The Voltron four!

The four young emcees of Cold Men Young are crammed into a dining booth at Woodbridge Pub. Half-empty glasses of Ghettoblaster beer litter the table. It's 9 o'clock on a frigid winter night and the bar is packed and noisy. The guys are tired but jovial; if you didn't know they'd come together as a collective two years ago, you'd think them childhood pals. Inside jokes and jabs color conversations between the Deep Talk, which touches on everything from The Green Hornet to Rick Synder's questionable sense.

The Cold Men Young project began in 2009 when four poets with hip-hop ambitions — Lawrence "Kopelli" Young, Miles "Phenom" Stewart, Chace "Mic Write" Morris and Brent "Blacksmith" Smith — crossed paths at open mics around Detroit.

Young says, "You know the scene in Anchorman where they have the newsman gang fight in the alley? We were all just in the alley just spitting bars." He stops, laughs, and then he adds, "Nah. Mainly, we saw each out at the poetry spots and the hip-hop spots and we all admired what each other were doing and we started coming together just for fun. The chemistry was so crazy that we knew we had to make it official."

So the Cold Men Young guys took their intense, floorboard-rattling sound up any avenue that'd have them, grass-roots style. "And a lot of people just need a laptop and mic and they have the means to release music," Morris says. "Technology is a mofo nowadays. A lot of people can be self-sufficient without having to go the rigors of the old-school model."

It's true, hip-hop radio is obsolete; it can't touch YouTube in terms of speed and the option to exercise personal choices to discover what's fresh, and all without interference of radio programmers, major label marketing, payoffs, etc. Detroit's latest rap darling Danny Brown proves it.

"To be able to release a single on the Internet with no physical copies pressed up and have it disseminated through the blogs and the Internet has been crucial," Young says.

Buzz rose around Cold Men Young after live shows won them huge word-of-mouth in Detroit. Soon things became serious — after recording in fits and starts over the course of a year, the crew's debut, Champagne Nights, Red Stripe Budget, hit the streets last April. The record featured beats from local up-and-comer producers such as Sheefy McFly and Jay Norm, and was anchored by clever and authoritative verses, serving up personal snapshots of everyday lives.

Because Cold Men Young's music hits on personal levels, it's getting wider attention. There's a connection, and listeners become fans.

"Yeah, I don't have a Maybach, I don't have a mansion," Young says, smiling. "I can't press a button to hit you with a hollow tip." Everyone laughs. "I know I can go home and fix a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." Morris adds, laughing: "That's something everybody knows right there."

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