AD

This rock/rap crossover outfit, a sleek and politically charged collective hailing from Brooklyn, New York, USA, draws its moniker from the teenage exploits of frontman Anthony DeMore (b. 1969, Brooklyn, New York, USA) under the moniker MC AD. While studying theatre at Bard College—a liberal arts institution in New York State, where he had already staged one play—DeMore encountered guitarist David Tarcia. Though his upbringing as the son of a lorry-driver father had taken place amid the Bronx and Brooklyn, the campus environment sharpened his outlook, as he later recalled: ‘Bard made me more political. I saw people who didn’t have the slightest understanding of my culture, and saw how they reacted to me and the other blacks and Latinos who were in that white middle-class world.’ Bassist Aaron Keane and drummer Mervin Clarke completed the lineup, and the quartet channeled that sharpened sense of grievance into their first album for Rage Records. In 1992, Melvyn Gibbs, bassist with the Henry Rollins Band, caught an early performance by the group; three years afterward he oversaw production of their follow-up. Titled The Dead Will Rise, the record nonetheless retreated from the debut’s fierce militancy, allowing jazz-inflected elements such as the track ‘It Could Fly’ to color its rock/rap foundation.