Welcome to the Audio Muffin, the web’s premiere blog featuring Canadian Hip Hop.  Okay, well that may not be true – but this definitely seems to be the week of maple leafed rap here at the bakery.

Oh, and if you haven’t RSS’d the Muffin yet and are sitting at your poorly lit cubicle saying, “wtf is Frank talking about?”  Check it son – K-os Theory.

Grand Analog is a genre-bending group from Toronto.  Their practically uncategorizable first album came out in 2007, titled Calligraffiti.  If you slept on the album, you need to get your passport stamped and take a listen to the tracks at the bottom of this post.

Hopefully if you listened to K-os earlier this week, the transition to Grand Analog will be a smooth one.  Grand Analog keeps a smooth underground rapping style, mellow melodic hooks, and creative lyrics.  The beats are really all over the place, you’ll hear sounds of funk, ska, reggae, blues, sampling, the list goes on.  Everything comes together with a slick production quality and complicated, yet jumping drum loops.

I think the biggest thing that (from my limited knowledge of Canadian hip hop) makes this style of music distinct is the melodic quality.  Both K-os and Grand Analog don’t hesitate to sing their own hooks and add some melody in the midst of a rhyme.

Grand Analog has a new album coming out on May 26, apocalypticly titled Metropolis Is Burning.  What can you expect from the new album?  Band leader Odario Williams says:

Grand Analog is fuzzy with three coats of dust and reads like an old manual no longer in use.

Yeah, that dude has a way with words.  You can get a sneak peek on the album with the below track “Electric City”.  And if you can’t wait until the end of March, I’d suggest picking up their 2007 album, finding a nice smokey bar to chill at, and forcing them put the album on.

Grand Analog – Electric City

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Grand Analog – Around This Town

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Grand Analog – Sittin On Sunday

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You can pick up Calligraffiti on .