Termanology

To understand up-and-coming MC Termanology's commitment to the golden age of hip-hop, simply look at the production credits on his new album, Time Machine. The Alchemist, Large Professor, Pete Rock, and even the untouchable DJ Premier all lend beats to this sophomore effort. But the Puerto Rican-extracted MC didn't get to work with top talent so easily.

As a teenager in his heavily Latin hometown of Lawrence, Massachusetts, he began his climb to the top the traditional way — through a series of underground mixtapes. He became closely associated with a fellow Lawrence native, DJ/producer Statik Selektah, whose star also began to rise quickly. Eventually, Termanology was scoring appearances on Statik's Hood Politics mixtape series by leading underground lights such as Royce da 5'9" and even Guru.

And from Guru, it wasn't such a big leap to meet that MC's former partner in Gang Starr — DJ Premier. Primo finally handed Termanology a beat in 2006, and from there came the other marquee names. Termanology does them all proud. His flow is pure, classic East Coast, able to rock street-ready beats with intelligence but without the dreaded backpacker's nerdiness. He cites Big Pun as a huge influence — he even declared himself Pun's successor in his underground hit "Watch How It Go Down" — and the local audience will appreciate his occasional Spanish rhymes. Nearly all the best acts in town will also perform at this PS14 show, notably Garcia, Saheed, LMS, and Alphanum3rics. So, Miami hip-hop heads, don't sleep on this one.