UTD is tagged as: new york, ninja tune, totec radio, rap, hip hop
For ten years the rap trio Urban Thermo Dynamics (a.k.a. UTD) fell into the “more a legend than a band category”. A family affair, Mos Def had teamed with his younger brother DCQ and his younger sister Ces in 1994 for UTD. The single “My Kung Fu” brought the group to the hip-hop underground’s attention and Polygram affiliate Payday London. Payday released the single in 1994, reissued it on the related FFRR imprint, and followed it a year later with the “Manifest Destiny” 12”. Work on a full-length was underway when label politics left UTD without a home. Mos Def and DCQ (who was now using the aliases Illson and Jashiya) went on to form Medina Green, another group that would have a long gestation period before delivering much above-ground product. A grey area version of UTD’s album Manifest Destiny appeared in 1999, but pressed in such a small quantity that if you blinked, you missed it. By 2003, Internet file sharing had become popular with the underground hip-hop set and lost recordings were being traded and mishandled. Mos Def was now a superstar and file-sharers were digging deep for his early recordings. The rare “My Kung Fu” was being widely distributed but mislabeled as a Medina Green track, while a correctly...
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