Shining Like Rasheed Wallace's Bald Spot

Night and day with LA's next breakout rap group, Brother Reade

By Peter Relic

Hip-hop recordings can serve up heady thrills. There's the jolt of adrenaline from beat-borne boom-bap, and the slaw-jawed guffaw induced by a particularly lascivious punch line. But nothing compares to the rarer experience of witnessing a telepathically linked DJ and MC cold kickin' it live. That live hip-hop bears a stigma is due to the difficulty of its real-time execution — a lot of rap acts just can't cut the mustard without the safety net of studio punch-ins and ProTooled track-tightening. The duo known as Brother Reade — beatmaker Bobby Evans (real name Erin Garcia, age 26) and rhymesayer Jimmy "Jael" Jamz (James Jolliff, 27) — don't suffer from this disparity. The group's phenomenal records are matched by their transcendent live experience. Old school, gold school, new school, true school — Brother Reade takes what's great in rap history and renders it fresh, in every sense of the word.

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