Our songs are supposed to be the voice of our soul
It was a great weekend for shows in Minneapolis. I was lucky enough to catch the great Mike Gunther at the Hexagon Bar for a sweaty, dirty set of old-time numbers about vice and deception. Then last night, I caught local hip-hop phenom P.O.S., who opened for the high school-demographic phenoms Gym Class Heroes. P.O.S. was fantastic, aknowledging that easily half the all-ages crowd was there for the Heroes, but providing a fun, passionate Sunday night hip-hop show nonetheless.
It reminded me of a couple things: that Minneapolis has one of the best scenes around, and that Rhymesayers and Doomtree are a really valuable part of that. Not only does Rhymesayers have the megahuge Atmosphere on their roster, they've got P.O.S., Soul Position (that's Rjd2 and Blueprint), and this guy.
You may have already heard this track, which Rhymesayers posted on their site a while ago. It's from his LP The Undisputed Truth, which comes out on April 10.
Brother Ali is an interesting guy. For one thing, he's albino, which I mention only because his bio claims the experience provided a lot of fodder and motivation for getting into rapping. He joined the Rhymesayers roster in 2000, releasing Shadows On The Sun and the Champion EP in 2004. So it's been three long years since we last heard from Brother Ali, and people are pretty excited for this.
Pre-order The Undisputed Truth from Fifth Element, an uptown Minneapolis record store owned by Slug from Atmosphere. Keep it local!