Ice-T & Long-time Producer Afrika Islam Form EDM/Hip-Hop Label Electronic Beat Empire & Unleash MR.X's The Brutal EP (EBE NATION)

For starters: above, you will see a rather striking image pulled from Claude "Paradise" Gray & Giuseppe "u.net" Pipitone's 2016 Wax Poetics photo-book, No Half Steppin' - An Oral & Pictorial History of New York City Club The Latin Quarter & The Birth of Hip-Hop's Golden Era. It's indeed, a photo Gray & Pipitone's book featuring Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five sharp-spitter Grandmaster Melle Mel, Afrika Islam & Ice-T taken sometime in 1986 either in or around New York's infamous club, The Latin Quarter. Afrika Islam kick-started his musical career at the tender age of 10, as he joined The Bronx-bred Hip-Hop/breakin' group, Rock Steady Crew in 1977. Islam would go on to cut his teeth acting as an apprentice under Afrika Bambaataa and was an early member of Bambaataa's international cultural awareness group, The Universal Zulu Nation. Throughout his decades-long career, Afrika Islam has repeatedly collaborated with New Jersey's own musician, rapper, song-writer, actor, record executive, record producer, and author Ice-T.


Afrika Islam single-handedly produced the entirety of Ice's first three studio albums released between 1987-89: Rhyme Pays, Power, and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! Ice-T & Afrika Islam would later collaborate on select cuts from Dennis Hopper's Colors (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack,) Rhyme $yndicate's Rhyme $yndicate Comin' Through, and Ice's fourth album, O.G. Original Gangster (1991) as well as a number of 12-inch singles and non-album tracks. Now, nearly 31 years after their first collaboration, Ice-T & Afrika Islam AKA DJ MR.X AKA Charlie Funk have reunited for their first multi-media collaboration in decades. Ice-T & MR.X have formed their own record label, Electronic Beat Empire—or just EBE NATION, for short—attempting to bridge the gap between Hip-Hop/Gangster Rap, Electronic Dance Music (EDM,) and Techno/House music. "With artwork evocative of graphic novels and images of extraterrestrial biological entities in their music videos, Ice-T & MR.X built a record label named Electronic Beat Empire; EBE is also, short for Extraterrestrial Biological Entities," EBE NATION wrote within a recent emailed press release.


Since launching around April, EBE NATION's first releases include: a MR.X REMIX of Ice-T & Afrika Islam's 1988 collaboration "COLORS," "BOUNCE THAT A$$" as Charlie Funk feat. Ice-T, "RAGE OF THE MACHINE" | MR.X WASABI BYTES | REMIX Video, MR.X's "KILLER (KILLER) DIE," and a 6-track collaborative genre-eschewing EP entitled The Brutal. "EXCLUSIVE: I mentioned last year that I was entering the EDM world! My original producer, Afrika Islam, and I have started a new EDM [label, Electronic] Beat Empire. Introducing: DJ MR.X. You've been WARNED! 💥" ICE-T (@FINALLEVEL) enthusiastically Tweeted back on July 17th. Executive Produced by both Ice-T & MR.X, Ice's first foray into EDM/EBE's inaugural release has been described as "a murderous EP of irresistibly catchy, computer-based music." MR.X & Ice-T's The Brutal EP is now available on Amazon Music, Apple Music, Beatport, Google Play, Juno Download, Napster, Soundcloud, Spotify, TIDAL, and like-minded digital streaming platforms.