Happy 35th Anniversary to Freestyle Fellowship’s debut album To Whom It May Concern…, originally released October 5, 1991.
It’s very rare to discover an album that sounds completely new and different. Freestyle Fellowship’s debut LP To Whom It May Concern…, released 35 years ago, was one of those albums. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it gave a voice to a whole scene and birthed an entirely new style of hip-hop music.
That scene was the Los Angeles hip-hop underground, largely spawned from the Thursday open mic nights at the Good Life Café. I’ve written before how these events became a major talent incubator for Los Angeles hip-hop. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many emcees, groups, poets, and musicians from the region got their start at these events hosted at the health food store. Over the years, established acts from around the city, state, and country would come through to test their skills in this highly competitive arena.
Freestyle Fellowship were forged in this crucible. Composed of Eddie “Aceyalone” Hayes, Jr., Michael “Myka 9” Troy, Ornette “Self Jupiter” Glenn, Mtulazaji “P.E.A.C.E.” Davis, and James “J” Sumbi, they honed their freestyle and written skills at these events, eventually coming together to form the collective.
Strictly speaking, Freestyle Fellowship wasn’t really a traditional group during To Whom It May Concern’s recording process. According to an article on Bandcamp about the album’s history, J. Sumbi originally envisioned the project as a compilation to showcase the Good Life’s best and brightest. The four emcees would come to Sumbi’s apartment to record songs for the album over specially crafted beats tailored to each one’s style. The vast majority (10 of the album’s full songs) are solo tracks. When multiple emcees do come together on a handful of recordings, it’s usually for relatively brief outings.
Sumbi got the participants (including himself) to kick in around $100 apiece to cover the costs of pressing the album onto cassette. Which meant that To Whom It May Concern wasn’t exactly readily available to all when it was first released. Personally, I didn’t hear the project until a good four to five years later, through my adventures in tape trading.
The album’s production is handled by Sumbi (along with his production team, All In All), Mathamattiks, and The Mighty O-Rah. For the most part, the beats are non-traditional and skew pretty left of center, matching the oddity of the emcees’ performances. The sole “problem” is that the album isn’t mixed especially well, sounding indeed like it was recorded in someone’s apartment.
Sound quality notwithstanding, To Whom It May Concern still stands out three-and-a-half decades later. The five emcees each bring something unique to the table as solo artists, and, on the rare occasions that they band together, operate as a well-oiled machine.
Listen to the Album:
Myka 9 explicitly lays out the crew’s plan of action for To Whom It May Concern during the album’s intro “We Are the Freestyle Fellowship”: “Acknowledging rap as an art form,” he explains, “we break the rules and set new standards in the vocal arena by experimenting in tonal and harmonic inflections and sporadic pitch changes and deliveries. We’ll stir your emotion and take rap music to its threshold of enlightenment.”
Which is an extremely poetic way of stating that they were here to provide a new and different style of rapping than most listeners had ever experienced. The collection of emcees were here to challenge your notions of what rap could be.
And make no mistake, Freestyle Fellowship also had a very clear vision of what they weren’t. The LA Dream Team catch a few strays on “Let’s Start Over,” as Freestyle Fellowship listens to (and mocks) the mid-1980s electro rap pioneers’ biggest hit “Dream Team Is Here,” (“It’s because of them that we have to do what we have to do now,” Myka remarks while the song plays) before dismissively shutting it off mid verse. Through 2026 ears, it’s a little harsh, but the sentiments were in keeping with the norm during hip-hop’s formative days. Hip-Hop music was built on vociferously rejecting what came before while creating something new.
The emcees effortlessly and melodically go against the grain on “Convolutions,” which features Aceyalone, J. Sumbi, and Myka 9 rapping over a sped-up sample of Miles Davis’ modal masterpiece “So What.” The three mimic the song’s musical progressions with their flows, using their voices as instruments, and utilizing their unorthodox styles to demonstrate “the convolutions of hip-hop and jazz.”
J. Sumbi’s two tracks are the most straightforward entries on To Whom It May Concern. “Sunshine Men” positions himself and the other emcees in the collective as iconoclasts battling the rampant mediocrity that permeates mainstream rap music, driven by artists who don’t have a passion for the art form, creating an environment where “rap becomes a tool often used in vain.” Later, on “Legal Alien,” Sumbi rails against racial injustice in the United States, zeroing in on a white population that regards Black people as alien and unworthy of respect.
