Remixed. Reinvigorated. Ready for anything. Swollen Members bring it home on Monsters In The Closet. By Karen Bliss

   Hip-hop and ya don’t stop — at least Swollen Members don’t. Not even a year after the release of their second full-length, Bad Dreams, and the Vancouver crew drop yet another album, Monsters In The Closet. They’re not just steppin’ thru, they’re steppin’ up.
   As “an album between albums,” Monsters consists of mostly new material, plus a handful of B-sides and cuts from underground mix tapes. Guests include Nelly Furtado and Saukrates, plus production from Evidence of Dilated Peoples, Kemo of Rascalz, and others.
   Three brand new singles are slated to go, one a season into the summer of 2003. ‘Steppin Thru’ is on the same tip as ‘Bring It Home’, but the other two are guaranteed to reach those whose only use for the words “swollen members” until now had been in the privacy of their own bedroom. The darker ‘Long Way Down’ features a sample of Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Ice Cream’, while ‘Breath’, with its menacing springy beat, features guest vocals by friend Nelly Furtado.
   “Bad Dreams is still doing very well, but we have some new heaters,” explains Swollen’s co-founder, the dreaded Prevail. “We have some new songs which we feel are a huge step forward. Something, for us, that’s key is to always have something ready in the chamber to fire off.”
   Swollen’s co-MC Mad Child is also the owner of the group’s label, Battle Axe, which he formed in 1996 with the proceeds from various jobs, including that of “sandwich artist” at Subway. While he has put out records by an impressive mix of underground hip-hop acts, Swollen Members is the company’s raison d’être.
   The respected group has worked with such luminaries as Mixmaster Mike (Beastie Boys), Dilated Peoples, Divine Styler, Everlast, World Famous Beat Junkies and Funkdoobiest, Chali 2Na (Jurassic 5), Del (Heiroglyphics), and Planet Asia . “One thing that speaks for itself is our work ethic, not only on the business aspect with Mad Child and Battle Axe, but with the music,” says Prevail. “We’re always in the studio. If we’re not, we’re thinking about making the next record.”
   After releasing its full-length debut, Balance, in 2000, featuring the single ‘Lady Venom’, and earning a Juno for best rap recording in 2001, the group released Bad Dreams that November, which quickly barrelled toward gold (50,000) in Canada and another Juno win in 2002. As the momentum continued (the album is now almost platinum), Prevail and Mad Child returned to a Vancouver studio to lay down more joints. The group’s resident DJ/producer Rob The Viking joined them, as did guest-turned-official-member Moka Only. Moka is the soulful contributor to SM’s breakthrough single ‘Fuel Injected’. His style immediately connected with listeners and gave this underground hip-hop phenom greater commercial appeal.
   “Stuff we were doing with ‘Lady Venom’ and even ‘Take It Back’ was real hard-driven hip-hop, kind of grungy,” says Prevail. “Moka comes in, not only with an ability to rhyme, but also with the talent to sing and do vocal harmonies and melodies, that we were not experimenting with before. It’s been an upward turn in writing and creating complete songs.”
   Following the success of ‘Fuel Injected’, the group cut two more songs with Moka — ‘Bring It Home’, which was added to a re-released post-gold version of Bad Dreams, and the new ‘Steppin Thru’. More followed. Moka, is “all over” Monsters In The Closet.
   The ‘Bring it Home’ and ‘Fuel Injected’ remixes are also on the album, for the first 50,000 Bad Dreams owners who didn’t want to purchase the reissued version. The rest are, indeed, monsters in the closet that no one has heard “unless you’re super underground,” says Mad Child. “It’s a good thing for our core fans because there’s some real underground s**t (on there) that didn’t even make Bad Dreams.”
   Adds Prevail: “It’s a good time-line type album for people who might not know where we came from. It shows the progression of the song-making and the headspace and the writing and the attitude and the way that the group is on.”