If you don't know, you definitely need to find out or ask somebody. If you have never herd about the Underground Realroad coming out of Montreal the Real City you need to put your ears to the street and inform yourself about this dynamic duo.
They are that original old school Hip-hop with that modern day twist or they can be considered the Harriet Tubman of a Hip-hop era full of commercialized garbage. Their album "Slave to the Game" is off the chain, with features from Mr.Bits, Yung Fame, Miss Tee and many more.
This is one of the best albums I have heard in the past two years, I cannot compare them to anyone because they are unique and great at what they do. The album "Slave to the Game" has a variety of tracks from club music like "Be Who You Are", songs to just vibe out to such as "On The Block" or those conscience tracks that make you think and my Favorite "Little Boy Street". I think everyone should listen to the album, and if you know music and love it the way I do, you'll definitely by this album. I give 4 1/2 stars on 5.
Q & A with Underground Realroad
How long you been rapping?
Bricc: I been making music for 5 years. started writing when i was 11, inspired by my older cousins who Dj'd and always had music bumping in the house. music was never a priority in high school, basketball being my main focus and passion. My athletic career came to an end in cegep after destroying both knees and having five surgeries in a span of 3 years. while recovering from these surgeries i began writing verses to illustrate my struggle.
At 20 I started recording at home, I set a home studio in my room and started writing music to my life. from this room i recorded and mixed 2 collaboration mixtapes with myself and other young artists around the city. "hood 2 hood" was the name behind these two mixtapes we released. people i was working with weren't in it for the same reasons as i so i left "hood 2 hood", and soon after started recording my solo mixtapee with engineer/producer Dj Drex at Red Rhino recording.
I expressed to him that i was tired of making the same old hip hop music as everyone else and needed something different. we shared the same feelings about the state of hip hop, and decided to do a track together. i had a verse in my head from a previous song but wanted to make it "harder". he let me hear an old rock beat he had done with a young guitarist a couple of weeks prior to us meeting. i jumped on it right away,(name of track) "this is me"! Drex's beat was crazy, my verse was hard... Underground Realroad was born.
Drex: I've been playing music since I was young. I played bass in a bunch of shitty heavy metal bands and have been doing down-tempo electronic music (trip-hop) for awhile too. Through that I really got into Dj Shadow and RJD2 which got me into hip-hop in general. When I started engineering as a career I started meeting all these local beatmakers and was introduced to sampling. I said "shit i manipulate audio all day, I can do this too" and that's how I started making beats. Because I'm not really coming from a hip-hop background though, my beats are a bit different and not what a lot of people consider "hot".
When I was mastering Briccs mixtape and he was telling me how he was bored with standard hip-hop and wanted to do a heavy rock song, I knew this guy was different and a lot more open minded than most rappers so we did a track together with Sammy K on guitar (from the band The Gospel) and that's were it started.
How did u get the name/what does it mean to you?
Bricc: We needed a name for our group that described us and the music we made. The underground railroad was a method of sneaking runaway slaves to freedom back in the slavery days. We fell music as we know it is somewhat in a similar state of slavery, where the record labels are the masters. Musicians work day and night, like slaves with dreams of freedom, trying to make make it to the top, a long the way these musicians realize they have to sell their soul in a way (make pop music) trying to make it in a world that doesn't belong to them hoping it might get them to freedom faster.
They make music not for themselves, but for sales. we are the the underground realroad... we do not make music for the masters... we let our emotions poor from our soul in to protools... because of our approach our music might come out sounding like underground Rap... but we are confined by no genres. we make music that is real to us. I'm not going to lie... we would love to achieve great success in this industry, we would love to get to the top of the hill, but if we do, its gona be on be while ridding on the realroad. doing it from the the soul...
What makes your music hot?
DJ Drex: It's real to what underground music is...just doing whatever you feel..just like the folk artists of the 60's, the punk artists of the 70's and all other great music, it's not contrived. I respect any pop artist that's making music they like, even if it has no real message and only appeals to 14 year old girls and superficial people but I can't understand why, if you love and respect music, you would try to pimp it out just to be rich. Start a business, go back to school, be a criminal, do what you have to do but stop flooding the market with bullshit music.
When is the album dropping?
We just finished up our first album "Slave To The Game" and are starting the second one, we never stop writing. We'll be having a record release party probably in January but we're not in a rush, no one really supports in Montreal anyways (there I said it!)
