One of the essential documents of the early 2000s underground hip-hop resurgence, and a debut album in the truest sense of the word. Evidence, Rakaa Iriscience, and DJ Babu had been building toward this moment since 1992, surviving a shelved major label album and years of underground hustle before finally releasing The Platform on Capitol Records on May 23, 2000. The result was exactly what the underground had been waiting for, and it arrived sounding completely, defiantly itself. In a landscape increasingly dominated by the polished gloss of mainstream rap, The Platform stood as a back-to-basics declaration, closer in spirit and sound to the boom-bap and turntablism of the early 1990s East Coast tradition than to anything happening in Los Angeles at the time. As Evidence himself has described it, the album had already been done before they signed their deal. They didn't budge. This was what they had, and this is what came out. The true sense of an independent record on a major label, and that integrity runs through every track. The production is a masterclass. DJ Babu brings the dextrous scratches and beat science of the Beat Junkies to proceedings, Evidence handles his own production with a raw, dusty precision that would define his entire career, and a young Alchemist, serving as something close to the album's unofficial fourth member, announced himself as a future great with beats that drew equally from the gritty New York school and the sun-bleached California underground. Kutmasta Kurt's "Work the Angles" is perhaps the album's finest single moment, a track that had been circulating on 12-inch since 1998 and lost none of its power on the album. The guest list reads like a who's who of the West Coast underground: B-Real of Cypress Hill on the uplifting "No Retreat," Tha Alkaholiks on "Right On," Everlast, Aceyalone, Defari, Phil Da Agony, and Planet Asia all appear. The album debuted at number 74 on the Billboard 200, earned critical acclaim across the underground press, and helped open the door for an alternative current in Los Angeles hip-hop that would shape the genre for the next decade. A certified classic, now available on vinyl and sounding as vital as the day it dropped.
