Themselves’ third album, CrownsDown, drops on October 20 via Anticon. While their theFREEhoudini mixtape featured a plethora of guests, the album itself is just Dose One and Jel.
Here’s a bio snippet:
Seven months after the release of theFREEhoudini – the celebrated mixtape that announced Themselves’ return – Doseone and Jel will drop CrownsDown, a careful and vicious exhibition of mastered rap tactics and sampling ethics. Themselves’ third album proper has been gestating in the gut of this seminal group for some time. It’s both a return to form and a honing of what’s come before (Subtle, cLOUDDEAD, Deep Puddle) – both the opus that these lionhearted two were always meant to make, and the album that their hip-hop-obsessed teenaged selves always hoped to hear.
On CrownsDown, Themselves hold back nothing, welding brute skill to a concrete set of tracks that represents an essential ten commandments of rap. In preparation, Doseone and Jel revisited their beloved hip-hop collections (e.g. Gang Starr, Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, Saafir) and whittled down the recurring themes that made their favorite records so sturdy. Each song on CrownsDown represents one of these archetypes – you’ll find the “don’t bite” song, the diss track, the story rap, the “bootleggers beware” song, and the “don’t fuck with my DJ” jam, among others. In this way, Themselves revisit something classic in order to invent their own future-school entry to the annals.
Here’s the track listing:
- 1. “Back II Burn”
- 2. “Oversleeping”
- 3. “The Mark”
- 4. “Gangster Of Disbelief”
- 5. “Daxstrong”
- 6. “You Ain’t It”
- 7. “Roman Is As Roman Does”
- 8. “Skinning The Drum”
- 9. “Deadcatclear II”
- 10. “Gold Teeth Will Roll”
