Kung Foo Grip
The MCs of Kirkland's Kung Foo Grip—the Afro'd Greg Cypher and the dread-shaking Eff Is H—are classic-minded, upper-range-voiced spitters in the vein of prime-time Hiero, but they're no real-rap revivalists. Since their quickly embraced appearance as teens upon the scene some years back, they've been as committed to progression as they have to their incendiary live presentation. Their production has morphed from jazzy loops and boom bap to cloudy trap, their couplets from merely impressive rhymes to naked emotion (particularly on 2013's Growing Up in the Future), they've never once sounded out of their lane, always honed their trajectory, always remained fans first of the area's illest shit—very based. LARRY MIZELL JR.