Well, it's Friday the 13th. An appropriate day for our first legit update in awhile. We've been quietly cooking up an onslaught of new releases for the second half of '08. Lots of news today:

DIVINE FIRE: THE STORY OF JEDI MIND TRICKS DVD

First up, we've finally wrapped editing on our newest DVD release, Divine Fire: The Story Of Jedi Mind Tricks. The DVD features a lot of never-before-seen footage and photos from the archive we've been building since we started back in the early 90's. For the first time, we feel like we've been able to give you guys a behind-the-scenes look at life on the road as an independent artist and hopefully answer a lot of the questions that you guys have had about us. We hope you guys will check it out. Stay tuned for release date details. 

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE ALBUM & TOUR

For the past six months, we've been hard at work on our sixth studio album, A History Of Violence, which will be released on October 14th. Stoupe, Vin, and Jus Allah have been in the studio conjuring the viciousness of those Violent By Design days for this new album. We're also plotting tour dates now for the A History Of Violence Tour. Stay tuned for album and tour updates at www.jmthiphop.com.

JEDI MIND TRICKS PRESENTS ALBUMS

We got into the lab with our Army Of The Pharaohs brothers-in-arms: Doap Nixon, King Syze & Outerspace to lend a hand on their new solo efforts. We're real proud of all these guys and were happy to be asked to lend a hand with their albums. Here is the release schedule for the Jedi Mind Tricks Presents albums:

July 22, 2008 - Doap Nixon " Sour Diesel"
August 5, 2008 - King Syze "Labor Union"
September 30, 2008 - Outerspace "God's Fury"

ESOTERIC

Eso has been riding a massive creative wave. Make sure you check out his latest release Esoteric vs. Japan. And if you're in Boston tonight, Friday the 13th, go check out 7L & Esoteric and Outerspace live at the Middle East. www.myspace.com/7lesoteric

REEF THE LOST CAUZE

What can we say, Reef is a beast. While spending the last three years murdering his features and burning down stages across the world, Reef has been hard at work on his new album, A Vicious Cycle, tentatively scheduled to be released on September 30th. Stay up with Reef and cop his latest mixtapes and t-shirts at: www.myspace.com/reefthelostcauze and the soon to be launched www.reefthelostcauze.com.

KING MAGNETIC

AOTP's King Magnetic has been making power moves of his own lately. Lookout for his upcoming Shadyville (Whoo Kid) mixtape mixed by JMT's DJ Kwestion. Also, make sure you cop his Everything's A Gamble CD. www.myspace.com/kingmagnetic

CELPH TITLED AND THE DEMIGODZ

Celph released a new song, "Mad As Fuck." Peep his MySpace page to listen and cop the latest Demigodz gear: www.myspace.com/celphtitled

TWENTY QUESTIONS WITH STOUPE

Contrary to rumors, Stoupe is alive and well and working on not only the new JMT album but his long-awaited solo efforts. Stoupe is a madman so it takes him longer than usual to release albums, but they always seem to be worth the wait. In honor of Stoupe's madness (and silence), we're asking you guys to send us your burning Stoupe questions to stoupeATjmthiphop.com. We're going to pick the top twenty questions and subject Stoupe to water torture until he answers them. We figured this is the closest we'll all get to a Stoupe interview anytime soon.

WEBSITE REDESIGN

By the way, we're working on giving our offical site, www.jmthiphop.com, a much needed facelift. We've been a little lazy with the site this year, but we promise a lot more updates, blog entries, behind-the-scenes video clips, and all that good stuff.

NEW JMT MERCHANDISE

We're constantly adding new shirts and other good stuff over at the Official JMT Webstore, so stay on the lookout.

