Hip-Hop's Unknown Legends: The Anticon Crew
posted on Apr 01, 2006Note: This piece was part of an April Fool’s satire.
Hey kids! Ever wonder what your favorite hipster magazines really wish they could write about while they’re out covering Fabolous and Young Jeezy? Well look no further! OhNerd has uncovered the following unpublished first draft of Stylus Magazine’s comprehensive look at D.I.T.C. Read on fellow nerds but be prepared, what you will read was not meant for public eyes and may shock, offend and change your view on music FOREVER…
‘ll go on record and say that ANTICON as a crew has produced some of the most important people in that era of Hip-Hop, and they are also one of the most slept on crews in terms of the mass market.”—Jay Seagraves, publisher, Backpacker Magazine, as quoted by HipHopInfinity.com.
It is difficult to write an unwritten history. This is simply the reality of writing about 1998 rap music in 2006; the information is out there, but much of it exists as hearsay and unsubstantiated rumor. There is no Hipster’s Manual for the Anti-confirmative crew. What I know about ANTICON is … not much. I’m not from San Francisco, never been to Maine. What I do know is that somebody put a torrent up and I downloaded it by accident last night. So this piece won’t revolve around obscure Orphanage tour discs. But I do hope to provide both a brief primer for folks who are not familiar, and some context and perspective on one of the most significant—and underrated—groups in internet-Hip Hop history. If the history of the group is what you are interested in, Backpacker has already covered that ground in an extensive multi-part exploration of the crew and its origins.
In the late 1990s Internet hip-hop was at a creative peak. Sure, Hiphopsite.com had arrived from the west, laying the groundwork for the uncreative blueprint that would set the direction for trap music’s future, and Sandbox-automatic had established themselves as a notable underground retailer. But Hiphopinfinity was still the rap music Mecca, with talent popping out of every Swedish remix 12’’, rappers spitting from so many different directions, producers still mastering the electric guitar. A major cornerstone of Hiphopinfinity’s creative rap movement was the Anti-confirmative crew, known simply as ANTICON.
Today, having fun aside, the last thing a hardcore rap crew will cop to is “not conforming.” However, this was the internet in the late 1990s, and no group captured that time and place better than ANTICON; Atmosphere was one-of-a-kind, Galapagos4 were too dark and grittily underground, too focused in scope. Until the Def Jux era, the members of ANTICON were exemplars of quality rap music in message boarding’s late 90s to early 00’s creative explosion. The beats weren’t danceable, and the rappers sounded like Battlestar Galactica fans on LSD.
The crew was a loose conglomeration. There were many albums released by individual members with assists from the rest, yet only one released officially by the group as a whole, and it dropped well after most members’ creative prime. Although at one time all underground internet rappers, each artist would end up in very different places; for Dose One and Why?: sub-par indie rock for kids who think normal indie rock isn’t nerdy enough; for Alias: obscurity in the wider world but a renowned producer’s status in goth-hop. For Sage Francis: superstardom. And for Sole and Pedestrian, tragic commercial death.
Production
Sole, Alias, Odd Nodsam, Jel
These four were the key to the crew’s name; their “beats” defined the period.
Sole was a rapper and producer, and had been a frequent caller on public radio since he went to a Nixon memorial high school. In some ways he seems to exists as the central constellation around which the crew revolved. Sole had known Alias and Jel from his teenage years; they all began as hair metal guitarists in the late-1980s. By 1997, Sole had released his first LP, Music for the Advancement of Hiphop, along with his “posse” and close friends The Restiform Bodies. Production credits on the record went to the core of the Anticon sound: Alias and Jel both contributed, alongside Buck 65, who was still in the formative stages of establishing his own style. The Sebutones’ rep wouldn’t be solidified until 50/50 Where It Counts release the following year. (Although not a member of the crew, Buck 65 would produce tracks for Anticon members throughout his career.)
By this time the Anticon crew began to come together. Odd Nodsam didn’t meet the crew until after Music for the Advancement of Hiphop’s release; both were internet rappers—Sole was supplementing the meager paychecks he received from Jay Seagraves by waiting tables at Denny’s on the side—and at that point, the foundation for Anticon’s sound was established. Alias would go on to produce some of the best tracks in goth-hop history, from Odd Nosdam’s “the futurist robotic conception” to Why?’s “metaphysical forest and the attack of Republican elves.”
