Zion I.
Zion I (pronounced “Zion Eye”) is the name of a hip-hop duo from Oakland , California . It consists of the MC Zumbi (also Zion , born as Steve Gaines) and the producer and DJ Amp Live (born as Anthony Anderson).
Career
Zumbi and Amp Live first met in 1991 at a college in Atlanta and formed the group Metafour with two other rappers. After the group had already briefly belonged to the Tommy Boy Records label, Zion and Amp Live joined an independent label as a duo in 1997 , which released their first single "Inner Light" a year later, which gave them a certain level of awareness in the underground.
In 2000 they released their debut album Mind Over Matter , which had drum and bass influences and was nominated as Independent Album of the Year by The Source magazine . Also in 2003 the successor Deep Water Slang V2.0 , which also sounds very futuristic. The album True & Livin , released two years later, sounds more organic and versatile due to the use of various instruments. Also act Talib Kweli , Gift of Gab , Aesop Rock and Del the Funky Homosapien , and the civil rights activist Fred Hampton Jr.. In 2006, Break a Dawn was released exclusively in Japan . In the same year, Zion I released the album Heroes in the City of Dope with The Grouch from Living Legends . Like all previous releases, it received mostly positive reviews.
Before her debut album, Zion I also released a few EPs and since then repeatedly mixed tapes . Zumbi and Amp Live have also released solo albums . In 2008, Amp Live published the work Rainydayz Remixes , consisting exclusively of samples from the Radiohead album In Rainbows , on which Too Short and Del can be heard on the Internet .
Her sixth album The Take Over was released in Germany on January 23, 2009 .
Discography
- 2000: Mind Over Matter
- 2003: Deep Water Slang V2.0
- 2005: True & Livin
- 2006: Break a Dawn (only in Japan)
- 2006: Heroes in the City of Dope (with The Grouch)
- 2009: The Take Over
- 2010: Atomic Clock
- 2011: Hereos in the Healing of the Nation (with The Grouch)
- 2012: Shadow Boxing
Web links
swell
- ^ Review on rapreviews.com , December 19, 2006