Flatbush Zombies

Brooklyn, New York’s Flatbush Zombies channel the best of the ’90s East Coast rap era on cinematic tracks full of mind-altering atmospherics and dense lyrical content. Emerging as underground favorites in the early 2010s, they crashed into the Top Ten of the Billboard 200 with their official studio debut, 2016’s 3001: A Laced Odyssey. They’re also part of the New York supergroup Beast Coast. The FBZ trio was formed by Meechy Darko, Zombie Juice, and Erick Arc Elliott in 2010. Meech and Elliott grew up together in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, and hooked up with Juice in high school, freestyling with each other until they decided to lay down official tracks. Their first release, “Thug Waffle,” was released in January 2012. Showcasing Meech’s gritty growl and Juice’s cocky boasts over Elliott’s bass-heavy laid-back production, the song and video were a hit and went viral. Later that year, they released their first mixtape, D.R.U.G.S. (“Death and Reincarnation Under God’s Supervision”), which featured the ominous “S.C.O.S.A.” and up-in-smoke “Face Off (L.S.Darko).” As their underground presence expanded, they made a number of guest appearances, like on A$AP Mob’s “Bath Salt” and the Underachievers’ “No Religion.” Along with the Underachievers and Joey Bada$$’s Pro Era crew, FBZ formed the Beast Coast collective and toured across the United States in early 2013; they would return at the end of the decade with their debut LP. Later that September, the trio dropped their second mixtape, the drugged-out epic Better Off Dead, which included verses by Action Bronson and Danny Brown. Continuing their Beast Coast relationship, FBZ and the Underachievers released a collaborative EP, Clockwork Indigo, in 2014. By 2016, Meech, Juice, and Erick completed work on their official debut LP, 3001: A Laced Odyssey, which was released in March 2016. The highly anticipated set was received warmly across Europe, Australasia, and in the U.S., where it hit number ten on the Billboard 200. Two years later, they returned with their critically acclaimed sophomore full-length, Vacation in Hell, which peaked at number nine on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart. In 2019, the Beast Coast project issued their debut effort, Escape from New York, which was produced in part by Elliott. The set became a Top 30 hit in the U.S. The Zombies returned to their own material in 2020 with the short EP Now, More Than Ever. ~ Neil Z. Yeung