The majority of the other songs on To Whom It May Concern are much more experimental, sounding unlike what you could find on a rap album circa 1991. Aceyalone gets three solo tracks, each an explosive lyrical barrage. He goes through complex lyrical contortions on tracks like “My Fantasy” and “Here I Am.” He later delivers a two-minute verbal salvo on “120 Seconds,” spraying his rhymes in an unyielding stream. He raps, “Flagrant, nefarious fragrance of various agents / And chemical compounds compounded / a bouquet, a readily picked array / Of dandelions, roses, poinsettias, Gold marigolds in a vase that's passed to monks.”
I’ve long felt that Myka 9 is the most uniquely talented member of Freestyle Fellowship, and his two solo cuts on To Whom It May Concern are the album’s peaks. On an album filled with innovation, Myka 9’s contributions are positively groundbreaking
Myka 9 descends on “7th Seal” as an unyielding dervish on energy. Over a sped-up sample of Billy Cobham/George Duke Band’s “Almustapha the Beloved,” he creates indescribable and winding rhyme flows filled with fantastical imagery and metaphors. I’ve previously written about my effort to study Saafir’s Boxcar Sessions (1994) during my junior and senior years of college. I also spent a considerable amount of time combing through “7th Seal,” attempting to decode Myka’s rapid flows, and discern the meaning behind the lines. Thiry-five years later, a good deal of it still goes over my head.
“5 O’Clock Follies” isn’t nearly as abstract, with Myka 9 taking the U.S. Government to task for its crimes against humanity throughout its history, as well as its efforts to cover-up the existence of the atrocities that it continues to commit in the name of preserving order. Myka distributes his verses in a jazz-like cadence, explaining that “On the level: the Government isn't a necessary evil / But an accessory in brutalities and the mercenaries of a modern day Sodom/Gomorrah.”
Self Jupiter, the Fellowship’s most overlooked contributor, shines on his sole solo track, “Jupiter’s Journey.” Jupiter gives a mind-bending performance on what he’s said was his first recording. He slips, slides, and crawls across a slowed-down sample of the bassline from Weather Report’s “Barbary Coast.” “I stalk when I lurk and I talk with a slang,” he raps, “and I lurk in my brain like a runaway train.”
P.E.A.C.E., best known for his freestyle skills at the time, fronts a pair of tracks. He gives a deceptively complex, laid-back performance on “Physical Form,” performing three free-association laden verses to some JB’s era funk and a rhythmic conga sample. He supplies the listeners “no more than 30,000 words a minute / Spinning in 360 degree circles, long-winded.”
“For No Reason,” the album’s darkest cut, is one that was ahead of its time. P.E.A.C.E. assumes the role of a remorseless psycho, delving into his bloodthirsty mindset as he stalks and kills his victims throughout LA’s most desolate neighborhoods. The track, which samples Billy Joel’s “The Stranger,” heightens the eerie atmosphere, punctuated by ghostly vocals and chants.
To Whom It May Concern built up a strong following amongst the Los Angeles hip-hop community, from the alternative scene to the most mainstream artists. Snoop Dogg has described himself as a fan, as well as Dr. Dre. The group ran into Dre, pre-Chronic (1992), at an LA diner, and he apparently expressed interest in remixing the album and even signing the group to the then-nascent Death Row Records. P.E.A.C.E. even spent a short period affiliated with the Dogg Pound Crew.
The group instead signed with 4th and Broadway Records and began recording their follow-up, Innercity Griots (1993). By that time, J. Sumbi had left the fold, eventually retiring from rap altogether and pursuing a different career.
Three-and-a-half decades later, To Whom It May Concern is more respected and acknowledged by a wider audience than it was when it was first released. It’s also been reissued and remastered multiple times. In fact, it’s 30th anniversary reissue was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Historical Album. Though it lost to the 20th anniversary reissue of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001), I doubt the young men who recorded To Whom It May Concern ever thought it would be recognized by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
The influence of To Whom It May Concern is still very much present throughout the contemporary hip-hop landscape. Its DNA is present in some of the most acclaimed albums being released, both mainstream and underground. It was foundational for a whole generation of emcees, and the surviving members of the crew have all achieved success and earned respect as both members of the crew and through their subsequent solo careers. Freestyle Fellowship broke the rules. They set new standards. And they continue to reap the rewards.
Listen:
