Company Flow + Juggaknots

Disenfranchised by mainstream rap’s popward turn during the late ’90s, underground hip-hop performers channeled their disgust into increasingly challenging—and self-referential—music. No act embodied this hard-line stance more than multicultural NYC trio Company Flow, whose El-P and Bigg Jus rapped in dense, coded rhymes over acidic, defiantly dark beats that couldn’t have felt further from Bad Boy–style jingle rap. The group’s decision to “drag its stinking corpse from the grave”—to quote the press release—is an unexpected surprise; providing support are Juggaknots, a trio of Bronx siblings whose aesthetics and timeline roughly paralleled those of Company Flow.