Wrekonize, Bernz and NonMS have been working collectively as ¡Mayday! for nearly a decade, however the group isn’t getting stagnant. In September, the trio switched issues by dropping a reggae-influenced album titled South Of fifth.
Regardless of sustaining their Hip Hop core on the report, the album was ficially categorised as a reggae launch. The excellence allowed the group to hit No. 1 on Billboard reggae chart. In accordance with Wrek, the brand new musical path was opened up by the reactions they acquired on tour.
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“We went on tour a pair years in the past with Soiled Heads,” he tells HipHopDX. “And their crowd, they’re like a pop-reggae hybrid sort group, and their crowd was tremendous receptive to our music. And this was earlier than we even determined to do reggae]. This was simply mainly our regular Hip Hop stuff. Then we went on tour a couple of yr later with Frequent Kings, who’re additionally one other group sort mixing reggae with a number of different totally different genres. And we received a extremely good response there. We simply beloved the power the reveals, we beloved the vibe the folks, and we actually fell in love with the power there.”
The optimistic reception made them critically take into account making a reggae-tinged album.
“Bernz was like, ‘Hey, what do you assume if we did an precise extra reggae-focused venture?’” Wrekonize remembers. “At first, I used to be very apprehensive to that as a result of coming from Hip Hop — I do know there’s lots parallels to reggae and Hip Hop however while you say, ‘Let’s do a reggae album,” my thoughts mechanically jumps to essentially the most stereotypical music].
“However we began throwing it round a little bit bit extra, it’s our fifth album on Unusual, and it’s additionally the final on our unique contract with Unusual Music. So, we thought it will be sort cool to change it up and do one thing totally different. We began making the music and that’s after I actually noticed the ‘Eureka!’ Like, ‘Oh, it’s not what I imagined it to be. It’s extra natural.’ It’s mainly a ¡Mayday! report with reggae inspiration for the instrumentals and stuff. It nonetheless appears like a ¡Mayday! album.”
When requested why ¡Mayday! took it a step additional and labeled it reggae, the veteran MC defined how the group’s notion in Hip Hop performed a task.
“Hip Hop has by no means actually absolutely gotten ¡Mayday! in my private opinion anyway,” Wrek notes. “So I figured it wouldn’t actually be a stretch for us as a result of our music and our catalog is so various through the years to change it up. Let’s put it into the reggae style and name it a full-out reggae album and simply see what we will fire up in that world. In order that was why we made the change and determined to totally classify it as a reggae album.”
What’s subsequent for the ¡Mayday! is unsure proper now. South fifth was the ultimate album the trio’s Unusual Music contract, but it surely won’t be their final launch for Tech N9ne’s indie powerhouse.
“We’re speaking with them,” Wrek says the label. “We do love Unusual. We’ve had an amazing run. We’ve by no means had any actual points with Unusual, and I really feel like they really feel the identical means about us. We’ve been capable of ship some nice albums for them. The ¡MursDay! album was an amazing success after which producing ‘Fragile’ for Tech, which went gold … We’ve had some actually cool issues occur for us within the final 5 – 6 years at Unusual.
“For us, it’s simply we’re taking a look at this level the place we’re going backwards and forwards with them making an attempt to determine what’s finest. And clearly the enterprise has modified lots since we first signed with them six years in the past. So, we’re simply making an attempt to determine with them what the best choice is. Hopefully, we will work one thing out with them as a result of we undoubtedly love Unusual and have had nothing however good experiences over the past 5 – 6 years.”
If South Of fifth does find yourself because the final ¡Mayday! album for Unusual, they definitely went out on a excessive observe.
Stream the LP under.