According to the dictionary, a humdinger is “a striking or extraordinary person or thing,” but according to the Nappy Roots, it’s the title of their third album, which perfectly sums up the South’s most realist hip-hop commodity. Hailing from Kentucky, Nappy Roots members met in college in 1995 and started the group to make quality music, which was nonexistent at the time. “We would just freestyle and rap at house parties,” describes member Skinny DeVille (the group also consists of B. Stille, Ron Clutch, Big V and Fish Scales; former member R. Prophet left the group to go solo).

Since Kentucky didn’t exactly have a hip-hop scene, the guys relied on their own efforts to try and make it in the industry, putting their own cash into promoting their music before eventually signing to Atlantic Records. “There was no [hip-hop] scene in Kentucky, no recording studios or anything, so we would go to radio stations to promote our stuff and actually built our own recording studio after we got the deal from Atlantic,” Skinny describes.

With the release of their debut album Country Fried Cess in 1999, Nappy Roots had become a full-fledged act that took the country by storm and provided a welcomed alternative to the “bling-bling” hip-hop that immortalized superficial lifestyles; their music focused on realistic concerns that touched home with many fans. Their follow-up album Wooden Leather in 2003 received the same success, further expanding their Southern reign. But, after trouble with Atlantic, Nappy Roots left the label in search of more creative freedom, which they found after starting their own label, Nappy Roots Entertainment Group, with distribution through Fontana/Universal Music Group.

But, expect a classic Nappy Roots album for The Humdinger. “We are always going to make quality and reality rap,” Skinny describes. “This album is the better of the past three to me. The first album, we were still in college and with Atlantic, so we couldn’t do what we wanted because of budget and stuff; and the second one was like our dream album since at the time we were living good, touring and got to make the album we wanted. This new one is an accumulation of those two. It was three years in the making, but we were in control of it all—we got our own producers, picked our own songs and used our own money.” Knowing that they’ve been out of the scene for the past five years, the group decided to place some of their songs on the Internet to get the buzz going again. “We have three years worthy of material, so we picked some of the best unused songs to put up.” And so the buzz has begun…