Internet-Rappers
Dose One, Why?, Pedestrian, Telephone Jim Jesus, Sage Francis
1998 was a major year for Sole in another way; it was the year he met a rapper named Dose One, who would arguably become the group’s definitive rapper. Dose One was an Ohio kid badgering Sole for his money back on a scratched Restiform Bodies cd he bought at concessions during Scribble Jam. Why? had battled Alias in that event’s semi finals, making him cry, and was an obvious choice for the crew. Sage Francis and Telephone Jim Jesus were later additions; comparative heavyweights (weighing in at 120 pounds each) who the wider world would know as solo artists. Pedestrian and Why?, associates of the duo Themselves, rounded out the group, although various internet rappers would make appearances on Anticon recordings from associates like Josh Martinez to established vets like Atmosphere’s Slug.
For a late 90s group named for the rather “gangsta” habit of not fitting into society, Anticon were first and foremost nerds. And these were the early days of the internet, so an internet sensibility followed: off beat rapping and lyrical excursions about one’s feelings over tracks with no discernable sense of rhythm. In many ways, Anticon’s rappers defined internet rap in the late 90s better than anyone; while the group itself is almost a footnote, its members’ influence in the world of rap is broad.
On the whole, internet lyrically lyrical hip-hop has never sounded as simultaneously insular yet confounding, viral yet appropriative in its existence. Certainly, other groups have captured the web’s swiftly changing spirit, but no crew so thoroughly defined the ideals of this era like Anticon. They were on top of the world, but they retained the committed connection to their origins – the goal of maiming and distorting rap records. We discuss the fall of hardcore Hiphop, and reassess the significance of a history that ignores the Freestyle Fellowship, but it is vital that we appropriately reassess the internet’s own history as well. Yes, Company Flow were significant, one of the most important groups to ever record. And while hipster music criticism seems to have latched onto Def Jux, then Kanye West, finally on to Young Jeezy, the story seems distorted with Anticon’s minimal inclusion. In my mind, Anticon was the definitive internet rap crew, and they deserve a central role in its history.
Their most significant role, however, is in your speakers. Driving to my local Anime convention some years ago, nothing sounded more like the sights, smells and sounds of suburban hip-hop than Sole’s “Bottle of Humans,” blasting from my headphones. Soulless, white, confusing—Anticon were the Hiphop act I wasn’t ashamed to play in front of my girlfriend.
No…no really, I had a girlfriend!
Sources
Seagrave, Jay “Scribble Jam 1999 rap-up”, “Sole Interview”. Backpacker Magazine, 2000.
www.hiphopinfinity.com
www.stylusmagazine.com
Comments for "Hip-Hop's Unknown Legends: The Anticon Crew"
damn good work, y’all. i need to check your site everyday to stay sane.
— beringer sauniere Apr 2, 06:53 PM
haha. oh haters. But seriously, I didn’t title the piece. Chill! Also I am not a hipster.
— David Apr 3, 05:02 PM
(And I’ve been listening to DITC for 6 years but yeah I get it, clipse and jeezy jocking new jacks are corny)
— David Apr 3, 05:05 PM
hahaha, I didn’t realize the original was yours. It’s all in fun though, we still read your blog.
— David of OhNerd Apr 3, 05:56 PM
Oh don’t worry about it, it was a lazy piece, I kinda deserved it.
— David Apr 3, 06:05 PM
Oh Dip! I didn’t realise you wrote that piece either. No offense meant, all in good fun for April Fools and only the good stuff is worth skewering so my hat’s off.
— Sach Apr 3, 07:33 PM
Ha, speaking of lazy… I knew I dug the Dilla piece you had written for stylus yet I still didn’t check the name on the original when Sach stepped up with the idea.
The hipster slur was for stylus anyway. You were just a faceless representative to us!
By the way some other source material that got flipped on April 1…
Bobbito’s Blindfold Test with Large Professor
NY Times:
Plight Deepens for Black Men...
A Poverty of the Mind
— rafi Apr 4, 05:30 PM
I loved the fact that almost every fact was wrong. Great read…
— 470m3 Aug 16, 03:33 PM
wow everything is sooo wrong here.
— slingslanger Aug 10, 11:31 PM
LOL @ Anticon
— Kevin Feb 12, 07:46 PM
This is the worst kind of rap music possible. I’d prefer low IQ southern stuff over this kind of garbage. Goth rap? Hip Hop legends? This shit completely misses the whole vibe of hip hop. Like it or not Hip Hop is dance music. Not to say everything has to sound like Rob Base but it has to have a rhythm at least. This brand of late 90’s internet-geek noise sounds like a gang of pissed off dorks crying nonsense over wack beats. This crew didn’t last because they sucked, Duf Jux only influenced losers, and I wish I could erase this whole genre from history.
This shit really gets under my skin for some reason. Peace!
— Grand Daddy Flexx Apr 16, 09:00 PM