Us3 - 20 Years of Mixing Jazz & Hip-Hop

In June of 1993 Us3 were in Osaka, Japan, for their very first live show. “We could hear the crowd outside shouting ‘Us3, Us3, Us3!,’” remembers Geoff Wilkinson, who co-founded the group with Mel Simpson. “It was proper mad. People clawing at your clothes, and stuff. They got the mute out of the trumpet player’s trumpet and he spent most of the gig trying to get the mute back. It was just bedlam. That was when we realized, first of all, something is happening here, something big is happening.”

Fast-forward to the present, and Us3’s debut album, Hand On The Torch, is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and the group is readying the release of their ninth album, The Third Way, which is due out in the US next week. The Third Way is the unofficial follow up to Hand On The Torch, and I caught up with Wilkinson to find out more about the project, and hear a few stories from 20 years worth of Us3 history.

Read the full story at RapReviews.com.