That Realness Is Now Closed!!!

C-Rayz Walz MySpace Page
Kosha Dillz MySpace Page

1. Unheib
2. Freestyle vs. Written
3. Calouses of a Hustler
4. Holiday
5. Bong Bong
6. I Love Jews
7. The Foolish Path
8. Babywipes
9. Ariel Sharon
10. The Evolution of Fan
11. March to the Death
12. Sof

It's not quite an indie hip-hop Postal Service, nor is it necessarily "Ebony And Ivory," but the new collaborative LP from Jewish MC Kosha Dillz and beloved backpack favorite C-Rayz Wallz is both a statement of cultural solidarity and creative open-mindedness. Freestyle Vs. Written will appear on Modular Moods this fall (with a pre-release via iTunes in late summer) and finds Dillz, the Yeshiva-trained wordsmith, trading well-crafted versus about his faith and homeland of Israel with freestyle responses from Walz that were inspired by Dillz' lines. And the whole thing was laid down in less than 24 hours, which was, by Dillz' own admission, as much a matter of necessity as studio synergy.

"Personally, I just knew it would be impossible to get C-Rayz in a place for more than three hours, six hours at a time," he laughs, adding that it was spread out over three sessions. "My part was well though out. His part, he just came into the studio and did it every time, right off the top [and] worked off some keywords... That was the way I wanted him to do it."

And while it may seem like a strange combination and an even stranger thematic focus for two people of disparate backgrounds, partial impetus was to remind people of the connection between black and Jewish journeys.

"That was a big point of the record," says C-Rayz. "Black Jews/children of Israel/descendants of Moses are the same. [There's] some different views here and there like with everything. The skin tones changed cuz of climate and migration."

Historical connections or not, who would turn down the chance to swap lyrical spit with someone who whips out one-line wonders like Dillz' "4/20's Hitler's birthday, so why does everybody smoke weed?"

"Kosha flexed numerous [styles] on this album with a lot of content like an Aesop Rock," says Walz, "but heavy on the boom-bap hip-hop rhythm that makes it real street... The LP is bad. Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good. Huh!"