Biography
TOOMB was founded in the early nineties by two MC's from Dayton, Ohio, a town which has a rich musical heritage in the Funk, Soul, and R&B. In a city which gave birth to groundbreaking acts such as the Ohio Players, Roger Troutman, Zapp, Sun, Slave, Lakeside, Heatwave, Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame, Shirley Murdock and others, it seemed that Hip Hop artists in Dayton mostly followed the trends. Eklypz (Craig Gist) and Diye (Tarik Myers) were already veterans of talent shows and inpromptu MC battles at their respective high schools when they were introduced to each other post-graduation. They gained mutual respect for each others lyrical skill, and became friends outside of the common musical grounds as well. While working together at a Hip Hop clothing store the two met a vacationing shopper who happened to be a manager of Hip Hop acts, one of whom was a pre-Ruff Ryders/Def Jam DMX. What struck the manager was not just the rhyming abilities or vocabulary of the two, but the concept and image that they had crafted. The MCs had taken elements of the horror genre in movies and literature and applied them to various other types of hip hop themes and motifs. The horror imagery was fused with battle raps, political rhymes from a black American perspective, racism, religion, even story raps about women and relationships. This is generally what is now known as Horrorcore, but at the time when Darkxied of TOOMB was formed, this style was unheard of except for a few regional artists scattered around the country. With the concept fully in place, the next step was finding the other elements to complete the group. The duo linked up with DJ Ike B (Issac Blake), who had attended the same high school as Eklypz and was becoming well-known in the city as a party DJ and formidable battle-style DJ. The next step was finding musical production, and it seemed that the Madd Scientist (Horace Dozier) would fit the bill. Madd Scientist was a quiet, soft-spoken man that was creating dark, moody landscapes on just one sampling keyboard workstation using snippets of sounds. He created a handful of instrumentals but only two were recorded with vocals, "What Is Darkxied?" a spoken word intro by F.O.R.C.E., and "Spittin' Image" with a solo performance by Eklypz and Ike B. on the turntables. Dozier's time with TOOMB was limited due his enlistment in the US Navy. As with Madd Scientist, F.O.R.C.E. (Artis Moore) and Khryste (Kyle Ellis) were introduced to Eklypz through Ike B. Force and Khryste a.k.a DJ K-Money, were already recording demos as members of a four-man group named Madskillz. The two were looking to find an outlet for their musical production, as they felt boxed in their group roles as MC (Force) and DJ (Khryste). The chance meeting immediately started Force to concieve tracks to build into songs for Eklypz. At this time Diye was only spoken of by Eklypz and he was absent during this bonding period due to balancing work and attending school at Central State University. The first song recorded by this new collaboration was "Think A'gin", a P-Funk based anti-Gangsta, but menacing song. The next song they recorded was "Strangefruit", based lyrically on a role-reversal of Billie Holiday's song about lynchings in the South. With "Strangefruit" , the TOOMB concept was solidified on a single song and now Force knew what direction production-wise to take. The completion of the two songs was also enough to make Ekylpz reach out to his rhyming partner and tell him that the group now had a full-time production crew to complete the sound. The first song with the full Darkxied line up was "Hewl Yeah", then followed "Nkryptshunz", the first song to feature a member of TOOMB's junior group DVS, "Witchunt", and "Hellaluyah". The crew began frequenting a Hip Hop/Electronica/Dance weelky called 'Supafresh', because DJ Ike B. was one of the featured DJs.
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