Here is some more info:
The l.p. is called Hip Strut and the band is called Bop City.
Apart from CL it features Lord Jamar from Brand Nubian and
Stic Man form the Dead Presidents plus a couple of jazz musicians.
The whole thing is best described by HipBop producer Milan Simich:
"There's a lot of other great stuff -- Greg Osby, Branford. They call
it jazz but it's really funk. I wanted the musicians to play hard bop
tunes with the rappers rapping in their own cadence. We're not doing funk
to please them, they're not being poets to please us. I wanted to expand
the rappers. I think they're very talented, but they don't really have an
outlet cos of the constraints of hip hop. It's a natural progression of
the music." (from Straight No Chaser 39).
This "new" approach is also the problem of the record because both
fractions (the rappers and the musicians) are doing their own stuff
and don't really come together. I have the impression that you could
get better results by mixing some old blue note stuff from the 50s
with the accapella b-sides of your hip hop 12"s. I decided not to buy it.
Patrick.