CYNE

Inspired foremost by the boom-bap production techniques and politically conscious rhymes pioneered in the late '80s and early '90s by the likes of Public Enemy and Gang Starr, message-oriented group CYNE have been active long enough to develop and exert their own influence on underground hip-hop. Since releasing their first album, Time Being (2003), they've recorded for labels in Germany and Japan, connected with the revered likes of Nujabes and Four Tet, and have enhanced their reputation with successive LPs highlighted by Water for Mars (2009) and All My Angles Are Right (2014). Short for Cultivating Your New Experience, CYNE formed at the tail-end of the '90s, after producers Speck and Enoch, and rappers Cise Star and the Benin-born Akin Yai, were introduced by a mutual friend. The four artists emerged from Gainesville in 2001 with the "African Elephants" single, released on Rice & Beans, part of the Miami-based Beta Bodega Coalition. They switched to Botanica del Jibaro, another Beta Bodega imprint, and put out a couple additional 12" releases in 2002. Already known abroad, they had early material anthologized for the Japanese release Cyne: Collections 1999-2003, technically their first full-length project, and later in 2003 returned to Botanica del Jibaro with Time Being, their first true studio album. Around this time, Cise made a couple appearances on Nujabes' Metaphorical Music LP. CYNE continued to find support outside the U.S. with the 2005 release of their second proper LP, Evolution Fight, bearing the logo of the Berlin/Manchester-based City Centre Offices. A 12" release for the album's "Running Water" featured a remix of another track by Four Tet. In 2008, after Project Mooncircle -- another German label -- released Starship Utopia, CYNE settled in with Portland, Oregon's Hometapes label, starting with Pretty Dark Things. They continued with Water for Mars in 2009, the cassette-only Wasteland, Vol. 1 in 2011, and All My Angles Are Right in 2014. By the release of the latter, Akin had left the group to stay in France and concentrate on solo work. Wasteland, Vol. 2 followed in 2017. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi