After three or four straight critics' picks for Best Hip-Hop Act, we had to retire The Tide, quite possibly the greatest accolade we've ever bestowed on a locally based outfit of any genre; those fuckers are just too good. Red Tide DJ Lazy suggested that we allow the band to pick this year's winner — like when Invisibl Skratch Picklz won the world's biggest scratch competition so many times that the promoters made 'em the judges — but since he's got his own label, Peripheral Records, to pimp, we had to decline in the name of avoiding any appearance of impropriety. He needn't have worried. We got to hear more Bay area hip-hop this year than ever before, from the spoken-word-tinged flow of Poesis to Christian MC Young Iz to any number of regionally based thuggish start-up labels, producers and independent artists, but nothing rocked us like Double Helix, who happen to record for Peripheral. Seamlessly blending the jazzy genre-fuckery of old-school groups like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul with an inventive indie mindset, an alternately mercurial (Surreal) and dancehall inflected (Ras Bongo) flow, and production to rival any national release, the Double Helix crew creates fun, eclectic and thought-provoking soundscapes without peer in the Bay area.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.