Former Antipop Consortium instigator Beans lays down relentless, out-of-this-world beats with highly poeticized and simply mind-boggling lyrics. Leading the hip-hop underground along with such tweaked luminaries as El-P and the Def Jux crew, Prefuse 73, and the Anticon collective, Beans brings to hip-hop an ear for uncompromising experimentalism and intellectual wordplay. Raised in White Plains, New York, Beans (aka Mr. Ballbeam), was a member of the influential Brooklyn Boom Poetic Collective. He then found acclaim merging hip-hop with electronica as one-third of the influential N.Y.C. progressive rap outfit Antipop Consortium. The group, formed in 1997, released three full-lengths (culminating with the sophisticated and cerebral Arrhythmia on Warp Records) and then a collaboration with free jazz maestro Matthew Shipp.