KingHellBastard (KHB)

Since its debut in 2005, there have been as many as 10 members of Milwaukee hip-hop crew KHB. Currently consisting of emcees Dana Coppa, Shemp, DNA, turntabilist DJ OneL and producers White Russian and Reason, the collective fashioned itself as a Midwest version of another large crew out of Staten Island.

"The group kind of formed as a halfway house for wayward MCs and producers who didn't have a home," says DNA. "We wanted to form this free-floating collective a la Wu-Tang and just blow people's minds with a variety of styles and voices."

Six years and five albums later, KHB has become much more than a home for itinerant rappers. The six-man crew has toured the country, opening for Cypress Hill and Wu-Tang Clan, and after the success of its last project, the 2010 EP "Remember the Name," the group can now boast album sales in locales as far away as Germany and Japan.

"'Remember the Name' helped us get out, even overseas," says Dana Coppa.

The group has just released a new project "War Room," available as a free download on its website, kinghellbastard.com.

Despite its bellicose title, the 15-track album is the group's most introspective work to date.

"We wanted to give people an in-depth look into how we feel and where the music came from," says Coppa. "Letting people glimpse into how we think, to give them an unfiltered view."

With a video for single "Who Gon Care" currently in production and an album release party on Jan. 28, KHB is in the beginning stages of promoting their new project to a local and hopefully national audience.

"We've got shows lined up from Minneapolis to Baltimore," says Coppa. "Spot dates in places where we have a good following and can push our music to them."

DNA and White Russian answered our questions.

Sell yourself in 30 words or less: (DNA) Organically-grown, free-range hip-hop from the soil of Milwaukee. Zero pesticides, courtesy of Uni-Fi Farms.

Biggest achievement: (DNA) In terms of actual awards, I guess winning video of the year for "Danger" and the Listener's Poll artist of the year award in the same year from 88.9 Radio Milwaukee was pretty cool. (White Russian) Getting onto the CMJ charts, getting reviewed by Okayplayer and pressing vinyl and selling it to Germany and Japan.

Song you're most proud of: (DNA) Either "Danger" for its conceptual cohesiveness or "Ma'waukee" for its hometown pride.

Song you play to get the party started: (DNA) Probably "A Tribe Called Bastard" or "88."

What's missing in Milwaukee's music scene? (White Russian) A supportive and consistent audience.

Where do you want to be in five years? (DNA) Playing festivals in Europe, Japan, places that actually buy our records. At home, though, we'll continue to put out quality material, put on interesting shows with artists who might otherwise skip Milwaukee altogether and help to maintain Uni-Fi Records as a viable outlet for underground/local hip-hop.

Why do you do this? (DNA) It's cheaper than therapy. If we didn't direct it onto a stage or a record, we would be the derelicts on the corner shouting nonsense at pedestrians.

Upcoming gigs: Album release party 10 p.m. Jan. 28 at Mad Planet, 533 E. Center St. $10 cover includes CD. Ages 21 and older.

- Geraud Blanks,
Special to the Journal Sentinel

- JSOnline

There is a mock Latin phrase that states "illegitimi non carborundum" or "don't let the bastards grind you down," which is the sentiment of the unofficial Harvard fight song. This is exactly what the Milwaukee hip-hop group KingHellBastard hopes to do – but in a good way – with their music.

For the last several years the group that's also known simply as KHB has done their part to create gritty, underground hip-hop while touring when they can, something that has led them to several different states across the country. Often lumped into the "college rap" pot, KingHellBastard is much more a group made up of '90s hip-hop diehards that seek to embody and embolden the culture they love so dearly.

That love is so deep that it also manifests itself in a jaded manner as they look back over their personal run-ins with harsh criticisms and critiques from people they feel are unjustified.

KHB members DNA, Dana Coppa, Shemp, Reason and White Russian discussed the making of their new album, "The War Room," and where this latest effort leaves them.

OnMilwaukee.com: After releasing projects like "Remember The Name" and the ATCQ mixtape, which are on the lighter side of KHB's spectrum, "The War Room" is noticeably angrier and darker. What led to the attitude strewn throughout the new project?

