Cheerful and deep, horrorcore and pacific, concious and proactive, humble and superb. American and European, most of all international. Throughout his contradictions, Lord Lhus is one of the best and well respected mcs in the rap scene, loyal to himself and to the fans, always against the industry, for independence and internationalization of music and its message.
Lhus is an acronym that stands for Love (hell or right) His Universal Self savior, according to the Supreme Alphabet of the Nation of Gods and Earths. It’s made explicit even in the video of the song L.H.U.S., not just a videoclip but a shooting with a story behind. Lord Lhus, born Brandon Frick, kidnaps a (fake) hip hop idol, Mc Supastar, summary of the stereotypes of products of mainstream labels (and a bit Kanye West looking like): yak fur, gold chain, empty but successful lyrics. In the video intro we also can see Lhus phone call with the label executive, who gives him tips to make it big. No meanings, starting from the name, people don’t care about that. Plus, no hardcore music, radio and clubs don’t play that.
Born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1984, Lhus reached a world wide fame with the two albums made with North Carolina duo Savage Brothers and produced by the German group Snowgoons: A fist in the thought (2009) and Iron fist (2011). The beef with Snowgoons caused Lhus some banishment and feuds with giants like Vinnie Paz and Ill Bill, of whom Lhus was fan himself. But the reasons of Brandon peculiarities are different.
Unlike most of his fellow countrymen colleagues, he strongly linked to many European artists, starting with the French beatmaker Al’Tarba and his group Droogz Brigade, highly inspired by the movie Clockwork Orange. He features in tracks with other French like Tireless Crew, the English Dirty Dike, Slovakian Cruscifix, Swiss Jace Abstract and Dash, just to name some of them. In 2013 Lhus realizes with Al’Tarba his – probably – more complex work, Acid & Vicious, a scale of emotions for all tastes, recap of Brandon’s essence. Last but not least, the brand new album A can of worms, of his trio Strange Guys (with Abstract and the Canadian Unknown Mizery, produced by the dutch Rob da Landlord).
He also moved to Europe, in Ostrava, Czech Republic, but not really for professional reasons, “I moved to Czech after meeting my girl, why else would I live in a city like Ostrava?”, he tells us laughing. Anyway he also started appreciating more and more European mcs, such as Furax Barbarossa (France), Lanz Khan and Salmo (Italy) Megaloh (Germany), Reznik, SG, Khomator (Czech Republic), Zverina, Strapo (Slovakia), Melph and Mr. Morbid (Netherlands). Most important, there’s Empty Handed Warriors.
Far from the superiority complex of most Americans when it comes to rap, Lord Lhus is co-founder of the international collective Empty Handed Warriors, “it started with myself, PSL, Cerebros (Holland) & Babylon Warchild (Canada) at Eastgarden Music (label based in Rotterdam) trapped in the studio for a week. We made pretty much the whole first two albums at that time. We all do our separate thing but EHW has developed well”.
The movement got bigger, with members that goes from Iran (Ali Dahesh) to Slovakia (Fantom), and it’s ready to gather artists in many ways (poets, musicians, singers, visual artists) to build a worldwide community which encourage the change of a generation and the fight against oppressive system and brainwash, as we can read on the official website. EHW simply keep doing what they know, using this network to share resources and information, raising awareness on political and systemic issues and to spread the message all over the world, crossing physical and language borders.
And whoever has this vision is welcome in this “hip hop komunita”.
Video of the track “Komunita”, with Unknown Mizery and Slovakian rapper Ekcelent, english subs in settings