Today, in a sea of whips and chains, bling, forties and video hos, hip-hop artists tend to blend together. Perhaps they get lost behind the booties shaking across the screen. But in a land of commercial, uniform rappers, Zion I stand out like a diamond in the rough. Or maybe a ruby, in a land of diamonds….

“If you want to do this professionally, you gotta keep on moving and innovating, and doing what you feel is right,” says DJ Amp Live of the Oakland, CA based duo. Throw on any one of their albums; listen to tracks like Silly Puddy, or Fingerpaint and you’ll hear what innovation is. What they feel is right has always been to push the envelope with their music and ideas, and remain true to themselves and to the music they are a part of.

Zion I is a group that has managed to change and evolve, while still paying homage to what we all fell in love with in this genre to begin with—hot beats, lyricism that will blow your mind, and a drive to keep the music fresh.

It has been no easy journey for these two. After what they’ve been through most people would have given up, but it seems the problems they’ve encountered in the past have only made these two artists more aware of what they want out of this hip-hop game.

DJ Amp Live grew up in Texas where, from an early age he had taken an interest in radios and technical equipment, taking them apart and reassembling them before he could even read, he says. His interest in music was close behind—he played drums and piano for his church and was surrounded by music everyday. “There were a lot of musicians and producers on my dad’s side of the family, and my dad used to play jazz piano every morning,” he says. “I always had music.”

“One day, my dad brought home a new EPS sampler keyboard, and well, I basically stole it and brought it up to my room,” he laughs. It was then that Amp began to try his hand at making his own music and sampling songs.

“It was the 80’s, and hip-hop was still really small, and there wasn’t that much of it in Texas.” Trips to the East Coast to visit cousins first brought hip-hop into his life. The first time he fell in love with this new music? “I guess it was when I was staying with cousins in Virginia and I first head LL Cool J’s Rock the Bells that I was first struck by it,” he says. “I loved that it made you move.” From then on, he was bringing back mix tapes and trying his own hand at making beats.

Out in California, MC Zion was thriving off this new musical style called Hip-Hop. “I first began to recognize myself as an MC during the early 80’s. Back then, jams like The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had my mind on lock. The gritty realism, the hip swagger hypnotized me, and that was it, I was hooked”

Zion grew up listening to the pioneers of the game—everyone from Rakim and Eric B, to NWA and Too Short—and took in everything these cats had to give. He now says “I absorbed their rhymes line for line. So, I guess, by default, I learned from the best.”

Sometimes boredom brings out the best thoughts in all of us, and it was no different for MC Zion. Inspired during a boring history class, he took up his pen and wrote his first rhyme. “Needless to say, it was whack,” he says.

But Zion, an eternal student of the music he loved so much, kept at it. He studied the things that most listeners may take for granted—cadences, rhyme patterns, metaphors; he watched and imitated the MCs he admired and implemented his own style into what he had learned. He got up on stage and perfected the role he seemed destined to become—the Master of Ceremonies.

When Zion and Amp met in the dorms of Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1990, they were fast friends. Amp used to watch as Zion and two other MCs, Sup and Ricky Ray, would sit around and spit rhymes. “I didn’t tell anyone I did beats at first. When I told them I did, they didn’t believe me.” When Amp came back from Christmas break with his gear, the other guys were nothing short of impressed.

Shortly thereafter, Zion, Amp, Sup and Ricky Ray formed Metufour, and soon after were doing shows around Atlanta. Their unique sound quickly drew the attention of Tommy Boy Records—home to hip-hop greats De La Soul, and Naughty By Nature—and the foursome were signed to the label.

“It was a weird time. We were still in school, and in the studio. We were learning how to be in the studio, and use the equipment,” says Amp. And while it’s every aspiring artist’s dream to be signed, the group’s time at Tommy Boy was a frustrating experience. They wanted to keep making the music they were making, the label wanted to hear more mainstream stuff. The group spent hours in the studio, only to have the music they had worked on scrapped by the label. After three years at Tommy Boy, Metufour was dropped, and Zion and Amp split from their other two musical partners.

After graduating from Morehouse, Zion went back to California and Amp stayed on in Atlanta. After a visit to see Zion in Oakland, Amp realized that people were feeling the music the two had created together in college, as well as the new stuff Zion was doing himself. Amp says, “Zion was like ‘I’m going to do this, what are you gonna do?’” So Amp moved out to Oakland, and the two started putting out six song tapes.