DNA: I would say that it's a result of the cumulative pressures of being an active group for over seven years. That's a long time to be engaged in any enterprise. When you start out it's all fun, because everything you do is new and exciting. As time goes on you find yourself in the same situations, having the same conversations with the same people, and it just wears you down. At least it does for me, personally. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, so yeah, underground hip-hop can definitely make you go nuts and start to resent the very culture you love. Add that to the fact that we seem to live in a world where the truth is consistently perverted and whored out for the sake of petty, ego-driven agendas and soon it feels like you're just drowning in assh*les and their endless bullsh*t parade. That's all on a macro level and it's hard to put your finger on precisely what's making you so angry.

On a micro level, there were a number of potshots being fired in our direction during the recording of the album and that sh*t ends up bleeding into the lyrics and the overall tone of an album. The title of the album refers to that feeling of being under fire. Honestly, I don't feel like it's all that dark. It could have been much, much bleaker. Dark days we're living in, you know?

Shemp: You know if you go back and listen to the first KHB album it's grim as all hell, pun intended. This is our second album and (it's) exactly what we expected from it. I don't think it's that gully. We got some heartfelt stuff on this album, we got some new sounds, we kind of really got open artistically on this project. It's a really good listen.

OMC: You guys had been working on "The War Room" for quite a long time and it was supposed to come out awhile back. What led to the delay?

DNA: Well, the eight songs that made up the "Remember The Name" EP were originally supposed to be on "The War Room" but when we looked at the final track listing it just seemed overloaded with guest appearances. I've never liked albums that do that, since it seems to disrupt any continuity of voice that builds over the course of an album. An album needs a vibe, but an EP can exist as just a collection of songs, so we put all the features on the vinyl. In the interim we toured the East Coast and Midwest behind that record, tried to push it as hard as we could, then came back and recorded a new crop of songs to finish the full-length album.

Dana Coppa: A lot of songs that are on "The War Room" were recorded around the same time as "Remember The Name." As DNA said, we didn't want to put out an album featuring a bunch of rappers. Around this time we were hell-bent on doing some vinyl – well, I was hell-bent. We were just going to put out the singles off "The War Room" at that time on vinyl because we thought some of those features would do good overseas and help get our music out there in other countries. Then Kid Millions dropped some advice on us saying that basically a traditional vinyl single would be a waste of money and that it would probably be in our best interest to do a vinyl EP. So, we changed up our game plan behind his advice.

After tour we came back home and recorded like five or six tracks to fill the void that was left on "The War Room." Also, the ATCB mixtape happened too. We felt like we should put out something to kind of keep the people's interest until we dropped "The War Room," which was meant to drop a few months after the mixtape. So now here we are, a little over a year later.

OMC: "Remember The Name" was your most cohesive project as a group. Where do you fe - OnMilwaukee.com

King Hell Bastard is back! Wait, they really never left because they are always putting out tracks. But now finally released their new album The War Room. Since it's free and dope, yeah free and dope, I don't know why you are still reading this and not downloading it.

Still running off the national attention from their last EP Remember The Name, KHB comes through with just as much energy, style and flow on War Room. The album features local veterans A-Biz, Elle Rassberry, Pezzetino and Evan Christian. That one dude from Slaughterhouse, Joell Ortiz, is on the lead single Commercial Free, but no big deal. If that isn't enough, you gotta listen to the interludes. If you know Dana, you know he can talk. And KHB always comes with dope production, this time thanks to Reason, White Russian and White Shadow. Giving the producers their own interlude, I'm down with that. Shoutout to 1L and Buttatooth on the cuts.

