Educated Advocates
Waterville, Maine, United States | SELF
Music
Press
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 22, 2012
STARTING AT THE BEGINNING Educated Advocates.
This August will mark the 20th anniversary of the Brand New Heavies' Heavy Rhyme Experience, Vol. 1 (there was no volume 2). Everyone will have a personal reminder that hip hop is no longer a young genre, but that's mine. At the time, the full live band playing behind early innovators like Guru and Kool G Rap and Ed OG was the pinnacle of the sound, alternately playful and aggressive MCs at the height of their game rapping over "a real live get down on the get down."
I thought for sure that melding of live jazz/R&B and MC delivery was the future of the music. Instead, it's remained a rarity. If anything, hip hop has only become more digital and artificial, incorporating ever more Auto-Tune and samples.
Listening to the popping horns and wicka-wicka guitars, the disco grooves and back-beat funk being laid down as production on the new Back to Class album from Educated Advocates, though, maybe there's hope for that direction yet. Heck, Spose is playing with Sly-Chi, right?
When EA say Back to Class, they mean it, riding that metaphor especially through the early part of the enormous 80-minute album and reveling in exploring the first 20 years — the classics — of hip hop. There are Wu references, Tribe Called Quest bits, Gang Starr, some throwbacks even farther to the likes of Eric B and Rakim and "Atomic Dog." Just by their construction, three MCs (Ryan Augustus a/k/a Ghost; Mike B; Jay Caron, formerly J-Scizzor with Ill Natural) who juggle verses and often are all three rapping together in the choruses, they're going to remind people of Jurassic 5 and De La Soul, especially the former when Mike B gets especially bassy with his delivery. Like those groups, too, Educated Advocates tend to stay away from the most aggressive, angry, and violent of hip hop's spectrum and aren't afraid to be playful.
Like most of lyrically focused hip hop, too, there are any manner of discussions of who might be the illest, what stage of their career they happen to be in, which substances they tend to enjoy most when they're looking to get fucked up, how excellent they happen to be at writing rhymes, and whether or not other MCs suck. Those things are like the horn section in the funk band, the banjo in the bluegrass; they are the stamp of the genre. All three MCs legitimately delve into smart wordplay, though, and have great flow, packing words in tightly using sophisticated verse construction without going all the way down the road to nerd rap.
"Vocab" is a highlight, where they set a high bar for themselves and easily jump over it, effortlessly incorporating 25-cent words like fenestrate, gesticulate, permeating, befuddle, and the like without anything seeming forced. If nothing else, songs like these prove an investment of hundreds of hours of practice.
By the time you get deep into the disc — somewhere around "Keep the Funk Flowin," full of Blues Brothers horns — you realize this is an album you can leave on forever. If you want this to be your jam for the first hour and a half of a party? Everyone's happy. To listen front-to-back on a car ride or to have in your headphones for a solid five-mile run or day on the slopes? No problem. You won't get bored. There aren't any must-skip songs. I consider that high praise for a 21-track album.
It's hard to cover all the territory here, but "Rocky Marciano" is a stand-out, with Mike B leading off fierce and each of the three taking a turn at landing body blows before giving way to the Marciano riff from Coming to America (1988). "Speak What I Feel," the album's first single/video, has a long and intricate chorus and a Ghost riff that gets at the philosophy here: "no ridiculous raps or drug dealing's been detected." And the finishing "I Need a Break" is absolutely hot as hell, with a quick-rolling beat to make your blood boil and Caron making a promise of some "skills 101 shit" and then completely de - The Portland Phoenix
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 22, 2012
STARTING AT THE BEGINNING Educated Advocates.
This August will mark the 20th anniversary of the Brand New Heavies' Heavy Rhyme Experience, Vol. 1 (there was no volume 2). Everyone will have a personal reminder that hip hop is no longer a young genre, but that's mine. At the time, the full live band playing behind early innovators like Guru and Kool G Rap and Ed OG was the pinnacle of the sound, alternately playful and aggressive MCs at the height of their game rapping over "a real live get down on the get down."
