The Feeblez

Hailing from Indianapolis, Indiana, and based in Tempe since 2002, this hip-hop trio of Ether, Dirty Nap-Z, and Tusk One brings its gritty hip-hop — performed during the Blunt Club series and at venues like The Loft — to Scattered Data. "Don't Stop" jumps out of the wind-up music box on speed sample and into what The Feeblez do best: the exchange of ideas among three lyrical MCs that are perfected with '80s storytelling rap elements ("Freedom" sounds like it could have been written in Doug E. Fresh's living room). Clever tribal percussion and Eastern-tinged flute samples on tunes like "Universe" and "How About That" — augmented by the scratching styles of Skip Skoolnik of Mob Action — keep the sounds fresh and shoo away the formulaic albatross that plagues a lot of recorded hip-hop. There are no fillers on this 12-track album, which mixes golden-age rap with raw wordplay for a banging mash-up of rapping delight. Word up.