When they joined me on the Mad Kids Radio show last Tuesday and previewed a few tracks I knew the album was gonna knock. Look, it's dope. There is a reason why they've been on of the top groups in Milwaukee for so long. Get it. No more talking or reading. Just listen. - JSOnline

press, press, press - The Mad Bloggers

KingHellBastard
Remember The Name
Uni.Fi Records
ESM Rating: 9/10

Last week, we took an unexpected trip to Milwaukee, WI, to profile the burgeoning hip-hop scene in this iconic Midwest city. And while Fresh Cut Collective and KingHellBastard share space on Uni-Fi Records’ roster, KHB is quite a bit rawer than their live-instrumentation labelmates, dropping street-wise rhymes, raucous boom-bap beats, and a vast knowledge of hip-hop history that drops in-the-know references like salacious pick-up lines at your local club. In other words, if you’re into straight-up rap that pulls no punches, paying tribute to the past with gritty soul samples while moving the musical genre into fresh 21st-century territory, KHB is your new favorite group.

But don’t mistake KingHellBastard for newcomers on the scene: this underground crew, comprised of MCs Dana Coppafeel, Shemp, and DNA, along with producers Reason and White Shadow, has been rocking Brew City basement mics for over a decade. And although Remember The Name only boasts eight cuts over its 31-minute running time, album opener “Clubber Lang” bursts out of the gates with enough sonic energy to trample heaps of weaker groups. Underground hip-hop icon Akrobatik guests on the fire-breathing track, before “I Believe” attacks your eardrums with bombastic horns, massive drumbeats, and mission-statement verses that establish KHB as top-shelf lyrical players.

After that, the uptempo Golden Age nuggets keep coming, with Brand Nubian pioneer Sadat X guesting on the funk-heavy “It’s The Crew Again” and fellow Milwaukee native Stricklin big-upping KHB’s hometown on the rough-and-ready “North Coast” while hilariously skewering modern hip-hop culture: “Cover your mouth when you rap, not just when you cough/ This Auto-Tune’s really starting to piss me the fuck off/ Pants too tight, belt got diamonds in it/ Some Gucci rapper/ Show how many rhymes is in it/ Taliban scarves, Louis Vuitton man-purses/ So much schwag, but ain’t nobody got no damn verses.” The next four tracks on Remember The Name are all similarly on-point, but those choice words are all you really need to know about just how kick-ass KingHellBastard is; find out for yourself at www.myspace.com/kinghellbastard. Forget New York vs. LA — hip-hop heads need to be paying attention to Milwaukee for the next big thing. By Nick McGregor - Eastern Surf Magazine

Remember the Name
Uni.Fi Records: 2010
Score: 80/100

Absorb how terrible the band name is. Took it in? Good. Because despite KINGHELLBASTARD’s desire for you to Remember the Name, it’s the main thing you’ll want to forget. This good band with the awful name (henceforth referred to as the much less distracting KHB) has just delivered one of the freshest hip-hop albums from the unlikeliest of places – Milwaukee. Evidently, they have cows and rappers. With loads of bass-heavy, neck breaking beats and diverse lyrical styles, KHB storms through a Southern-dominated rap scene with unabashed reverence for the Northeast old school; they carve out a place for themselves as Midwesterners with something interesting to add to the conversation.

Lively beats propel the crew through the swift-moving 8 track release. With energy rivaling hip-hop’s Golden Age, KHB attacks every verse like they’re trying to out-Busta each other. The rhymes are consistently strong, yet on occasion, particularly when there’s a guest rapper in the mix, the core threesome can sound like a rap clan with simply too many voices droning at you, no matter how good they sound. A major assist, though, goes to Milwaukee native Stricklin, featured on “North Coast,” with his always clever rhymes breaking through the pack of emcees. Most times, though, KHB avoids the shadow of its guest stars Sadat X, CoolZey and Raashan Ahmad. It even bounces back from the rare misstep on “PhD” (senseless Eminem territory) with a nice mash-up of A Tribe Called Quest and other hip-hop references sprinkled throughout “A Tribe Called Bastard.” KHB finishes strong with a tribute track to its overlooked hometown, giving hip-hop fans a reason to take a chance on Milwaukee for more than just cheese and beer.

