When I first heard of iLLmont, I knew that they could spit. What I didn’t know was how big the group actually was. Once I found out that it wasn’t just three emcees but rather eight, I immediately thought of an all-star professional sports team that had a bench stronger than most starting lineups. The thing is that they probably wouldn’t consider having a bench. They’d much rather storm the field altogether and deal with the penalties after. Most of their members (producer Slimm; emcees Allen Thomas, Olde English, Brotha IB, Nihilus Nukes, Ollie Black; double threat emcees/producers Voncito and Khalil Who) met at the same high school, while the internet, in its infinite power, connected the rest of the missing pieces. Together, they united under the iLLmont moniker, named after a street that they grew up on. Similar to other groups of the larger variety such as Odd Future and Two-9, each member brings their own style, reminding me of this song. Each emcee is distinguishable not just by his voice but by his cadence and steez.

As they explained the project to me: “From a personal standpoint we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could make songs that people could sing along to and gravitate towards while staying to true to ourselves…
Generally our goal is that people will hear the project and understand who iLLmont is and what we’re about without having to look too deeply into it.” Most of the production is extremely laid back, making for great driving music. But the clever lyrics are far from soporific. They named the project after Interstate 20, which runs through Atlanta. The “East” comes from which half of Atlanta they rep. The scary part, in a good way, is that these tracks were put together as a result of being deemed not good enough for their next album. Unfortunately, they’ve put the album on hold as a few of the members are focusing on individual projects. They did put out a video for one album cut, which is below.

You can download the project off of their Bandcamp page and Mediafire. The production credits are below.

Track 1 Prod. by BlackMuzik
Tracks 2, 3, & 9 Prod. by Voncito
Tracks 4 & 7 Prod. by Danny!
Track 5 Prod. by Khalil Who
Track 6 Prod. by MaMa G
Track 8 Prod. by Yaj

Bryan Hahn (@notupstate)