Like most nationwide underground scenes, independent hip-hop has flourished in the wake of advancing technology. Increasingly affordable home-recording systems have provided countless talents with a palette, and the internet's unprecedented opportunities for proliferation and community interaction has done the same things for D.I.Y. rap that they did for punk, porn and film-industry gossip. Artists and heads alike took to the wires along with aficionados of just about everything else, ceaselessly swapping shows, tunes and information.Unlike some other scenes, however — most notably indie-rock and DJ culture — we in the Bay area haven't seen the kind of consistent grassroots national touring that generally accompanies such a network. The regional hip-hop scene is certainly heating up and area venues host a fair amount of open mics, local acts and radio-related names. But that middle ground, the land of the club tour, seems comparatively vacant.
"Really? Out here, it's the total opposite," says Oakland, Cal.-based MC Zion-I. "I mean, people get on the Net too, but shows are the main way to make it happen out here."
Zion-I, producer/DJ Amp Live and their Zion Crew are an excellent example of an outfit spreading their sound and finding an audience via indie hip-hop's burgeoning clique. Opting out of the vapid, sound-of-the-season clone wars of mainstream rap, they ply a multifaceted style that balances intelligent, provocative, spiritually aware rhymes with an easy listenability. They're aligned with Raptivism Records, a socially conscious independent label that got its start as a co-op dedicated to exposing the injustices of America's prison industry. As the arbiters of their own career path, they study the turning cogs of the industry, then apply what works to their own process, stripping away the middlemen, the superficiality, the waste.
And they get in the van and tour the clubs, offering something truly alternative in a far more visceral format than the special-ordered 12-inch or file-shared mp3.
"It can get hard, but this tour we're about to start is our third pretty large tour. It's not as hard as it used to be," says Amp Live. "Of course, if we got more radio play, we'd have bigger draws. It's still basically your [average] underground tour."
The Zion Crew's enthusiastic embrace of the underground scene has its roots in having experienced an early and less-than-fulfilling round in the majors. Zion-I and Amp Live met while the two were attending Atlanta's Morehouse College, where they formed Metafour with three other MCs. The group was signed to the highly influential Tommy Boy label in the mid '90s, but even then, their ideas were too adventurous for easy consumption and the ensuing hang-ups and waiting games splintered the crew.
"The Metafour thing wasn't like a planned breakup, but after we dropped off the label, one cat went home, another dude was in his own zone," says Zion-I. "We had to wait for months. (Amp and I) just started doing stuff and it sounded good. It was a natural progression, I guess."
A brace of EPs under the Zion-I moniker were well received. Somewhere in there, Zion-I relocated to Oakland, one of the late-'90s "backpack" hip-hop scene's most fertile hotbeds; Amp Live joined him shortly thereafter. Their first full-length, Mind Over Matter, dropped in 2000 on the ill-fated Ground Control imprint. While the crew toured heavily behind the release, their label experienced the distribution and cash-flow problems that tend to plague start-up indies, and eventually folded. Undaunted, the pair continued work on a follow-up. Word-of-mouth and a few e-mails around the community brought Raptivism, whose milieu had expanded beyond the stridently political calling.
Deep Water Slang V2.0, released this year, tempers both Zion-I's cultural and spiritual lyrics and Amp Live's idiosyncratic production with a knack for hooks and a bit of the pair's Atlanta Southern-groove influences. (Not to mention guest spots by buzzy peers such as Aceyalone, Pep Love and MC Dust.) While the album's sounds include fuzz-drenched Hendrixian guitar, electronica-informed down-tempo and mystical Eastern sitars, there's also syncopated grooves, rolling bass and a nod to the classic club shot.
The smart, high-register raps and overtly atmospheric accoutrements provide an edgy feel, but Deep Water Slang is imminently ear-friendly, perhaps much more so than their underground pedigree might lead uninitiated listeners to believe. "Indie" doesn't always translate to "difficult," and even though the Zion Crew's latest certainly isn't tough to digest, they can't sit around worrying whether their underground associations will scare anyone away from their catchy sounds.
"That happens already. You can't please everybody," Zion-I reasons. "I think the goal is to take what we have to say, and put it in a context that's universal. So it's not preachy, but it makes you think. You try to strike that fine balance."
Despite their experience with Tommy Boy, the duo refutes the majors-must-die posturing common to the independent scene's more dogmatic corners. There are generally two types of artists in any underground music community, regardless of genre: those who vow that they'll never sign with the big boys, right up until they do, and those who readily admit being willing to take a shot at letting the machine work for them. The Zion Crew are members of the latter camp. They just don't believe that singular creativity and mass exposure are mutually exclusive.
"I don't feel like that, you know what I mean? For some cats, there's a sense of 'forget commercialism, fuck that shit,'" says Zion-I. "But I respect a lot of cats on major labels, just because I like their music. And cats on majors have communities just like we do. I think it's more a question of where your motivation is."
Middlebrow America's gotta be nearly sick of the bling. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the underground scene will boil over to reinvigorate the mainstream, just like it always does. In the meantime, Zion-I and Amp Live will keep taking their own style to the fans who support them, in the finest independent tradition.
"There's definitely a sense of, 'one time Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls were underground', you know? So there's a sense of staying on the path," Zion-I says, "just staying committed to what you're doing."
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail atscott.harrell @weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2003.