Six years ago is a different lifetime as the body approaches 30 years of age. Marinate that sentiment with hip-hop’s culture in motion and an artist could risk making music on the wrong side of retro. Grass Valley’s Lostribe could have stuck to its 2005 script, but with personal growth comes valued artistic growth and even rebirth.

Lostribe began as a crew consisting of three producers and one MC. Its debut could be considered rapper/producer Agustus ThElefant’s solo Sole Expressions in 2005, which featured production from Lostribe producers JustLuv and MLB. The group went through a series of tribulations after that record, but still managed to bounce back with a video game soundtrack deal in 2007.

Members JustLuv and Agustus were asked to score the Namco Bandai video game Afro Samurai, featuring Samuel L. Jackson and RZA. The duo scored 10 tracks on the game. Meanwhile, JustLuv remained busy by breaking into the Bay Area rap scene to produce tracks for Andre Nikatina, Mac Dre, San Quinn and Mr. FAB. The growth would prove invaluable to Agustus and JustLuv, even if it distracted them from following up on their personal efforts. MLB is on hiatus from Lostribe crew, only making an appearance on one track on Sophie, the band’s latest album, which will be released on Aug. 23. But JustLuv assured me he had good reason for the absence, “He recently had a baby.

“So he’s focused on being a father and building that life,” JustLuv said. “He’s got a lot on his plate right now. I made it a point to include him on at least one track. He has a hard time getting out to the studio, living in Grass Valley and we recorded everything in Sacramento. He’s working, trying to get that money for his family.”

Sophie by Lostribe is out and available starting today! Here is quick list of places you can find the album… go buy it!

• Amazon
• Access Music (Living Legends Record Store)
• UGHH (Underground Hip Hop.com)
• Fat Beats
• iTunes
• Beatport

The new Lostribe album Sophie is available today and is on the front of Apple iTunes Hip Hop/Rap music store. If you have a copy of the album PLEASE visit iTunes and rate and review the album, it helps!

Lostribe - Sophie

It’s clear from the impressive first lines of the very first track that Lostribe’s Sophie is a strong release: “Time to flip the switch and trip the light fantastic/ to write another line and give an addict his fix cause she’s gotta have it/ riddle me this, if a blind man bought the sunlight for a night/ would he learn to write and read or search for a kiss to have beauty burned on the inside of his eyelids for an eternity.” The song, titled “Intro,” is anything but a throwaway lead-in to the album. Instead, it is a triumphant prologue that invites listeners into the sonic pleasantries of Lostribe: “if I said I’ve give ‘em hip-hop, you say ‘alright’/ if I said I’d give ‘em hip-hop, you say ‘okay.’”

Check out this great review of Sophie from Oh Drat!

This Friday’s music post is an early look at Lostribe’sSophie, due for release on August the 23rd. The team of producer JustLuv and vocalist Agustus ThElefant call in a host of guests, from Casual to Gift of Gab to Talib Kweli to produce a hip hop album with not just a broad reach but a fresh sound that successfully melds electronica with classic hip hop undertones.

a fresh sound that successfully melds electronica with classic hip hop undertones

From the juxtaposition of light guitar licks with borderline industrial sounds in Come Down and Find Some Meaning in Life’s wonky beats to No Other Word, an elegant ode to the early 2000s soulful boom bap it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Talib Kweli blessing, what Lostribe succeed with most is what much hip hop misses nowadays – a sense of variety, but with enough contingency not to feel like every track is an abstract collection. Sophie feels like an album, a collection that you can draw a circle around and enjoy an entire, self contained experience. If any criticism is to be levelled at the LP it’s that perhaps a definitive Lostribe ‘sound’ doesn’t come forward, so much as their willingness to create tracks in various styles and bring them together. Nonetheless, Sophie is impressive.

Lostribe :: Sophie :: CFO Recordings
as reviewed by Steve ‘Flash’ Juon

Peep this list of artists: Casual, Gift of Gab, N8 the Gr8, The CUF, and The Grouch. If you said or thought “West coast underground hip-hop” you’re on the right track. In fact on Lostribe’s “Sophie” could in some ways be considered a compilation album for all of these often critically acclaimed yet commercially overlooked artists. For many hip-hop heads, that alone would be a purchase point, but the truth is many compilation albums with equally impressive line-ups also tend to get overlooked and languish on store shelves.

Agustus ThElefant and producer JustLuv have something different in mind for Lostribe. The latter is a fixture of California’s rap scene who has a resume other Cali producers would be envious of, working with everybody from Mistah F.A.B. to Mac Dre to San Quinn. The former is an up-and-coming emcee from NorCal who first collaborated with JustLuv and another producer named MLB back in 2005 on “Sole Expression.” They were buzzing at just the right time to get invited to score the Afro Samurai video game soundtrack. JustLuv produced eight tracks, and Agustus rapped on six.

That achievement would be enough for many independent rappers who aren’t as mainstream as Eminem and Nas, but neither JustLuv nor Agustus was satisfied to sit back and cash Namco’s checks. Though MLB is described as being “on a brief hiatus” from Lostribe, that doesn’t stop the two main men being discussed here from collaborating. They’ve known each other since high school and always kept it cool even when working on different things, something the press release with this album chose to emphasize. I on the other hand would like to emphasize “Gettin Back,” a song which has some crooning from Deja Solis which otherwise serves to spotlight what Agustus and JustLuv can do. The latter’s melody is a pleasantly harmonious mixture of pianos and drums to set the mood off right, while the former’s rap is a refreshingly personal life narrative. This is what “keeping it real” is really about:

The latest full length album from Lostribe (Producer JustLuv, Vocalist Agustus ThElefant) is set for Earth-wide release August 23rd 2011 in digital and hard-copy form. Find it on iTunes, Amazon.com, and many other online retailers!