BTH/BravezTeamHyphy

In today’s hip-hop world, where guns, glamour and the drug game dominate the collective consciousness of most emcees, it’s hard to find much brilliance and creativity amongst the masses of rappers aspiring to stardom.
Enter Bravez Team Hyphy (BTH): a rap group based in the Bay Area, who breath fresh life into a music cosmos gone deathly cold. Composed of rappers KuZn, Blaze Trackz and Jenyus, producer Hoodlm and hype man Tha Truth, this group is already winning over Northern California’s historically fickle hip-hop audience and is well on their way to making a name for themselves among the litany of nationally known local acts that have preceded them. Indeed, BTH are the latest in a legendary line of Bay Area talent to infuse their music with cutting edge styles, boundless energy and lyrics that can move listeners both to the dance floor, and to better themselves, all in the same breath.
Moreover, with the Bay riding the tidal wave of newfound attention affiliated with the hyphy movement, BTH are hyphy’s newest offspring—a group whose shows, whose music is so energized, it will make you move your body in ways you never thought imaginable. Their debut album, All Systems Go (Stand Up/Green Light Records), is the perfect case in point—replete with up-tempo, bass-infused tracks, fast and heavy enough to make necks snap, women swoon and cars bounce.
“It’s so energetic, so different, so unique, people automatically wonder about what the music that they’re hearing,” says KuZn.
“This is a combination of crunk and hyphy,” adds Hoodlm. “When you listen to it, you’re going to feel what you feel. And trust me, it’s something you’ve never felt before.”
Sure enough, even before the group officially began making music together, it was clear there was a special chemistry that would some day translate into the sound booth.
Friends from high school in Contra Costa, a suburb of the bay, BTH initially just wrote songs and spit rhymes as a hobby, for fun. But with influences like Bay Area mainstays The Team, Mac Dre and E-40, pulsing through their veins, it soon became apparent that their music was meant to be heard. A raucous outdoor show last June in Vallejo, California confirmed what each member of the group knew was the truth.
“We realized when we were performing that we could do this,” Jenyus says. “The park was packed, people were going crazy, everyone was going crazy, girls were trying to get to the stage. And, everyone wanted our cds.”
And so, the group hit the studio hard, banging out tracks, beats and rhymes in an effort to produce an album that would satisfy the increasingly ravenous appetite of a growing fan base.
The album’s first single, “Bay Boyz” is an unabashed club song, a track you whose bass, drums and words dare you not to start wilding on the dance floor.
“This is the song we’re pushing,” Jenyus says. “It’s hyphy—something you can pop in and you and just hear it and you feel like dancing. You’ll just wanna get stupid when you hear this track.”
Along those same lines is “We Go,” another hyphy-drenched track, fused with the energy that BTH bring to their music: handclaps, lightning-quick synths and an addictive hook that moves even the shyest clubgoer out to the dance floor.
“All three of us are on the hook. This is another one of those tracks that you can just slap in and not care about nothing else,” KuZn says.
Don’t get it twisted, though. This group can do far more than just tracks for the clubs. “Only One Chance” is an uplifting, inspirational track that pushes people caught up in personal struggles to appreciate each day.
“It’s basically says ‘Live your life to the fullest,’ ‘cause you never know what’s going to happen. You just never know,” Jenyus explains.
Ever the hustler, Blaze Trackz speaks to the impetus behind another banger, “Step Your Game Up.”
“This is the track that motivates the people. For me it motivates me to go out there, do what you have to do to get the money, ya’ feel me?”
On “Dummy,” the group trades battle raps over a smoothed-out, speeded-up backbeat, which conveys to all lovers of lyrics that BTH can spit with the best of them. Meanwhile, the album’s title track, a synth-soaked, bass-bumping track, showcases a spare, minimalist beat behind the group’s Blaze Trackz and Kuzn’s raspy, hard-edged flow.
Not shy around the ladies, Hoodlm notes that all the females need to watch out for the melodic “Oh Girl,” which features the group members each speaking to a woman as if she were right there in the studio, backed by a soulful, keyboard hook-infused hook.
“It’s a love song, fo’ sho,” says Hoodlm. “We had to put on a song that was all about a girl, because that’s an important part of our lives too.”
But most important, most evident on the album, is the awe-inspiring, muscle twisting, dance-floor hitting, hyphy music BTH makes.
Says KuZn: “This is dancing, but it’s a new form of dancing. People haven’t seen this be