All Hands - Doomtree (2015)
a run through four decades of the hip hop underground
There’s something special about Minneapolis. I live nearby–by midwest standards where you measure how far something is by hours of driving–so I’m biased. It’s a genuinely interesting city with a lot of big city problems but a lot of collective solutions and can-do attitude. You can see how the area reacted to the ICE invasion recently, as well as how much of a hotspot they were for mass action in the racial tensions of 2020 and 2021, to get an idea of how a lot of its residents don’t tend to sit around and wish things were different.
This ethos extends to their music scene. There’s a long history of punk and underground music, as well as artists like Bob Dylan and Prince who carved careers out of their own creativity. In the last 20 years or so, that’s included a distinctive strain of hip hop culture that doesn’t really sound like either coast and prefers to forge its own path.
While not every Minnesota-based rapper fuses hip hop with hardcore and rock energy, Doomtree are one of the groups who do that on the regular.
Of the group’s many parts, Dessa has probably had the most recognizable success outside of the group. POS is also pretty prominent, with several great records of his own. But there’s more to it than that.
The mix of lyrical and production talents is widely varied and the whole thing has a great collective atmosphere. Everybody gets a turn.
In my writeup on one of those POS records, I referred to Doomtree’s aesthetic as “socialist revolution meets anarchist comedy jam” and I’d stand by that. There’s a lot of anger, but not blind rage.
Tracks I Liked
Final Boss - fantastic opener
80 on 80 - midwest AF
Beastface - a synth-heavy banger
See Also
that POS record, We Don’t Even Live Here. For as much as I’m pimping it, it’s not even my favorite POS record. That would be 2009’s Never Better
Dessa’s records include the excellent A Badly Broken Code
And don’t sleep on Wugazi, Doomtree’s Cecil Otter mashing up Fugazi and Wu Tang to great effect
