Iller Than Theirs 'Iller Than Theirs' album

Tone Tank tried to be normal. He tried to live a normal life. He had moved from Brooklyn to sunny Phoenix, Arizona. He bought a house, moved in with his girlfriend and their two dogs, and there may have even been a fence of the picket variety. But the Gods of fate and the whim of the universe had other plans in store for young Tone. His girlfriend left him, he lost his job, and his house burned down, all in the span of a single month.

So Tone calls up his old friend Krayo. Krayo tells Tone that this must be a sign from above. The Great-What-Have-You is telling you to return home to Brooklyn for you are too ILL and there is much art to be made.

Kray was putting the final touches on Nuclear Family's debut EP The New Singles (2004 Ruffnoxious). Junk Science had started recording Feeding Einstein (2005 Embedded). After failing miserably at school and getting fired from his dead-end job that he didn't even like, Kray found himself waking up each morning with desperation in his gut. That's when Tone showed up with the U-Haul.

They lived in an industrial building set up as a bunker-style compound. They moved in fellow Nuk Fam members Probe & Scott Thorough, along with two Pit Bulls, a Rottweiler, a palm tree, and a rotating cast of junkies, runaways, and roustabouts. They made an album. Tone and Kray that is.

Iller Than Theirs was produced almost entirely by J. Howells Werthman, who oversaw the project and ran the studio. Snafu of Junk Science dropped by to contribute beats and get busy with the cuts. Scott Thorough came out of his room to donate beats and vocals. Cool Calm Pete casually strolled in, kicked the dogs of the couch, and kicked a few rhymes. Jah-C from The Project (Glow in the Dark Records) popped in with some piff from uptown. And at one point, Masta Ace even magically appeared (poof?).

And through all of this, Kray & Tone Tank assembled their statement of being. ILLER THAN THEIRS is a reaction to all things bloated & phony, boring & corporate, fancy & fashioned, dead & robotic. It is a barroom-brawl of a record, honestly eccentric, wildly colored and just a little bit ILLER than the rest of y'all.

Iller Than Theirs tracklisting with select song capsules in their own ill words:

1.Razor Bumps - This song is about people who pretend to be cool, fly or tough on television and how they are suckers and liars. Nobody's too fly to fart or too tough to get their heart broke.

2.To Be ILL - An Instruction guide to being ILL. Everybody wants something for nothing and that's why they end up being un-happy: "everybody wants Ice but nobody wants to fill the tray." Then you go to get yourself a cold drink and it's all empty cold plastic trays in the freezer. Like, how hard would it have been to just run that under the water and put it back in? People are selfish and short sighted. We're trying to be ILLer than that.

3.The Same - A song about change. It has a lot to do with gentrification and the Manhattanization of Brooklyn. Bruce Ratner is an egomaniacal billionaire real-estate developer who uses eminent domain laws to force people out of their homes and buildings so he can build huge ugly corporate structures. We think that's wrong. Masta Ace is on this one. The idea for putting him on the song happened kind of like it did in the skit. We had the thought that he'd sound dope on it and so we reached out. He did it in his studio and sent it via email so we never actually met him. A lot of times people do songs with famous people and try to act like their best-friends and they hang out all the time. We wanted to keep it real so we present it as if we just imagined it and he just appears out of thin air. Cause that's kind of how it happened.

4.It Is What It Is

5.Good People - Just wanted to give it up for people who are nice and cool. They are underappreciated, especially in Hip-Hop where everyone's thugs and drug dealers. Jah-C is from a group called The Project. He's from Harlem and he's one of the most goodest peoples we know.

6.Smorg
7.After All
8.Lo-Top Sneakers
9.Splash
10.Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Nuclear Family (Nuk Fam for short) is a musical collective of seven guys from New York who make hip-hop music with a decidedly honest, down-to-earth approach. They cast aside tough-guy posturing and self-referential boringness in favor of tongue-in-cheek humor and humble personal expression.

The music has the aesthetic of early 90's boom-bap hip-hop, but Nuk Fam has no interest in being sound preservationists or genre purists. 'Cause fuck that. Their music and highly charged live performances often take turns towards places and ideas that are “un-hip-hop”. But by simply being themselves, Nuk Fam feels they are staying truer to the spirit of a music whose roots lie in innovation and rebelliousness.

Nuclear Family functions as an art factory, producing a variety of musical projects, the most recent of which was Junk Science’s (Nuk Fam members Baje One and DJ Snafu, with guest appearances from the whole crew) critically-acclaimed debut FEEDING EINSTEIN, released last year on Embedded Records. The next projects for Nuclear Family are a follow-up LP from Junk Science and the debut record from a new group called Iller Than Theirs (Nuk Fam members Krayo and Tone Tank, with production from Nuk beatmakers J. Howells Werthman, DJ Snafu, and Scott Thorough).

Known for their impressive live shows, Nuk Fam draws songs from all of its members and individual projects and weaves them together so as to create a truly memorable experience for the party people. With a captivating sound all their own, and a seemingly limitless supply of energy and hustle, this should be a good year for the boys from Brooklyn.

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Iller Than Theirs - Iller Than Theirs