North Carolina is known for many things. Most notably, it’s the home of Duke and the University of North Carolina where legacies of Michael Jordan and Coach “K” started. The state has been in the news recently, but for more unfortunate reasons that I won’t get into because I’m pretty sure WordPress is owned and operated by fascists. That’s heresy. Or is it?

ANYWAY, I was fortunate to sit down with a much brighter spot from that region, Mallz. If you’re not familiar with the rapping man from the land of Raleigh-Durham, hit the jump and press play on his new single, “Sleeping Giant,” and then sit down and take a breath full of everything Mallz, Voltron, Plymouth Reliants, and star-studded rap collabs:

Verbal Spacey: If you could, give us a little difference between The I In Team, your forthcoming album with X3M, and Service Entrance, your album released just over a year ago.

Mallz: When I started working on Service Entrance back in 2007, my group that I had been in since my sophomore year in college parted ways and I wanted to make an album that was all about me. I’ve been rapping for a really long time and most of that time has been as a part of a group so it was really important for me to establish myself as a solo artist and not just “that guy from this group” or “So And So’s homeboy”. I really wanted to go back to the days when an emcee held down a whole album by himself – no features. With The I In Team, I wanted to do the opposite. I started working on it during the summer of 2011 and I never reached out to other rappers for my own songs, so I decided to holla at a couple of people (thank God and Oprah for Twitter). I actually came up with the title back in 2006 or so when a member of my old group and I were going to do an album as a duo. Glad that album never happened…I kinda suck at coming up with titles.

VS: The I In Team is of the one-MC-one-producer mold that, if Chris and I at TECB can speak for all, everyone enjoys. Do you have a preference of working with one producer over working with many for one project?

M: I can’t say I prefer it over working with many producers for the simple fact that I get in moods where I’m really diggin’ a certain thing for a certain amount of time. I’m what some would call a “hip-hop purist”. I like the consistency of working with just one producer for a project, but I also like the variety of sounds you get from working with a number of producers. Just so happens that I have three solo projects coming out this year, all of which are just one MC/one producer. I will say, it’s a whole hell of a lot easier to work with just one producer.

VS: To me, it seems like there is a greater chance of cohesiveness with one producer on one project, but on Service Entrance for example, the handful of production credits didn’t deter from the album.On that album you worked with Nubbz and now X3M, two overseas based producers, how does a Carolinian hook up with a Dutchman and a Serbian?

M: Yeah, it’s definitely easier to get a consistent vibe, working with one producer. I linked up with Nubbz on Twitter. I have no idea how we ended up following each other. I just remember the album being almost finished, and I was wanting  an intro track to set it off. I got at Nubbz and asked him for something with horns to open up the album and that was that.

X 3M actually contacted me first, last year, through Myspace of all places. He worked with my man, Big Hop on a couple of projects and I guess Hop told him about me. Normally, when I get an email saying I have a Myspace message, I’ll just delete it right away but I happened to check the message that day. The first joint we did together was a song called “The Way That It Is” on his album, titled Junkyard. Then he came up with the idea of doing an EP together and I loved that he had a different sound than a lot of other producers so I was more than down to collab. We exchanged email addresses and started working.

VS: Damn I should check my MySpace to see if it has any messages. Hip-hop is definitely global, there is no denying that, but closer to home is AMSOC, The First In Flight State’s rap coalition that you call family. Is the Alpha Male Society like a Wu-Tang Clan, guys that came up rhyming together or more of a Slaughterhouse, guys that got together later in their rhyming lives to form a Voltron-like unit?

M: We come together like Voltron, and Gza just happens to be the head, nahm’sayn. Nah, but we’re a collective of emcees – in the same vein as Native Tongues, DITC, Juice Crew, The Gangstarr Foundation, etc. There’s actually a duo within the collective called N’dangr Species. Alpha Male Society is Big Hop’s brainchild. He hit everyone up around September of 2011 or so and explained his vision and we were all down to combine our talents and resources. Everyone in AMSOC is from a different place – I’m in Raleigh, but I’m from a small, northeastern NC town called Harrellsville, Big Hop is from Newport News, Va, Luse Kanz is from Brooklyn. The crazy thing is, Big Hop, Luse Kanz, Maf Maddix and I all went to the same college together but we never linked up while we were there. I had my little crew, Big Hop had his and I believe Luse and Maf were soloists. I knew about Diablo Archer from an old NC based hip hop message board back in ’04 and I was introduced to H2OKZ and Don DiGiorgio from checking out their collabs with Big Hop. So yeah, we rep Raleigh, Greenville, Rocky Mount, Greensboro, Newport News, etcetera…etcetera…etceteraaaa. I might be the only rapper to use a reference from The King And I.