I thought for sure that melding of live jazz/R&B and MC delivery was the future of the music. Instead, it's remained a rarity. If anything, hip hop has only become more digital and artificial, incorporating ever more Auto-Tune and samples.
Listening to the popping horns and wicka-wicka guitars, the disco grooves and back-beat funk being laid down as production on the new Back to Class album from Educated Advocates, though, maybe there's hope for that direction yet. Heck, Spose is playing with Sly-Chi, right?
When EA say Back to Class, they mean it, riding that metaphor especially through the early part of the enormous 80-minute album and reveling in exploring the first 20 years — the classics — of hip hop. There are Wu references, Tribe Called Quest bits, Gang Starr, some throwbacks even farther to the likes of Eric B and Rakim and "Atomic Dog." Just by their construction, three MCs (Ryan Augustus a/k/a Ghost; Mike B; Jay Caron, formerly J-Scizzor with Ill Natural) who juggle verses and often are all three rapping together in the choruses, they're going to remind people of Jurassic 5 and De La Soul, especially the former when Mike B gets especially bassy with his delivery. Like those groups, too, Educated Advocates tend to stay away from the most aggressive, angry, and violent of hip hop's spectrum and aren't afraid to be playful.
Like most of lyrically focused hip hop, too, there are any manner of discussions of who might be the illest, what stage of their career they happen to be in, which substances they tend to enjoy most when they're looking to get fucked up, how excellent they happen to be at writing rhymes, and whether or not other MCs suck. Those things are like the horn section in the funk band, the banjo in the bluegrass; they are the stamp of the genre. All three MCs legitimately delve into smart wordplay, though, and have great flow, packing words in tightly using sophisticated verse construction without going all the way down the road to nerd rap.
"Vocab" is a highlight, where they set a high bar for themselves and easily jump over it, effortlessly incorporating 25-cent words like fenestrate, gesticulate, permeating, befuddle, and the like without anything seeming forced. If nothing else, songs like these prove an investment of hundreds of hours of practice.
By the time you get deep into the disc — somewhere around "Keep the Funk Flowin," full of Blues Brothers horns — you realize this is an album you can leave on forever. If you want this to be your jam for the first hour and a half of a party? Everyone's happy. To listen front-to-back on a car ride or to have in your headphones for a solid five-mile run or day on the slopes? No problem. You won't get bored. There aren't any must-skip songs. I consider that high praise for a 21-track album.
It's hard to cover all the territory here, but "Rocky Marciano" is a stand-out, with Mike B leading off fierce and each of the three taking a turn at landing body blows before giving way to the Marciano riff from Coming to America (1988). "Speak What I Feel," the album's first single/video, has a long and intricate chorus and a Ghost riff that gets at the philosophy here: "no ridiculous raps or drug dealing's been detected." And the finishing "I Need a Break" is absolutely hot as hell, with a quick-rolling beat to make your blood boil and Caron making a promise of some "skills 101 shit" and then completely de - The Portland Phoenix
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 22, 2012
STARTING AT THE BEGINNING Educated Advocates.
This August will mark the 20th anniversary of the Brand New Heavies' Heavy Rhyme Experience, Vol. 1 (there was no volume 2). Everyone will have a personal reminder that hip hop is no longer a young genre, but that's mine. At the time, the full live band playing behind early innovators like Guru and Kool G Rap and Ed OG was the pinnacle of the sound, alternately playful and aggressive MCs at the height of their game rapping over "a real live get down on the get down."
I thought for sure that melding of live jazz/R&B and MC delivery was the future of the music. Instead, it's remained a rarity. If anything, hip hop has only become more digital and artificial, incorporating ever more Auto-Tune and samples.
Listening to the popping horns and wicka-wicka guitars, the disco grooves and back-beat funk being laid down as production on the new Back to Class album from Educated Advocates, though, maybe there's hope for that direction yet. Heck, Spose is playing with Sly-Chi, right?
