s a very intelligent question, a very good question. A lot of artists in hip-hop have been faced with this for the past ten years. Again, we getting our music to the people and that’s what our role is… I really couldn’t give you an answer as to why the demographics are the way they are. This is something that still baffles me to this day.

Gift: I was about to ask you that! (laughing)

HHSite: Well, this is turning into a discussion that requires much more time to continue.

Chief: In answering your question, you can say that’s an answer we’re still searching for. Still searching.

HHSite: Just like the first track on your album, “Searching”?

Chief: Yup, most def!

This is the kind of release in only seven short songs that most rap soloists and crews wish they could come up with in bulky blathering thirty cut double discs of mindless drivel. Sometimes, shorter is better – especially when you can pack this much flavor into this condensed of a space. Proving that point aptly is the title cut “A to G” where Gab proves his ability to alliterate aptly; then flips it at the album’s end with “Alphabet Aerobics (The Cut Chemist 2 & 1/2 Minute Workout)”, which forces Gab to up-tempo his flow everytime the beat is picked up – except this time he goes all the way from A to Z. Zounds!

Gab isn’t one of those one-dimensional rappers that’s just out to prove how clever he is with his tongue. “Deception” is an examination of how the fast road to success can be a quick road to downfall, and “Making Progress” is a heartfelt dedication to all his people struggling to make a better life for themselves. Gab has an extrordinary ability to sound matter of fact – never preachy or didactic – so you won’t mind when he says, “Can’t achieve a a garden if you never water your crops/If you never paid your dues, then you don’t get props.” Gab never aims any barbs at others that he wouldn’t aim at himself so this comes across as much as a self-reminder as advice.

A fan of hip-hop for advanced listening would be hard-pressed not to enjoy this musical menagerie. Chief Xcel’s sonic production deftly compliments Gab’s liquid smooth voice and provides the appropriate sound backdrop for whatever topic is addressed. Of this release one can only be left mouth-watering for the fuller length Nia from which these jewels of excellence were culled. Picking up this and the previous Melodica EP would both be a very good decision.