Brooklyn based record label and creative lab Thisish presents Thisish Vol. I, hosted by Large Professor. An instrumental hip hop album of flavor defying proportion, Thisish Vol. I features mind bending production by a cadre of Brooklyn’s best experimental hip hop producers: Marshall Law, Cresh Frazy, Jonny 5, and DJ Masa. Best described as the meeting of new-school flavor and true-school class, Thisish Vol. 1 is a boundary pushing work with total emphasis on production. Filled with sonic references to everything from drum n bass, house, trip hop, acid jazz and pop, legendary MC Large Professor (of Main Source fame) contributes vocals to several tracks and acts as an anchor to the albums hip hop core. Simultaneously abstract and concrete, Thisish Vol. 1 is truly a unique release.

With a backstory as organic as it’s sound, Thisish Vol. 1 represents one of the first true meetings of a member of hip hop’s vanguard and one of it’s successors to the throne. Lead producer Marshall Law had toiled for many years in quasi solitude, perfecting a style that the public was simply not ready for. However, a chance encounter with the man who helped define the golden age of hip hip through his production work on Nas’ Illimatic set the stage for the musical mutation that is Thisish Vol. 1. But nothing this great usually happens by chance. “It was bound to happen, we ran in a lot of the same circles,” explains Law, although he does admit being instantly impressed by Large Pro’s technique. “Watching his mind open was just an incredible thing.” Large Pro’s feelings were mutual and soon after their first meeting Marshall was officially installed as a member of Large Pro’s production squad. As their artistic exchange grew it was clear that the two artists had many creative directions with which to explore their new partnership.

Enter Joe Glover, founder and chief creative officer at Thisish. Looking to penetrate the market for high end creative fashion, art, music and multimedia, Glover had been searching for the right artists to put out a musical release that would be consistent with his already successful line of exclusive apparel. Law, an old friend, told him of the Large Pro connection, and Glover immediately knew he had found what he was looking for. Adding Pro into his lineup of Law, Cresh Frazy, Jonny 5, and DJ Masa, and Glover had everything he needed to define the Thisish sound. “We knew we were pushing the envelope, and sometimes that’s hard for people to understand at first, so having a legend co-sign what we were doing definitely made a big impact,” he says.