It's hard to believe it's taken this long for a proper retrospective of legendary Los Angeles collective CVE. We Represent Billions is a crucial portrait of one of the West Coast's most low-key influential crews - a hydra-like collective of rappers, producers, designers and engineers who were key members of the Good Life Cafe's open mic scene, going on to inspire artists like Jurassic 5, Kendrick Lamar amongst many others. Initially called Chillin Villain Posse before morphing into Chillin Villain Empire in the late 1980s, they eventually centred around the core trio of Riddlore, NgaFsh and Tray-Loc. The crew were years ahead of their time, self-producing music without samples and pioneering a stream of consciousness lyrics that still sound fresh and innovative. CVE were self-sufficient and motivated from the beginning, named "Chillin Villains" because that's how they were perceived by white America. This social motivation was channelled into their groundbreaking performances at Good Life Cafe, the South Central session that evolved into Project Blowed and later on came to influence LA club night 'Low End Theory'. On We Represent Billions, we're treated to a snapshot of the CVE sound from 1993-2003, their most prolific era. The retrospective collects music from the handful of albums the crew released on their own Afterlife Recordz label (mostly as limited edition CD-R's) plus many previously unreleased tracks and highlights their untethered eccentric creativity and sheer breadth of influence.
