Dessa is hard at work finishing her new record. Mike Mictlan has been battling health issues. Cecil Otter pursued scoring and production work.
Those circumstances left the other four members of the Twin Cities hip-hop collective Doomtree to their own devices this year. Predictably, they didn't sit around idly.
Producers/beatmakers Lazerbeak and Paper Tiger started trading tracks between New York and Minneapolis. Around tour dates for their respective solo albums, "More Than Ever" and "Chill, Dummy," rappers Sims and P.O.S. took hold of those beats and started trading verses over them.
The end result is Shredders, a new group of old friends, who just dropped a full-length album two weeks ago and are prepping for only their third live performance Wednesday at the Palace Theatre, part of the entire Doomtree crew's first hometown show in a year and a half.
"Shredders was born out of the four of us just wanting to make a quick, easy record while we had a window," explained Lazerbeak (Aaron Mader). He unabashedly called the new album "Dangerous Jumps," one that was "done mostly on the fly."
"The Doomtree records tend to be really dense and epic, with every detail carefully mulled over. And this is just more of a run-and-gun sort of thing that started with Paper Tiger and I making some bangers."
Sims (Andrew Sims) described the record with similar reverence for its irreverence: "Basically, Stef and I are just trying to out-rap each other for most of the record," he said of his cohort P.O.S. (Stefon Alexander).
While that all may sound a tad dismissive, it's actually refreshing to hear the two rappers having so much fun — especially after their rather heady and dramatic solo records and the kidney issues that sidelined P.O.S. for a couple of years, not to mention the tumult of the world around us.
