Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Quannum (1999)
Mo’ Wax was a record label started by James Lavelle in 1992, which closed about ten years later. Initially they released 12" singles and licensed a compilation from Japan of Japanese Hip Hop, until 1994 when they began releasing albums of their artists original work. While some of these artists such as DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Money Mark continued releasing music after Mo’ Wax closed, others have seemingly disappeared from the music scene. In this series I will look at each artist on Mo’ Wax and try to find out where are they now…
Quannum is a record label, but also a collective of MC’s and producers who originally formed in Davis, California and who have recorded under the name Quannum Projects and Quannum MCs.
In 1990 several students at UC Davis, the local university in Davis, California, began meeting at the student radio station KDVS. These included Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow, Xavier Mosley aka Chief Xcel, and Tom Shimura aka Asia Born (later Lyrics Born). They each had been listeners of a Hip Hop program hosted by Jeff Chang, aka DJ Zen, and after Chang invited them all to come into the studio they soon began raiding the massive library of records at KDVS, and using the studio to record their solo works. As Jeff Chang later recalled:
They’d all go off to the sound booths and take a stack of records in with them, basically looking for breaks on these different records…It started getting really competitive. There were two sound booths, closed door-type of things. Josh and [Stan Green aka The 8th Wonder]…would go into one. Chief Xcel and Lyrics Born would go into the other.
They would all have these stacks of records, and if you walked in on them, they would lift the needle up, turn off the stereo and they would cover up the records. It was really funny. They were doing this for a while and then, finally it got to a point where I was like, ‘Damn, y’all are like kind of stupid because you’re sitting here, hanging out, but y’all are trying to be so competitive with each other. What if we all joined up and did a label or something like that?’ Folks took to the idea gradually. Eventually we formed SoleSides.
Solesides Records was formed in Spring 1992, with the name a reference to how the label intended to release a series of 12" records with each member given a side, a sole side. The crew included musicians DJ Shadow, Chief Xcel, Asia Born, Tim Parker aka Gift of Gab, Lateef Daumont aka Lateef the Truthspeaker, and Benjamin Davis aka Mac B. Dog, as well as visual artist The 8th Wonder, journalist Joseph Patel aka Jazzbo, and promoter DJ O-TION, with everything run by Jeff Chang.
Solesides’ first release arrived in February 1993, a 12" featuring Asia Born’s Send Them and DJ Shadow’s Entropy, and was followed by Blackalicious’ Swan Lake 12" in October 1994, a collaboration between Chief Xcel and Gift of Gab. The labels third release was also from Blackalicous, with the Melodica EP arriving in 1995, though it was released in the UK before the USA through a partnership with Mo’ Wax.
James Lavelle had released DJ Shadow’s In/Flux 12" on Mo’ Wax in 1993, following Soleside’s release of Entropy, and Lavelle obviously took an interest in Solesides as Mo’ Wax put out releases from Chief Xcel, and Latyrx (Lateef and Lyrics Born), alongside albums from DJ Shadow, and Blackalicous.
After tours around Europe, Japan, and Australia, the Solesides crew were famous across the world, and in late 1997 they met to discuss the labels future, as Jeff Chang explained:
…we were s’posed to be talking about how to blow the shit up more in 98. Truth was, we were all dead broke and exhausted…Everyone was already there the day I drove up…[and when] we sat down for a meeting…They said that they had come up earlier, talked it out, and decided to shut down the label. I was shocked. But it made perfect sense.
Jeff Chang would go on to publish Can’t Stop Won’t Stop A History of the Hip-Hop Generation and focus on his writing, while the rest of the crew would regroup as Quannum Projects, a new label which intended to sign and feature new acts who hadn’t been part of the original Solesides crew. Their first release wouldn’t arrive until 1999, but each member of the crew remained busy, with DJ Shadow following his 1996 debut solo album with UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction, the collaboration with Mo’ Wax’s James Lavelle released in 1998. Following his work on Psyence Fiction, DJ Shadow returned to Quannum, with the rest of the crew having started recording a compilation album intended to announce the new label, as Shadow discussed in 1999:
I came off Psyence Fiction and I was a little worn-out on certain levels…The rest of the crew had already begun the process of doing the album, so I came into the process with a load of ideas and just got started. Quannam and the Solesides label has always been a super-important outlet for me because it’s a chance to do music which is a little closer to the type of music that I listen to. I just enjoy working with MCs from time to time…Quannum is about hip-hop as we know it, hip-hop which is open to different influences and different sounds…We’re not trying to canonise a certain sound per se; if anything, we’re trying to fit in everything we hear. Growing up in the Bay Area, we listened to LA hip-hop, New York hip-hop, Houston hip-hop, Seattle hip-hop and Bay Area hip-hop. So, at any given time there’s a little bit of all of those influences at work.
