The Five One- Nothing is Work + Got Till It's Gone + Free Mix Tape

Every genre of music will have its ebb and flow. Every genre of music has the day when fans get fed up with a certain trend or change and ostracize its future while disconnecting. I'm sick to death of the 'hip hop is dead' rhetoric, only because we all know it isn't. But I do believe hip hop is bored.

For the most part, we have dopplegänger MCs, carbon copied flows, uninteresting personalities, and a community that has decided to play it safe and ignore creativity. As hip hop fans continue to get more restless, so have the artists. As hip hop fans turn to other genres to satisfy the emptiness, so have the artists. A godsend in many ways because the fresh, genre bending material coming from hip hop's most versatile names have breathed new life into the future. That future continues to brighten, but not every one that tries can make it work. To pull off genre crossovers, to flip from rapper-to-singer-to-guitarist in one set, to expand your music and mind and perfect it in sound takes a different breed. It takes someone with balls, someone with versatility...someone with color.

DMV/703 representers, The Five One, are a hip hop quartet ready to paint the industry red...blue, green, and gold. Motivated by their self coined philosophy, Revalulion (rev-uh-loo-lee-n), the action of personifying oneself as a color, the Reston, Virginia collective have been grinding hard to spread their all-purpose style of music. The Five One recently caught their first big break after the release of their remix project, which featured the group taking popular songs from Bob Marley, Vampire Weekend, Gorillaz, Zero 7, Sam Sparrow, Death Cab for Cutie and more, making them their own. 

Their stage presence and electric live energy have been applauded as well. The band treats the live show experience as an opportunity to re-engineer the material into a surprising new form with Red playing guitar, Blue on the drums, Green on keys, and Gold on bass.

Versatility and color.

I decided to write about the group after coming across an older mix tape from March of this year that celebrated their road trip to Austin's South by Southwest music festival. The tape was released to raise donations for the 30+ hour trip and features infectious remixes of Janet Jackson, Vampire Weekend, Death Cab for Cutie, Weezer, El Ten Eleven, Daft Punk, The White Stripes, and more. 

We missed their trip to SXSW, but the free download is still available below, as well as a few samples of their music before you dive in head first. Nothing is Work is a Five One original, the rest are remixes. Guilty pleasure tracks? Maybe. All I know is that I haven't been bored listening to it all day. 

DMV/ 703-- roses keep on growing through the concrete and it's great to see.

Download: The Five One- Got Till It's Gone (Janet Jackson)

Download: The Five One- Nothing is Work

Download: The Five One- Need You More (Daft Punk)

Download: The Five One- Stuntin' Like Mufasa (El Ten Eleven)

Download Mix Tape: The Five One- Road to SXSW