JMT STREET TEAM

If you want to help us spread the word about all the upcoming JMT releases and tour dates and you live in any of the cities listed below, give us a shout at: infoATjmthiphop.com to join the JMT Street Team:

New York, NY
Boston, MA
Burlington, VT
Portland, ME
Montreal, QC
Ottawa, ON
Toronto, ON
Chicago, IL
Detroit, MI
Minneapolis, MN
Boulder, CO
Denver, CO
Colorado Springs, CO
Salt Lake City/Park City, UT
Seattle, WA
Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
San Diego, CA
Phoenix, AZ
Albuquerque, NM
Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA
Orlando, FL
Miami, FL
Raleigh/Durham, NC
Washington, DC
Baltimore, MD
Pittsburgh, PA

As always, we can't end our updates without thanking you guys... our fans. The best fans in independent music. None of this is possible without you guys.

For now,

www.jmthiphop.com

THANKS!

Hey Ya'll,

This is the first opportunity that we've had to catch our breath and get back in touch with you guys. We've spent most of the last year touring in support of our most recent album, Servants In Heaven, Kings In Hell, including the honor of appearing on this summer's Rock The Bells Tour with Wu-Tang Clan and Nas who, needless to say, have been major influences on our music.

This short break between touring and recording gives us this opportunity to reflect a little This fall marks the tenth anniversary of the release of our first album, The Psycho, social, chemical, biological, and electro, magnetic manipulation of human consciousness. We're not sure what we were thinking with that title either. We didn't know much about "the business" then. All we knew is that we needed to get our music out, so that's what we did. We pressed up a 1,000 copies of Psycho-social on vinyl and started selling them to distributors and that began the story that has become us. But we can't tell that story without including you guys, our fans...

This is where the story gets complicated. If we were to measure our success over the past ten years by Billboard charts, we might be considered only a moderate success or, in some eyes, a failure. Though all of us seem mesmerized by Billboard charts that are measured in millions, those charts don't tell the whole story. Those charts don't measure a band's integrity or its relationship with its fans, so we've never subscribed to their false importance. Call us crazy, but we measure our success by YOUR response to our music, because you're the only people that matter to us. So when you guys support us by packing our shows across the world and spending your hard-earned money at our merchandise table or online store, we feel more than successful... we feel grateful to have such loyal fans, some of whom have been with us since we began a decade ago and some of whom have joined along the way.

When you guys e-mail us and tell us you're feeling this, or not feeling that, we listen more to your criticism than a Billboard chart position; a label executive's opinion that we can't make "hits"; or a radio programmer's decision that we don't fit a "format." More often than not, you guys have reached out to us to say "don't change" and "keep it raw." And that's exactly what we're going to do. That's all we know how to do. That's the music that drives us. Your messages to us have been our battle cry to fight through a decade's worth of corp-speak from industry gatekeepers who rarely know their heads from their asses. Each time we step on stage to a sold-out crowd, whether in Boston, Bogota, or Bucharest, we feel like the luckiest, most successful group in the world thanks to you guys.

For ten years of support, we can't thank you enough. Stick with us, we're not done yet...

Jedi Mind Tricks

JEDI MIND TRICKS PRESENTS
ARMY OF THE PHARAOHS
RITUAL OF BATTLE
IN-STORES NOW

Click on album cover below to purchase.


Click here for the Official AOTP MySpace Page.

A year and a half after waging war on the underground rap scene with their debut release
The Torture Papers,” Army of the Pharaohs, the supergroup spearheaded by Jedi Mind Tricks’s powerhouse emcee Vinnie Paz, return with their long-awaited sophomore offering, ”Ritual of Battle.”

Ritual of Battle” revisits the supergroup’s winning formula, once again featuring an incredible lineup of underground emcees, including Vinnie Paz of Jedi Mind Tricks, Outerspace, Esoteric, Celph Titled, Chief Kamachi, Reef The Lost Cauze & more.

Originally conceived as a fluid movement of emcees and producers, The Army has expanded to include a few notable additions: Doap Nixon, Demoz and to the inevitable delight of long-time Jedi Mind Tricks’ fans, the return of core original JMT member Jus Allah, who can be heard trading verses with Vinnie Paz on a number of head splitters, including the ferocious “Blue Steel.”

Executive produced by Vinnie Paz and boasting production from Esoteric, ILL Bill, Celph Titled and others, “Ritual of Battle” is another raw reincarnation of the 90's-era boom bap rap that has become synonymous with Jedi Mind Tricks.