The album Quannum Spectrum was released in 1999 and featured songs from the entire crew, as well as Joyo Velarde, Divine Styler, Souls Of Mischief, EL-P, and Jurassic 5. Spectrum was rated 8/10 by Spin and NME, while Muzik gave both Spectrum and the Instrumental edition 4/5, and for their review of the regular edition, Muzik wrote:
‘Spectrum’, structured like a radio show complete with DJ snippets, sounds less like an artist album than a beautifully coherent compilation…stretching hip hop in new directions and sounding just as exciting as they did five years ago.
In the UK the album peaked at #90 on the Albums Chart, and #11 on the Independent Albums Chart, while their single I Changed My Mind peaked at #84 on the Singles Chart. DJ Shadow explained the new labels expectations were modest, telling Spin, “We won’t knock Britney Spears off the charts, but we finally got this together.”
Spectrum was Quannum’s final release with Mo’ Wax, and in 2000 they signed a new deal with Ninja Tune in the UK, and another compilation was released. Solesides Greatest Bumps compiled their Solesides work, and it entered the UK Compilations Chart Top 100 at #39, spending three weeks within the Top 100. The double album, released on 2xCDs or 4xLPs, and featuring linear notes from Jeff Chang, saw positive reviews again, with Muzik awarding it 5/5 and later including it in their list of the best compilations of 2000. Reviewers were happy to see so many Solesides rarities collected, including Oliver Wang who wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian:
For the hard-core collector, the anthology fills in blanks in Solesides’s vast catalog of freestyles and unreleased cuts; for the newcomer it’s a thorough introduction to material that has long gone out of print, like Blackalicious’s “Swan Lake” or the very first Solesides single, “Send Them,” by Asia Born (now Lyrics Born).
The icing on the cake is Jeff Chang’s funny and insightful liner notes that humanize this group of former disc junkies turned vanguard artists. They remind us that at heart, these are just a bunch of guys from round the way, and as the Bay’s hometown heroes, their triumphs have been ours as well.
Following Solesides Greatest Bumps, Quannum as a label continued to release new music from their crew, as well as welcome new members such as Pigeon John, Lifesavas, and Tommy Guerrero. Outside of music, in 2008 Quannum collaborated with Reebok on a shoe, which was available in four different designs inspired by Lyrics Born, Lateef, DJ Shadow, and Blackalicious. The label continued to be active until around 2012, and since then Quannum’s credits only include reissues of their back catalogue, and Blackalicious’ most recent album, 2017’s Imani Vol. 1.
While Spectrum was their only collaborative album, the Quannum MC’s, including Gift of Gab, Lyrics Born, and Lateef, have toured together, and they released a live album in 2007. In December 2019 the Quannum MC’s performed at a special New Years Eve concert, marking the first time the crew had been on stage together in three years, according to Lyrics Born. Understandably they haven’t toured again in 2020, but the last few years have seen most of the original crew remain active.
Lyrics Born released his most recent album in 2018, which followed a Greatest Hits compilation in 2016. But apart from releasing music, he has acted in the films Sorry To Bother You and Always Be My Maybe, and he started a YouTube series called Mobile Homies, featuring interviews with friends such as Gift of Gab and Cut Chemist. Most recently, in October 2020 Lyrics Born resumed touring again at a special “socially distanced” concert.
Lateef collaborated with Gift of Gab and Ethan Parsonage as part of The Mighty Underdogs, who released one album in 2008, and he also worked with Lyrics Born, recording together as Latyrx, with their most recent album The Second Album released in 2013. In 2011 Lateef released his own solo album on Quannum, and in 2019 he released Class War, a new song which featured Lyrics Born and Gift of Gab as guests. The song was later included on a new album from Roots & Tings, a group featuring Lateef with Winstrong, and Jah Yzer.
Chief Xcel and Gift of Gab have remained active as Blackalicious, with a follow up to 2017’s Imani Vol. 1 planned for release later this year, and in 2004 Chief Xcel and Lateef teamed up as Maroons, with an album released on Quannum, while Gift of Gab has released four solo albums, and recently teased a new album as coming soon.
Meanwhile DJ Shadow released his most recent album Our Pathetic Age in 2019, and a promotional tour was started before it had to be abandoned due to the Corona Virus pandemic.
While Quannum as a label might not be actively releasing new music, the point was always to get their music heard, and to that aim each member has been successful. As Jeff Chang said of the Solesides/Quannum crew in 2005, “for us, we began as a bunch of friends who went out to change the world. And in many ways, we succeeded. We did change the world in a small way, and we’ve remained great friends. So it’s a happy ending.”
Further Reading
You may also be interested to read other articles on members of Solesides and Quannum.
