"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Hip Hop From The Underground

One of the things about underground/indie music is it tends to be local, meaning if you don't live in the locale you miss out on the good stuff. I was out at UP the other weekend up on a mountain high and getting the hipster claustrophobia fear -- the steamroller of gentrification... every place has a bouncer now... girls getting younger and less pretty every year... -- and the skinny-ass white kid with the stringy Alan Ginsburg beard on the decks dropped this track:

Aceyalone, The Faces

And it makes everything ok, a little too ok actually. Sexy even. I go over and ask him who it is, trying to maintain some edge, some pride, some credi-fucking-bility in this now-thrumming sharklike scene. "A.C.L.O" I hear, and it sticks, even though it's wrong, so I ask google and plus in some lyrics that stuck too ("lemme holla at ya face to face") and in three or four clicks I get around to A Book Of Human Language, an apparently seminal track from 1998. Up there with Dr. Octogon and Deltron3030, now out of print. Took me somewhat longer to score the track I heard off the peer to peer scene.

But I believe it must be that good of an album. There was some very very good shit coming out regional at that time. Outkast, the Wu Tang, Del, etc. Give that mp3 a listen and see if it doesn't tickle your lower back a bit.

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