-Candace L. - Okayplayer.com

ew Milwaukee rap groups match KingHellBastard’s burning desire to assert a dominating presence in the city and beyond. At its best, the group’s latest EP, Remember The Name, justifies that desire with proudly traditionalist basement jams that find MCs DNA, Dana Coppafeel, and Shemp good-naturedly passing the mic to a bevy of underground hip-hop luminaries, including Brand Nubian’s Sadat X, eMC’s Stricklin, and Boston rapper Akrobatik. But while Remember The Name reaches beyond Milwaukee for guest stars, KHB is still very much centered on home and putting it on the map.
At times, Remember The Name is practically a Milwaukee hip-hop pep rally, particularly on well-intentioned but stridently boosterish tracks like “Ma’waukee” and “North Coast,” where Stricklin takes shots at cringingly easy targets like Soulja Boy and other “radio rappers.” Remember The Name fares better when KHB and its supporting cast ditch the corny digs at forgettable flashes in the pan and get down to the business of showing (rather than telling) what they’re capable of. Producer The White Russian whips up a heady, endlessly funky backing track for a thrilling, machine-gun-spitting verse from guest star Reakt on the boisterous highlight “PhD,” while Reason provides a soulful backdrop of splashy horns and punchy backbeats for “I Believe,” which features a cameo by Raashan Ahmad of Crown City Rockers.
Like the rest of Remember The Time, these songs eschew anything and everything that’s happened in hip-hop since 1993. (In case it wasn’t already obvious, KHB makes its Tribe Called Quest worship explicit on “A Tribe Called Bastard.”) With its eyes permanently affixed toward the past, Remember The Name won’t turn KHB into dreaded radio rappers, but it certainly would’ve been welcomed by Dre and Ed Lover on Yo! MTV Raps back in the day.
KingHellBastard celebrates the release of Remember The Name with a release show Saturday at Mad Planet. - The AV Club

Much like the actual act of rapping, the business of rap music is trickier than it sometimes appears to outsiders. That’s in part why the attrition rate for rappers is even higher than that of musicians as a whole. Overzealous entrepreneurs begin rapping with unrealistic visions of easy money, but once they realize that big breaks are nearly impossible to come by, they quickly move on.

“A lot of people think they’ll be able to pay their rent and eat and pay their bills off of just hip-hop,” says DNA, one-fourth of the Milwaukee rap crew KingHellBastard. “But the truth is those people are few and far between, and at a local level it’s almost impossible to make a living from rap alone.”

DNA says that for the rappers who stick with it and keep their financial expectations in check, however, there are smaller successes to enjoy. After six years together, doors continue to open for KingHellBastard.

“Every year, we get to experience more cool things than we ever could have planned on,” DNA says. “We played to 5,000 people opening for Cypress Hill at Summerfest this year. We got some recognition from 88Nine, having been chosen for artist of the year and video of the year in their listeners’ choice awards. On Monday night, we sold 30 copies of our record to a store in Germany—I have no idea how that happened. So we never feel stagnant. There are always new cities for us to play on tour that we’ve never been to, and bigger venues around town that keep asking us to play. Just this year, after having played the Rave probably 15 times before, we were on the main stage opening for RJD2. Like probably every music fan in the city, I’ve been going to that venue for as long as I can remember, so to see your group’s name on the marquee out front is really amazing.”

This week KingHellBastard—rappers DNA, Dana Coppafeel and Clark Beez and DJ 1L—release their latest EP, Remember the Name. Showcasing the more party-friendly side of underground hip-hop, it nods to the beat-heavy ’90s output of The Native Tongues and Rawkus Records, and features production from Reason, the White Russian and LMNtlyst, all of who had worked with KingHellBastard on previous projects.

“It’s always been a comfort issue for us,” DNA says of working with familiar faces. “There’s plenty of people who can make dope beats, but not a lot of people that I want to sit in a studio with for hours and hours on end, since we like to have a good time. Nobody who has ever been in the studio with us has ever left sober. I remember when Reason came over to work with us for the first time; he came with a bottle of Crown Royal and a couple of bottles of Coke, and I thought, ‘I can work with this guy.’”

