Junk Science

Average Joe may enjoy epic coke raps, but he also works a shitty job to fund his Netflix and weed habits; Brooklyn-based hip-hop duo Junk Science makes music Joe can relate to. Riding dusty, sample-heavy collages constructed by his producer/roommate Jimmy “DJ Snafu” Buckets, 28, Michael “Baje One” Tumbarello, 27, spits self-assuredly about living in his mom’s house, finding cat shit in the hallway, and everything else that’s really real.

“I don’t ever lie on a track,” says Baje, who met Snafu in the mid-’90s while attending a prestigious prep school in BK. (The duo dropped its first LP, Feeding Einstein, in 2005.) “The whole world is telling you not to be yourself. We’re making the music we want to make, and, to me, that’s the strongest, bravest thing anyone can do.”

Junk Science’s new album, Gran’Dad’s Nerve Tonic (Def Jux/Embedded Music), which Snafu equates to “the beer you can’t find on the shelves right now, the cure-all,” is already inspiring some liquid courage. “Jerry Maguire,” a take-this-job-and-shove-it anthem inspired by Baje’s unpleasant stint doing market research, has empowered several disgruntled fans and friends to go for broke, literally. On the track, Baje mocks his employer: “This is just to let you know I took a shit in the file cabinet/Now file that under ‘I’ for ‘I quit!’” (No, he didn’t actually do it.) Both Baje, who now supplements his rap riches as a moving-company foreman, and Snafu, who spent the summer working as a camp counselor and contracting whooping cough, feel a little guilty. “It’s not the most healthy advice,” says Baje, laughing. “So, quitting your job is [more] like a fucking state of mind!” After all, Average Joe still needs to pay off the weed man.