Test Their Logik

Listen to me, people of the interwobs, for today I have come before thee to tell the tale of perhaps the greatest anarchist rappers of all time.

The particular rappers in question are known by the moniker of Test Their Logik and have been spitting some of the best anarchist bars you can have the honor to lay your ears on.

From pop parodies to mean dubstep to badass hardcore rap to cheerful party tunes, this duo of Turtle Island natives not only delivers a pretty incredible breadth of styles but is also refreshingly explicit about their views and intentions. Unlike most other would-be counter-cultural bands and rappers, these two have adopted a consequent take-no-prisoners approach to their lyrics, giving us truly good advice like:

"Every vote is a vote for the system – act directly, make your own decisions!"

"Bling is murder, bling is dead – fuck getting rich, get free instead!"

And of course the eternally timeless utterance:

"Yeah, uhuh, you know what it is – fire your boss and fight the pigs!"

Now if you're thinking "Damn, if people made music directly telling people to fight the cops, they'd be jailed for sure" then you're not mistaken.

Back in 2010, Test Their Logik released a song and video called "Crash The Meeting" containing lyrics like

"Every single one of us has a reason, together we're strong - let's crash meeting!"

"No justice, no peace on the streets – it's just us versus the elites' police!"

and probably my favorite part:

"Shattering the so-called social peace – Windows getting smashed live on TV! 2010 it's here – confront the beast! Reclaim the streets - FUCK THE POLICE!"

But judge for yourself:

This video apparently lead to the klanadian police jailing them during the 2010 G20 protests to which they reacted by giving a live rendition of "Crash The Meeting" to their fellow prisoners, which was described as

"so awesome; it reminded me of when the prisoners hear the opera song in Shawshank Redemption. Brilliant moment for all of us in detention hell."

But wait – it get's better!

For the next few months, they were released but barred from seeing each other on charges of "conspiracy, counselling others to commit an indictable offense".

After the charges were stayed and release conditions (being barred from contact) were dropped, the reaction came promptly with a new song – Conspiracy Rap.

This one kicked things up yet another notch, straight up calling on us to

"String up the billionaires if they don't want to bake bread! Class war – till every head of state's dead!"

The refrain, and I'm not making this up, goes like this:

"Conspiracy rap, intentions ain't masked and we're counselling you to fight back! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! – Test Their Logik's back, conspirin' on the track!"

You have to stop for a second and just marvel at the raw badassery of using their criminal charges verbatim as source for their lyrics and turning them around like that – words fail me.

Since then, Test Their Logik have gone on to produce two full-length Albums, A[nticipation] in 2011 and Be in 2013. After that things sadly got pretty quiet, so I contacted them to ask for one what's up with this most delightful of rap acts nowadays and whether it's okay to mirror their music here and on the almighty Internet Archive.

As of now, a reply is still outstanding, so for now enjoy their publicly available releases on bandcamp as well as the Arrested Development EP available at crimethinc.