There was a time when my mail was so full of Anticon releases that I thought I'd heard it all before and could have gone on record about it. Last year, for instance, when my ears could've used an hour or two more of Selling Live Water, the album released by Sole. While I think the rapper could've worked harder on a couple of tracks, I was too harsh on an otherwise strong album, and I'm glad for the chance to apologize. Pick up Anticon Label Sampler 1999-2004 if you want to see what he's about: "Shoot the Messenger," from the same album, has a desperate lyrical energy driven by a simple percussion groove that battles a thick veil of music threatening to suffocate the track. The same description applies to "Bottle of Humans," from Sole's first release – which makes an implicit promise to explore the possibilities of words and beats that for the most part has been kept.

This album, a collection of releases by the eight-person East Bay-based hip-hop collective, shows what they've been doing for the last seven or eight years. At a time when pop music – and it's absolutely wrong to single out hip-hop as anything more than just one guilty party – was all about toeing the line, Anticon gave its artists a permission slip to explore. The fruits of this are here to enjoy; Alias's drum 'n' bass-influenced "Divine Disappointment" is a standout, as are Odd Nosdam's thick, murky "Wig 21," Passage's upbeat, anxious "Poem to the Hospital," and Jel's off-center, deceptively angular "Nice Last."

The crew began in Maine in the mid '90s, winding up in the Bay Area while picking up fellow travelers along the way. As most local hip-hop fans know, they eventually put together a weekly live showcase whose popularity was built in part by innovative use of the Internet, where the artists made themselves, their opinions, and their music available to the public. There was, as I recall, a backlash against Anticon for – I think – being white (and hence reaping the much debated benefits thereof). I don't think people pay much attention to that at this point – in part because it's clear that Anticon's artists aren't as much about staking a claim to well-worked turf as they are about declaring their right to expand its boundaries.