On his road to becoming a lawyer my brother has been managing bands on the side.  Usually the bands he has managed have never really been my cup of tea.  Not that they were awful, just not really anything more my style of listening.   That being said though I have really been digging City Council, his new project.  The hip hop I love is the older stuff that I grew up listening to: Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Del, etc.  I think the "roughest" I ever really listened to was Das Efx (which is scoughable by true gansta rap standards I am sure).   That being said though after Outkast really hit it big with Elevators off ATLiens (I didn't really start listening to them until then)  I started to go back and listen to their older stuff and pretty much fell in love with southernplayalistic even though I felt like it was very different from ATLiens.  It just seemed like a different sound entirely; southernplayalistic sounded much more like rap, whereas ATLiens was at some points (Babylon) kinda mindblowing but yet was hard to believe that this was the same two guys from southernplayalistic.    I think this went even further as Outkast has grown older till I think it hit its peak with Speakerboxx/Lovebelow, which a lot of my friends deem their worst release, but I think is actually them at their best.    

I think this brings me back around to why I like Unsocial Commentary, it just sounds a bit off (but not in the bad way) from the normal, much like ATLiens did.  Spaceship seems almost like it belongs on ATLiens, and probably my personal favorite off the album is Cooler Side of Town. My brother has also passed me a few newer songs that are not on a release (yet) that really makes me feel like City Council is following that same trajectory of exploring hip hop's edges as they release new stuff.   I may try to get permission to post some here, but I know you can probably listen to Arts & Crafts over at their site somewhere.  I know you can listen to a good bit of Unsocial over there, and also preview the album over at Amazon and on iTunes.  I am pretty excited for them (and my brother), I remember going to shows in Athens in college and you could pretty much tell who had a shot to get out of the southern college concert circuit and onto bigger things (remember that cocky Mayer guy?).   I would have put these guys into that category easily.  

Musak city council, hip hop