VS: Rogers and Hammerstein were the Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz of their day. Wait… what? With AMSOC projects, your own projects, and a 9-to-5, is it hard to go from working-stiff mode to rap-mode? Since I’ve started blogging and interacting with tons of artists I’ve been humbled by the fact most artists are regular folks just like me. When I wasn’t blogging and was “just” a fan, the thought of artists needing to pay rent, mortgages, car payments, and Girls Gone Wild subscriptions never crossed my mind.

M: You love the combination of steel drums and drunken, co-ed boobs too, huh? Balancing a day job with my music isn’t too hard, considering the fact that I don’t really do a whole lot else. I’ve never been the type to hang out a lot, so unless I’m at a show, I’m at the crib, writing rhymes, watching movies or chilling.

It is frustrating, however, because I’m broke as hell; working for someone else and their vision when I could be broke as hell, working for myself and my own vision. Everyday I wake up imagining me telling my boss to kiss every ass he can find, but I think about these bills and student loans…then I clock in and zone out for eight hours.

VS: Telling a  boss to kiss an ass or many ass is a dream of mine. Another dream of mine is dropping an Echo Chamber LP featuring Kool G Rap on every track. And yet another dream of mine is to grow most of, if not all of my hair back. But more importantly, it’s the second dream. If Mallz found a magic rap-genie lamp, who would Mallz rap with if cost was no option and was just about making music?

M: Man, it could take me all day to answer that question. There’s so many guys I would be honored to trade bars with so I’ll cheat and name a few of em. Rakim and Big Daddy Kane are at the top of the list. They were, and still are my hip hop heroes. Black Thought, Pharoahe Monch, the entire Native Tongue crew, Elzhi, Jean Grae, Skyzoo, Phonte, Heltah Skeltah and just for the hell of it, The Rapping Duke.  His infatuation with Aretha Franklin bordered scary.

I guess that’s more than a few, huh?

VS: Duh-ha, duh-ha. I have a similar infatuation with Lois Griffin. I’ve been told she’s not real. Mallz with Ruck n’ Rock would be dope, so when that TECB album gets in motion I’ll make that happen. I’ll just need to sell a couple of kidneys and livers and ovaries first.

One of the illest examples of cover art right there. That’s actually a split cover of the two latest singles from the good people over at Reservoir Sound, both courtesy of 11:00A.M, the group comprised of MC Eleven on the mic, A.M. Breakups creating the music, and Shortrock with the ill cuts. “Forrealism” and “Mother Earth” are available for your downloading pleasure over at the brand new ReservoirSound.com. If those songs sound familiar it’s because you heeded my advice and downloaded MC Eleven’s M-Theory mix tape. If you need yet another reminder, “Toast” and “Elevenocalypse” are right underneath our year-in-reviews.

Now if those song titles don’t sound familiar, here is your chance for a reprieve.

and…

Each “single” is actually 3-tracks. “Forrealism” comes with a remix by Willie Green and “Mother Earth” comes with a remix by Jeff Markey. These tracks are all fresh and it would behoove you to spend your free.99 on them. All it takes is mouse clicks. MC Eleven and A.M. Breakups are true innovators and the Boston-based Shortrock can scratch better than Johnston, Rhode Island guidette fight.

Please let me know what you think. Hit the comment section, ya dig?

O.C. is a boss on the mic, and, when he’s over some quality production, it’s not even a debate — dude is easily one of the best. He always has been, and his latest project with Detroit beat-maker Apollo Brown proves that nothing is stopping him from continuing to be a dominant figure in hip-hop.

Give a listen to “People’s Champ”:

Dwayne Johnson co-signs the shit out of that track, which is featured on O.C. and Apollo’s recently released Trophies. You can buy it from Fat Beats or UGHH; mp3 geeks have the options of BandCamp or iTunes.

As far as hip-hip releases go, it’s been pretty slow in 2012.  Vodka & Ayahuasca is undoubtedly the best to hit stores, and I honestly can’t picture anyone out-doing the sophomore effort from dirt-dogs Alchemist and Oh No, the producer x emcee combo known collectively as Gangrene. If they were to be outdone, it could only be done by their own hand. Turns out, last week the duo released Odditorium EP, a limited edition vinyl picture disc, for Record Store Day (I did’t see it anywhere), and the top-notch quality of the project’s sound is definitely on the same level as their full-length from the beginning of the year.

This is a sampling of the hooch:

Yes. Gangrene is on their gladiator shit, and, lucky enough for you, the EP isn’t exclusive to folks who favor forty-five rotations per minute. Get the download over here, grow some wings, and come back through TECB to boost my already inflated blogging ego with praise.

Back in November we showcased the album Embracing Rejection from SigNif. Since you’re all awesome blogaholics, you downloaded it and entered it into your iPods, yeah? Well if you’re also apathetic and lazy and didn’t follow-up with your homework, the homie Signif just dropped a new video, “Like My Style,” to get you into the learning mood. Those dope loops you here are from Gee Wiz, who also is no stranger to these pages.

Now that you’ve earned a reprieve, hit those hip-hop books…er…links, and do work.

