Eyedea & Abilities

courtesy of eyedeaandabilities.com

Eyedea & Abilities: Beyond hip-hop bravado

Details

Eyedea & Abilities, Abzorbr, and Sector7g are scheduled to perform on Wednesday, December 5.

Chasers Bar & Nightclub in Scottsdale

Related Content

• Hip-Hop Duo Atmosphere Strives to Tell Stories
  August 25, 2011
• Murs @ The Clubhouse Music Venue
  September 22, 2011
• Murs @ The Clubhouse Music Venue
  March 31, 2011
• Six New Times Contributors Name Their Top 10 Records of 2010
  December 30, 2010
• Creepy Tokio Hotel Record Cover, Roxanne Shante Doctorate a Fraud, R. Kelly Works on Jackson Tracks
  September 3, 2009

More About

• Slug (Rapper)
• Atmosphere (Band)

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

This Minneapolis duo has been a team since their teens, when DJ Abilities left home, and Eyedea's mom put him up in their basement, where their partnership flourished. Eyedea began competing in battle rap competitions, taking top honors in the '99 Scribble Jam before he was 18, and winning the HBO-sponsored Blaze Battle a year later. For several years, he and Abilities supported Atmosphere. Eyedea played Slug's hype man, engaging in a lyrically heated onstage sibling rivalry. It was a valuable apprenticeship. With their '01 debut, First Born, Eyedea demonstrates there's more to his game than bravado, from the story of fractured childhood and parental bigotry ("Red Wiped in Blue") to the epistemological "Powdered Water Too," in which he raps, "We don't know the meal/We only know the menu that our brain tells us is real." Their '04 follow-up, E&A, finds Abilities stretching his skills, and providing some truly sublime beats and sweet scratches. The whole affair is more polished and nuanced, from Abilities' backdrops to Eyedea's increasingly philosophical raps. They've spent the intervening couple years working on side projects as well as some promised new material, though no album appears in the offing.