Custom Made

Custom Made steer clear of the G-funk template that shaped countless West Coast rappers, instead channeling the stark, gritty atmospheres pioneered by East Coast outfits such as Mobb Deep and the Wu-Tang Clan. Following the model of many New York crews, the five-member Los Angeles street-rap collective built their reputation through a steady stream of raw, hardcore mixtapes that moved more than 100,000 copies in just a few years after the group formed. While still in their teens, four of the original members—Sinister Six (Michael Brown), Bluff (Briceson Loving), Element (Oliver Johnson), and Skandalous Scoobs (Aaron Umanoff)—launched the outfit at an L.A. high school; Aneek (Charles Newton) came aboard as the fifth member in 2002. Before graduating, the crew dropped their first straight-to-street project, L.A. State of Mind, in 2004. The next year they intensified their underground campaign with additional mixtapes, most notably building momentum through the Street Cinema series. The third volume, Street Cinema 3: The Blackboard Jungle (2006), proved their strongest release to date and drew multiple label offers. Rejecting the major-label route, they opted for an independent deal and signed with Babygrande in 2006. Later that year the imprint put out Sidewalk Mindtalk: The Best of the Custom Made Mixtapes, a collection that compiled highlights from their seven strongest tapes along with several new recordings. Although a full-length debut had been planned immediately after the signing, the project stalled when Sinister Six was incarcerated on counterfeiting charges. The existing material was reworked into the Truth Be Told EP, issued digitally by Rawkus in 2007. Their long-awaited Babygrande album, Original Dynasty, finally surfaced in 2008.