Artist: Shades Of Culture, Album: A Little Bit About Us, Song: Trapped In A Maze

Shades Of Culture were a hip hop trio from Montreal that formed in 1992.  They were MC's DShade and Revolution along with DJ Storm.  The band was at the forefront of Montreal's hip hop scene and perhaps one of the most recognizable bands during the nineties within that province.  They were a hard working group that basically did it all independently.  They toured relentlessly and travelled across Canada numerous times, playing close to 100 shows a year.  They toured with Washington D.C. band, Bad Brains.  They also opened shows for other punk acts like SNFU (see blog 12/17/10).  Within the genre of hip hop, the band shared stages with Eminem, KRS-One, Gang Starr and EPMD to name a few.  They even opened for the Backstreet Boys at the Molson Centre in Montreal.  The band released their debut EP in 1996 and their follow up full length album in 1998.  In 2000, the band released an album of unreleased demos called, A Little Bit About Us, with the Stomp Record label (http://unionlabelgroup.com/).  One of the standout tracks from this release is a song called, Trapped In A Maze.  You can check out the song on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T3jRlKcAxU).  They sound a lot like Oakland, California's Souls Of Mischief on this track.  The band would end up splitting in 2004.  DShade released a solo album this past year which is available on Itunes and you can follow him at http://www.myspace.com/deeshade.  DJ Storm has also remained in music and has numerous projects on the go.  You can follow him at http://www.djstorm.ca/.  The album, A Little Bit About Us, is available for sale at Amazon.ca for $10.  Thanks for reading and enjoy!