Fruits of Nature

On their debut album, Fruits of Nature, the UMC's -- Hass G and Kool Kim -- are endlessly imaginative, witty, and effervescent by disposition and lyrical flow, and always intelligent. 

The ironic thing is that nearly everything on Fruits of Nature is sing-along catchy and so ebullient that it would have sounded great bounding out of radios or from MTV. Unfortunately, it is also the sort of hip-hop that is too idiosyncratic and brainy to garner a widespread audience. Instead of alchemizing their jazz-tinged sensibility into a more earnest and reverent underground hip-hop extension of the jazz tradition, UMC's twist their jazzy inclinations into what are essentially pop songs that, even while generating a singular style all their own, cover the full range of the catchiness spectrum.

For a brief couple years, though, rap as uniquely excellent as Fruits of Nature could be found around every urban corner.