You know how we hate that copy-and-paste nonsense. Verbal and I rap about it on the regular — maybe even a little too often in my case. What can I say, plagiarizing upsets me, especially when the overwhelming majority of press and/or promotion is dog shit, and the laziness of artists to write a decent biography or convey intentions or even relay the particulars is outstanding.

That said, when the complete opposite of the prior sentence happens, I do believe it’s appropriate to quote and show respect, as being elegant with the words is much more complicated than you’d imagine. In this instance, my dude DJ Mekalek had some quality words about his latest mix, Moodswings Part II, his new twenty-one-minute instrumental blend. Here’s what the fellow English major had to say:

“The idea is to have all the peaks and valleys that a person goes through in life, but using straight hip-hop instrumentals to express the ups and downs, falling into and out of zones, happiness and sadness, etc.”

Blaow.

Now give it a listen:

And get your free download from the SoundCloud player.

Shout out to Jack Torrance.

Queens and Philadelphia get together on this track like a National League East grudge match. Junclassic’s patented flow over the simple, subtle yet pungent sounds of Karl Lazlo can get anyone in a hip-hop mood on this hump-day.

Go ahead and download your own MP3 of this joint from Karl Lazlo’s Bandcamp page. It’s free and it’s dope. You have zero excuses.

Here’s one of those songs that has the ability to reel you in as a listener as soon as the track counter hit’s 00:00:01. Verberzerker is the musical duo of Vig Vega and Waatu, if you’re not familiar. They hail from the Great White North, while the two gentlemen they have featured reside in the allied power across the Atlantic, the Queen’s United Kingdom. Waatu produced this jammy, “Night Falls,” and it certainly leaves me wanting more from the Verbezerker crew.

Grab your free download of this track at Verberzerk’s Bandcamp. Issuez, or Maxx Reebo as he’s also known as, has been featured on TECB in the past, back in December when he had us Occupying Christmas. Passive65ive dropped by TECB with this cut, “Pick Your War” featuring the likes of ADAM. TECB is worldwide. Try to keep up.

The basic formula for a dope album is simple for me. I’d like the lyrics to tell me or show me something, the production needs to be original and keep my attention in check, and samples with cuts that will make me fawn like a prepubescent Beiber fan catching glimpse of a life-size cut out of the Beibs at a Walgreens. Execution is everything as even the worst of the worst can get their hands on this or similar formulas, but if they’re bad at making music, then you have crap. And that’s the kind of crap we tend to get sent to our inbox. People who mean well, but have a false sense of bravado because other similarly terrible artists have big-upped them along the way.

Enter Revelation, MC/Producer from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. From the first moment we were introduced through a mutual acquaintance, every e-mail correspondence I received, which ultimately led to me receiving this album a week early to test drive, was nothing short of professional. Which is quite the change-up from what we’re used to. But none of you care about that sort of stuff. Nor do I blame you. On to the boom-bappery.

A couple of months back I featured a track off of this album, Ghost in the Maschine, called “Super Villains.” That track laid the groundwork for the rest of the album for me. Each track is fast paced and in your face just like it. Revelation has a humble hunger that pours out not only in his raps, but also his production. Being responsible for the 16′s and music behind them is quite the task. Many have tried it but only a handful have been successful long-term. Rev certainly has the strength to be one of the handful. Ghost in the Maschine is ten-tracks, but no song is less than 3:44, other than the first track, the intro.Trying to fill four-minutes worth of air time over and over is a bold task but never do I as a listener feel like there was filler added just to make the album feel longer.

Enough of my paragraphs, try some on for size:

Cuts on this track are by DJ L-Gus. The album won’t be out until next week, 4/12/2012, but I felt the need to get the review out as soon as I could. I’ll be re-releasing it on that day too, to help further the buzz this album deserves. It’ll be available for free while download limits last (Bandcamp) and if hard copies are more your steez, hit up Revelation at hidden7prod@gmail.com. Also use that same e-mail address for beat inquires. Which I recommend. Because these beats are nice.

Keep it locked to TECB for more info on Revelation’s projects as well as other independent hip-hop and music from around the globe.

**UPDATE** The album is live and ready to get downloaded, head on over to http://revelationbeats.bandcamp.com/ and cop Ghost in the Maschine by Revelation.

The Mid-Atlantic-based hip-hop duo of Collectible Humans have released their first album, String Theory, and it’s available for free download. Way back in July I posted their single, “Rocket Surgery,” which includes some filthy cuts from DJ Addikt. The duo also released a video for that track, which you can see after the jump. If free isn’t your thing, you can also get a CD-R version of this album along with a Collectible Humans t-shirt for just $10. Which, to me, is the best deal in sports.

The self-proclaimed duo of “progressive hip-hop for humans that can read” each have solo endeavors down the pipeline, but for now, enjoy some hip-hoppery that’s worth a lot, but won’t cost you much.