The band struck up similar camaraderie with the guest rappers featured on the EP: Brand Nubian’s Sadat X, underground icon Akrobatik and Oakland’s Raashan Ahmad, as well as Milwaukee’s Stricklin—all artists the group has met through touring or booking local shows.

“We didn’t want to make tracks with people that we just contacted through the Internet, paying them for a verse through PayPal without even sitting in the studio with them,” DNA says. “I see so many albums that play up the names of all these big guests featured on them, and I’m like, ‘Man, I know for a fact you don’t know this rapper, and that you’ve never even hung out with him.’ It’s inauthentic. We want to work with people we know. We’re not into hiring mercenaries.”

Backed by the live band Fly Neurotic (whose members also make up Fresh Cut Collective), KingHellBastard plays a release show at Mad Planet on Saturday, Aug. 21, at 9 p.m. with Raashan Ahmad. The show will also be a video shoot for the song “I Believe,” and the $10 cover will include a vinyl copy of the Remember the Name EP. - The Shepherd Express

Here are the winners of the third annual Milwaukee Music Awards, announced Thursday evening on air by the sponsoring radio station, WYMS-FM (88.9), also known as RadioMilwaukee.

Winners were selected by the staff of the radio station in 10 categories; the other six awards were chosen via an online vote.

Album of the year: "Recession Proof Rap," Kid Millions

Song: "The Sword," The Championship

Vocalist: Jeanna Salzer

Urban artist: Prophetic

Best new artist: Pezzettino

TNT Award: (Artist Most Likely to Blow Up): Will Phalen & the Stereo Addicts

Power Pop Tart: "Yer A Blur," The Reckless Hearts

Earwig Award (Catchiest Song): "Continental Drift," the Subcontinentals

414 Music Award (In-Studio Performance of the Year): The Vega Star

Best CD Artwork: "Middle West," Will Phalen & the Stereo Addicts

Listener choice categories

Artist: KHB

Most Memorable Live Show: The Championship at Turner Hall Ballroom (Halloween party)

Milwaukee's Best DJ Night: The Get Down

Best music video: "Danger," KHB

Blog of the Year: Music in Revolt

(theattackonmaars.wordpress.com)

Saturday Session Set of the Year: The Glamour
- JSOnline

King Hell Bastard
Remember the Name
Uni-Fi Records

Packing Milwaukee-centric lyrics into a bunch of posse cuts, King Hell Bastard's new album delivers a solid, fast-paced, straight-through listen that's uncluttered by skits, rants and over-the-top ego.

The theme of Brew City love runs through the entire album, particularly on the scratch-sampled track "Ma'waukee," where the emcees describe their hangouts and upbringing within the blue-collar city.

Other tracks, such as the varied beat production of "PhD (with Reakt 20)" and the synthesized "North Coast (w/ Stricklin)," find the emcees showing their lyrical teeth in attempts to out-do each other.

Full of guest appearances, other standout tracks on the battle rap-heavy EP include the driving "Clubber Lang (with Akrobatic)," "I Believe (with Raashan Ahmad) and the catchy though dated "It's the Crew Again (with Sadat X)."

KHB will perform at an album release party at 10 p.m. Saturday at Mad Planet, 533 E. Center St. Cover is $10 and includes a vinyl copy of the EP.

- Steven Potter, Special to the Journal Sentinel
- JSOnline

Life is good for local hip-hop group KingHellBastard. In early 2009, the collective won artist and video of the year at RadioMilwaukee's annual awards show. In July, the foursome of MCs Dana Coppafeel, Shemp, DNA and DJ 1L opened for Cypress Hill at Summerfest.

They'll celebrate their new eight-song vinyl EP, "Remember the Name," at an album-release party at 10 p.m. Saturday at Mad Planet, 533 E. Center St. The event will double as a video shoot for lead single "I Believe," featuring Oakland native Raashan Ahmad.

Cover is $10 , which includes a copy of the album.

- Geraud Blanks, Special to the Journal Sentinel - JSOnline