CANIBUS Gets Back To His Hardcore Roots On 'Def Con Zero'; Renowned For Leading The Mix Tape Market In The 90's And For A Legendary Feud With LL Cool J, Canibus Debuts With Collaborator Phoenix Orion As 'Cloak N Dagga'.

LOS ANGELES -- Back in the mid-90s, the talented upstart street poet and performer Canibus made a monstrous impact on the East Coast rap world in two very different ways--as a budding new star on the underground mix tape market scene, and as the lightning rod of controversy in a misunderstanding with superstar LL Cool J which led to a longstanding feud.

After inviting Canibus to appear on one of his "posse" tracks, "4321," LL dissed him in an improvised rap on the track--all for making a seemingly harmless comment about a microphone tattoo on LL's arm. Canibus was subsequently cut out of the song's video, and the resulting firestorm simmered for years and changed the course of the young rapper's budding career.

Now, ten years later--after a handful of indie releases, a year and a half as part of the U.S. Army's Stryker Brigade and an intense amount of soul searching--Canibus is back with Def Con Zero, a revolutionary CD/DVD music and video package whose in your face, street savvy hardcore style harkens back to the days before he hit the mainstream with his MCA/Universal hit albums.

Def Con Zero marks Canibus' debut recording for Head Trauma Records in association with First Kut, the rap subsidiary of Kent Entertainment, which also houses the blues label Kent Records. Joining a growing migration of the music industry from Los Angeles to dynamic Las Vegas, Kent Entertainment is owned by 48-year industry veteran, producer-manager Morey Alexander, the "Godfather of Gangsta Rap" who launched the careers of genre pioneers N.W.A., Easy-E, Mellow Man Ace, and Kid Frost.

Canibus explains that the title of the album is a term that describes a nation's Defense Readiness Condition, very much appropriate in our post 9/11 world. In real life terms, the Zero indicates an imminent nuclear, biological or chemical danger, that something has been detonated.