The Mighty Underdogs, consisting of Gift of Gab from Blackalicious along with Lateef the Truthspeaker and Headnodic, a West Coast producer and bassist for The Crown City Rockers, have recently completed a run of shows of shows through Australia to promote their debut EP The Prelude as well as their full-length album that has only just been released. And if their EP is anything to go by, we should all be rubbing our hands together in anticipation for when, as Gab says, they’ll be “dropping it to the world”.
So how did The Underdogs come about? Gab and Lateef, co-founders of the SoleSides collective label since 1992, have been in discussions about making an album for a long time, and whilst working on his solo album with Headnodic, Lateef found enough tracks to make an entire album in its own right. “We’ve been working on this project for about two years” says Gab, and given the circumstances with Lateef’s album, Gab and Lateef agreed this was the opportunity they had been waiting for to get their collab on and put an album together, with the help of Headnodic, a well respected producer who hasn’t drawn a great deal of attention outside the West Coast scene. “We took a kind of different approach to making this record to how we’ve traditionally done it, and from how it’s often done in hip hop music… Every song depicts a different scenario from a movie”.
All the lads are self proclaimed movie buffs, and from monsters to “hot shot pilots from a different planet” to a “rocky track which depicts the underdog in a sports setting”, they took the approach of “changing the reality of who we are for every song, and making it a “fun interpretation of all the songs that we put together that way”. As Headnodic explains “there’s not as much of an aggro tone” in comparison to the work he has previously done whilst on the East Coast, and a lot of the influences on the album are the result of “watching way too much television as a kid”
The Prelude is an eclectic mix of tastes that blend into one big fun album, which was intentioned this way, and is undoubtedly catchy from start to finish. It features a number of guest appearances, from DJ Shadow, The Crown City Rockers, Akrobatic, Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na and Damien Marley, just to name a few. These collaborations have contributed to the diverse range of tracks, and it has been described as a “hyper reality where vacationing monsters have gunfights”, and as out there as this sounds, it truly is an apt description of the album.
Tracks of note include Monster a funky fresh riff with a heap of brass samples and a contagious energy, Gunfight which samples sounds of the Old Wild West with a kickarse bassline to boot. Ill Vacation is reminiscent of a theme song from an 80s sitcom (although tastefully done, if you can imagine it), while Science Fiction, true to its name, is like being in the middle of a Space Invaders game with some cleverly placed floaty samples. Similarly, Warwalk featuring Chali 2na is an aesthetically pleasing, cruisy track and Aye features classic Gab double time reminiscent of Alphabet Aerobics and finally, Doglude is an interlude which goes for about a minute and samples dogs sniffing, howling, barking and growling (seriously) and has to be heard for its sheer cleverness.
Based on the success of the EP, I asked whether they were keen to work together again. “I think we will be, probably just based on how much fun we had making this record… we just want to make music for the fun sake of it”. Their direction at the moment is that they are “definitely focused in on this tour… we definitely want to tour strongly behind the record… this is an album we’re all really proud of and have high expectations for”.
In the meantime, the boys are keeping themselves busy with solo work and other commitments. Gab is due to put out a solo record, and around the same time Blackalicious is planning to drop a new record soon, which according to Gab will be a double EP, where they’re going to rerelease their first EP Melodica; he explains it will be “kind of like a then and now EP”.
When I asked him how the Mighty Underdogs is different to working with Blackalicous, Gab explains that “it’s definitely a different vibe… Headnodic’s tracks take me to a completely different place” to Xcel’s tracks. “Blackalicious is a little more serious… it’s “kind of refreshing to work on something that was more (about) fun things”, and that they are definitely “two different creative processes”. The main thing, according to both Gab and Headnodic, is that “we love to create” and will continue to do so regardless of what context this is in.
The Mighty Underdogs’ Dropping Science Fiction is out now on Definitive Jux through Inertia.
