‘Stressed Out’ is the archetypal Lil Blood track. It has featured on a number of compilations and mixtapes from the Livewire camp, not least our unofficial tribute to the gang, and perfectly captures his aura of raw, drug-numbed muffled pain. Blood’s long-awaited ‘Heroin Music’ album is coming soon.

More great music from more members of one of our favourite groups in music: #Livewire.

The muted, calming notes that float underneath Lil Blood’s abrupt Town raps would be a wholly chilled out experience were it not for the fact that he’s only recently got out, and is being filmed around cooked coke and firearms. But their being audaciously true to life is why we love everything Livewire. And like everything Livewire, this release from Blood’s upcoming album ‘Heroin Music’ and featuring Livewire Records’ young leader J. Stalin, does just what it says on the tin.

Off Blood‘s soon-coming ‘Heroin Music’ album and featuring Shady Nate, who seems to have this insane ability to switch his flow button on and just accelerate into a kind of speaking in tongues, eyeballs back, totally heavenly rap momentum. Forget BP, Livewire‘s got the most gas.

Stevie Joe‘s debut album proper can’t come soon enough. The man has one of the most relentlessly acerbic flows in rap. Straight gas every time. Make sure you cop ’80s Baby’ when it drops.

Also off the Damon Jamal video production line is this new banger from Moe Joe, featuring Philthy and Stevie.

The name says it all.

Formed of Oakland’s livest wires and hailing from all four corners of the Town, the Livewire Empire’s membership has risen above sectional tensions and maintained a strictly if never willingly one foot in, one foot out the pokey policy. Signed and delivered via the new Pac – J. Stalin – the congregation of Oakland’s hardest and hardest working artists have been dominating our lives over the past couple of years.

To understand Livewire the music and movement you first must get acquainted with their leader and patron – someone who went from selling confectionary on the Bay Area Rapid Transit railway system as a boy to serving bags of something or other as a young man, to getting put on by Richie Rich, and who in only a few years has graduated to owner/CEO of Livewire Records and president of Town Thizzness.

J. Stalin’s own words about his own music, taken from our exclusive interview with the man last spring, tell us all we need to know about the central tenets of the Livewire Empire: “I like making songs where they got feeling in ‘em. Emotion, where you really saying something. And I like making music that’s timeless, that’s gonna mean something 10 years from now, five years from now and so on.”

Livewire are the Outlawz to Stalin’s Pac. Except there’s more of them. And they’ve proven to be way more prolific in the short time they’ve operated as a movement; so much so that Southern Hospitality has been inundated with pleas to put out a compilation and scratch the surface off a seemingly impenetrable shell of output from artists like Philthy Rich (five albums in under a year), Shady Nate (160 tracks in 16 months), Jay Jonah, Lil Blood, Lil Rue and the dozen or so core members.

We were only too happy to oblige, and while it is far from a definitive Livewire compilation, this officially unofficial set should serve as the perfect introduction to those uninitiated in a collective of artists that have consistently delivered uncompromisingly soulful, hard-edged but nourishing music from the heart. And that’s all we could ask for, and all we really want.

Enjoy.

DOWNLOAD

If you know anything about Southern Hospitality you’ll know that we ride and have been riding hard for Livewire since time immemorial. And if everything we’ve ever written about J. Stalin‘s dozen or so deep crew wasn’t proof enough that this is the shit heads looking for that New York kind of gully should have on, or in, deck, then this latest video by Blood and Rue definitely is.

Look out for Southern Hospitality’s officially unofficial Livewire compilation, dropping soon due to popular demand.

Seriously, give this man an award. Not only is Livewire’s Philthy Rich one of the hardest working and just straight hardest artists in the Bay Area, he’s also released more videos this year than the Vampire of Memphis. Funk Or Die in stores now.

Rapping over The Fugees’ ‘Ready Or Not’ has no right to be this dope, but with such low, low bass and just straight rowdy flows from Livewire’s Rue, Blood and HD you can’t help but nod your head to this – off the Shottas mixtape.

Lil Rue & Lil Blood ft. HD – ‘Neva Leave The House Without My Hammer’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

With so very few good reasons to press pause on Shady Nate‘s supremely produced new album, Gasman Unleashed, perhaps take a second to watch this short interview by Shake Da Mayor, and then peep this video to the track we previously posted (filmed, evidently, around a year ago), which features a pre-pokey Lil Blood and the boy Jay Jonah.