Fun DMC

As longtime fans know, though, when you hear a PUTS record, all the work, from the beats to the rhymes to the scratching to the artwork (Fun comes with a comic book written by the rappers themselves), is almost inevitably done strictly by the duo themselves. Instead of cashing in on hot outside producers or of-the-moment emcees, the pair has always been fiercely independent, with barbecue guests the only collaborators on the 20-track album. The duo holed up in Thes's new home studio with no outside producers or engineers to work on Fun DMC. To achieve the sounds floating in their heads, Thes One designed and built a custom recording console to record and mix the album. (The console became so efficient that audio company Vintage King plans on selling versions of it console publicly.) Costing in excess of $50,000--"A lot of long talks with the wife," he says, laughing--credit lines were maxed out, but the end result is the pair's most intricate-sounding album to date.