In 2000, hip-hop was in a very different place than it is today. Outkast’s Stankonia, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, and Jay-Z’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia topped the annual charts; Nelly released his first album; Big Pun released his last; and through all of the sonic experimentation ranging a broader geographic scope than ever before, much of the scene focused on the Bay Area with smooth-talking pimp-culture projects coming from a number of acclaimed emcees including Del the Funky Homosapien, Mac Dre, and E-40. And yet, often overlooked amongst a sea of not only Bay Area hip-hop artists, but hip-hop and influence through the last two decades at large, exists the career of Zion I, who released their own debut album, Mind Over Matter, on May 30 of the same year.

 

From the very beginning, the hyper-lyrical, consciously rooted raps of front man, Steve ‘Zumbi’ Gaines danced across the framework of electronically nuanced beats from DJ and producer, Amp Live. Undisputedly ahead of their time when it came to infusing a signature sound with cyber-punk keystrokes that left a listener suspended sans gravity in a futurist sonic space, Zumbi’s raps acted as a balancing act, carrying more than enough gravity to bring a listener not only back to Earth, but into their own mind. Perhaps the most prominent of such a balancing act first came in the form of Silly Puddy, an immersive five-and-a-half-minute exhibition of the spacey production and thought-provoking poeticism that would come to define Zion I’s texture for the next two decades. Galactic synth play, deep bass, dynamic penmanship, and an addicting hook make the track – and really the entirety of the debut album around it – feel like a collection that could have been released from the retrofuturistic SoundCloud underground of today.