Blackalicious
Blackalicious is a hip-hop duo from the USA. It consists of the rapper Gift of Gab (born as Tim Parker) and the producer Chief Xcel (born as Xavier Mosley).
Career
Xavier Mosley (Chief Xcel) and Tim Parker (Gift of Gab) met in 1987 at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento . They founded their first crew with another rapper Homicide , still under the name DJ IceSki (Chief Xcel) and Gabby T (Gift of Gab). But it quickly turned out that IceSki and Gabby T worked best as a duo and in 1989 they decided to go their musical path together. After searching for her artistic identity, her sound kept changing. A suitable name could not be agreed and they initially called themselves GTI (a combination of their pseudonyms), then The Elements of Sound and Atomic Legion . They first appeared as Blackalicious in 1991.
When Gift of Gab moved to Los Angeles, the motivation to make music together suffered. Quite a few songs were created through telephone contact. At this time the group Solesides (from 1997 Quannum Projects ) with Lyrics Born , DJ Shadow and Lateef the Truthspeaker was founded. As a result, they only released their solo album Nia in 1999 after two EPs on the British trip-hop label Mo 'Wax . The underground album sold very well and so several labels made Blackalicious contract offers.
Under the label MCA they released the second album Blazing Arrow in 2002 . The album includes Chali2Na from Jurassic 5 , Questlove from The Roots and Gil Scott-Heron . Gift of Gab released his solo album 4th Dimensional Rocketship Going Up in 2004 , while Chief Excel released the album Ambush with Lateef under the name Maroons . In 2005, the follow-up work The Craft was finally published . In October 2008, Gift of Gab released the album Droppin 'Science Fiction with Lateef and Headnodic as The Mighty Underdogs . The accompanying EP The Prelude was released the previous March. Another solo album called Escape 2 Mars will also be released this year .
Discography
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Studio albums
- 1995: Melodica (EP)
- 1999: A to G (EP)
- 1999: Nia
- 2002: Blazing Arrow
- 2005: The Craft
- 2015: Imani Vol. 1
Web links
- Blackalicious - Official Site
- Blackalicious on Myspace
- Blackalicious at Discogs (English)
- Blackalicious at laut.de
- Blackalicious on Allmusic (English)