UG Rap Community

Worldwide release: April 6, 2010
Available now at stonesthrow.com

Young Jazz Rebels is a Madlib jazz group from the Yesterdays Universe collective. The album Slave Riot, their debut, is an avant-garde free jazz record, a style Madlib has been developing with Young Jazz Rebels since their debut on 2006's Chrome Children compilation with the track “Nino's Deed.”

An alternate take of “Nino's Deed” is included on Slave Riot, with 17 others – sounds ranging from heavy rhythm (“The Legends of Mankind”) to electro-jazz fusion (“Forces Unseen”, “Black Freedom”) to the sparse and experimental heard in the 2-part album centerpiece, “Slaved Riot”.

Inspired primarily by independent and experimental jazz vinyl from the late 60s, 70s and 80s, Slave Riot begins and ends with audible vinyl static, and it's packaged uniform with Madlib's other new jazz release, Miles Away: CD with heavy-boarded mini-gatefold LP-style package with a “tip-on” gatefold photo and inner sleeve. The double LP is printed with a duo-tone black panther on front & back.

Young Jazz Rebels: Melvin Hampson, Juggy Lewis, Lena Hamilton, Mary Jane, Tyrone Crumb, Lamont Parker, Monk Hughes, Brother Dave L. Produced & Arranged by Madlib.

This collection of beats showcases the way that Madlib s early Hip Hop demos were filtered out to his friends and associates and provides an opportunity for a unique view into Madlib s working process: these beats, often freestyled on whatever machine he had at the ready, were picked up by rappers over a period of many years. Trainspotters will find it interesting that beats later destined for the likes of Wildchild and Percee P were made some years before those albums saw release. This album is punctuated with a series of early solo-raps by Madlib and his Quasimoto alter ego and features the cadre known collectively as CDP those rappers who worked side by side with Madlib during the days of his Oxnard-based Crate Diggas Palace studios.

Good Things marks a shift in methodology from personal to political for Aloe, who refers to the project as his report on present conditions -- joblessness, homeless, the misappropriation of wealth, pillaging of resources, and a universal lack of compassion from the capitalism at-large under which we all function, but some struggle to survive. Song titles such as "You Make Me Smile" and "Miss Fortune," coupled with airy, ethereal production from Truth & Soul's Leon Michels and Jeff Silverman, mask a foreboding undercurrent in which Aloe crafts lyrics both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Nowhere is this more evident than on lead single, "I Need a Dollar" -- commissioned by HBO as the theme music for the series "How to Make It in America" -- because ultimately, that is how to make it in America.

Produced by Truth & Soul's Leon Michels and Jeff Silverman.