Whether they overtly admitted it or not, Those Chosen has always seemed to have an agenda to set themselves apart from the hype-saturated multitudes. And rather than meekly uttering proclamations of what’s “real” and what isn’t, they march it with humble poise and dead-on presentation—an impression that the three way makers transparently made with the release of Reign Food. Then, amidst a myriad of exclusive interviews and live performances on big name stations like MTV2 (and let’s not forget the video they just debuted for “Soundclash”), you had Steamulus: The Watts Riot Effect, the mix tape that extended that metaphor and had their self-proclaimed steamsters nodding their heads and fervently yearning for more. So it’s about time that Kornbread, Foreshadow and Japetto took it up a notch with the release of 5IVE, no? It’s their first project to be released on iTunes and digital retailers everywhere, and from the look of this lane they’ve been paving over the past year or so, it appears as if their time to shine has finally come.

The long-awaited five-track EP is not only their most fluid work, but it is easily their most tangible work. Take “Soundclash” and “Spare Tires” for instance. The two singles mash solid lyrical puns with an uncultivated bass-boom hip-hop pow to create two blockbuster smashes (try not to blow out your speakers with these two). “The Feeling Again,” a remaster of Reign Food’s “The Feeling,” is that feel-good track you put on in the morning while you’re getting your day started (it’s something like Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day”). “The 1ne” reminds us what it’s like to fall in love. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the positive vibes oozing from “Rise and Shine” prove that, with this EP, it definitely can.

It isn’t even so much the fact that these guys are producing real hip-hop that’s the most grabbing; it’s their undeniable passion for their craft and the verity that they know precisely how to utilize it while sounding neither forced nor fabricated–something that is made clear with this particular release and certainly won’t go unrecognized by the veterans of the hip-hop community. This isn’t senseless “1, 2, 1, 2,” as Foreshadow once put it in an interview with Brooklyn Bodega’s Raven the Blazin’ Eurasian. What 5IVE is instead is honest and timeless to-the-point music. In a time where solid hip-hop acts are few and far between, Those Chosen triumphantly swoops in with a jolly bag full of hope for all the hip-hop whos that have wanted their hip-hop back for a while.

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