When EA say Back to Class, they mean it, riding that metaphor especially through the early part of the enormous 80-minute album and reveling in exploring the first 20 years — the classics — of hip hop. There are Wu references, Tribe Called Quest bits, Gang Starr, some throwbacks even farther to the likes of Eric B and Rakim and "Atomic Dog." Just by their construction, three MCs (Ryan Augustus a/k/a Ghost; Mike B; Jay Caron, formerly J-Scizzor with Ill Natural) who juggle verses and often are all three rapping together in the choruses, they're going to remind people of Jurassic 5 and De La Soul, especially the former when Mike B gets especially bassy with his delivery. Like those groups, too, Educated Advocates tend to stay away from the most aggressive, angry, and violent of hip hop's spectrum and aren't afraid to be playful.
Like most of lyrically focused hip hop, too, there are any manner of discussions of who might be the illest, what stage of their career they happen to be in, which substances they tend to enjoy most when they're looking to get fucked up, how excellent they happen to be at writing rhymes, and whether or not other MCs suck. Those things are like the horn section in the funk band, the banjo in the bluegrass; they are the stamp of the genre. All three MCs legitimately delve into smart wordplay, though, and have great flow, packing words in tightly using sophisticated verse construction without going all the way down the road to nerd rap.
"Vocab" is a highlight, where they set a high bar for themselves and easily jump over it, effortlessly incorporating 25-cent words like fenestrate, gesticulate, permeating, befuddle, and the like without anything seeming forced. If nothing else, songs like these prove an investment of hundreds of hours of practice.
By the time you get deep into the disc — somewhere around "Keep the Funk Flowin," full of Blues Brothers horns — you realize this is an album you can leave on forever. If you want this to be your jam for the first hour and a half of a party? Everyone's happy. To listen front-to-back on a car ride or to have in your headphones for a solid five-mile run or day on the slopes? No problem. You won't get bored. There aren't any must-skip songs. I consider that high praise for a 21-track album.
It's hard to cover all the territory here, but "Rocky Marciano" is a stand-out, with Mike B leading off fierce and each of the three taking a turn at landing body blows before giving way to the Marciano riff from Coming to America (1988). "Speak What I Feel," the album's first single/video, has a long and intricate chorus and a Ghost riff that gets at the philosophy here: "no ridiculous raps or drug dealing's been detected." And the finishing "I Need a Break" is absolutely hot as hell, with a quick-rolling beat to make your blood boil and Caron making a promise of some "skills 101 shit" and then completely de - The Portland Phoenix
Discography
Singles:
Educated Advocates-Educated Actions (2011)
Educated Advocates-Vocab (2011)
EP:
Educated Advocates-In Sessions (2010
LPs:
Educated Advocates-In Sessions (2011)
Educated Advocates-Back To Class(2012)
Music Videos:
Educated Advocates-New Vintage (2010)
Educated Advocates-Speak What I Feel (2012)
Educated Advocates-Just Us Three (2012)
All singles and LPs can be found on ITunes, Amazon MP3 etc...
Videos can be found on Youtube.com
Photos
Bio
Educated Advocates;
an energized and animated hip-hop trio from the state of Maine have emerged with a style that has been described as "new vintage". This sound is a mixture of innovative rhymes, vocal arrangements and golden era production styles. With the majority of beats, recording, and scratches handled by the group themselves, they have formulated a trademark sound reminiscent of the classic era of hip-hop in aspects, with a fresh perspective. The seeds for the formation of this trio were planted over 5 years ago, as each of the artist had worked together periodically creating songs and performing live at shows. In june of 2009 during a weekend recording session, It became evident their chemistry in the studio was something that could not be ignored. A week and a half and 8 songs later, they performed live for the first time as educated advocates. over the following months, with an abundance of live shows under their belt, EA developed their bread and butter; a high intensity performance which incorporates all elements of their work in the studio brought to life on stage. Late summer '09 marked the release of their self made EP which was sold hand to hand. The project was extremely well received gaining college radio plays through out new england and opening doors of opportunity on their path of progression. At the moment the group is preparing their next release titled "in sessions..." A collection of material written produced and recorded during their starting stages tied together with some new elements. And with a third project near completion, as well as solo projects from each member on the horizon, this will surely prove be a promising year for this talented group of hip-hop enthusiasts. -kurt melkis
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