Speakeasy Jive Turkeys & Cat Daddies

Chopped Herring is gonna start up 2017 with a real obscure project and purest underground bomb outta Austin, Texas from the year 1995. The group never officially released anything. There was just this full length demo tape. Reminiscent of the Bay Area sound, on a Hiero/Dereliks/Sacred Hoop tip, this underground bomb was handed to the label by French demo tape collector Hakan Dougpark. Here's a few words from MC & Producer Tony Hardman, who is now a sneaker designer at Nike based in LA:

"Kichi and I met working in a record store when I lived in Austin in 94. We were 20 years old and as Hip Hop heads, we hit it off right away. He had been rapping and mixing and scratching for years and I had been involved in a few other groups rapping and doing production. Naturally we came together, inspired by all of the amazing music coming out at that time (the B.U.M.s, Nas, BIG, Common, Artifacts, Co Flo). We spent nights in my mom's garage or in a little lab room at his crib writing and recording as much as we could. The album was recorded over the course of a year in 1994/1995 with an EPS 16 plus and a Tascam 4 track recorder. We went on through the late 90s gaining local notoriety through the college Hip Hop radio (House of Phat Beats) and performing at a few different spots in the city. Eventually I moved to Denver to go back to school around 2000. The rest is history."