Heiruspecs might not be a name that well known outside of the Twin Cities, but if you talk to anyone involved with the music scene there, they will no doubt not start talking your ear off about the group, who have been a mainstay of talented individuals who come together like Vultron to make some unique and fantastic hip hop. To celebrate their twentieth anniversary as a band, they’ve assembled a mixtape looking back at some of their greatest hits and some rarities and side projects as well, all together in 20⁄20.

Heiruspecs formed twenty years ago at St. Paul Central High School as a live hip hop band, and they’ve had a fairly steady lineup the entire time, with emcees Midway Felix and Muad’dib, bassist Sean “Twinkie Jiggles” Mcpherson, drummer Peter Legget, guitarist Josh Peterson, and keyboardist DeVon “DVRG” Gray. Since that time, they’ve not only made plenty of great music together, releasing excellent albums such as A Tiger Dancing, Night Falls, and their self-titled album, but they’ve also balanced a million side projects as well. There is a lot to this group, and it’s hard to encapsulate twenty years of music into one mixtape. They’ve done a pretty damn good job, though, of balancing the hits with rarities and side projects, all while keeping things at a tight twenty tracks that just cracks the sixty-minute mark. That’s no small order, but if you asked me to make an introductory mixtape for Heiruspecs that hit on all the different songs and styles and projects they have worked on over the years, I’d be hard pressed to come up with something better than what we got with 20⁄20. The thing that hit me the most as I listened to this mixtape is just how lucky we are that these musicians not only found each other at a young age, but stayed together, developed great chemistry, and made great hip hop for the past twenty years.

If you’re already a fan, you’ll absolutely love this look back on the last twenty years with one of the most talented hip hop groups, and you might even discovery something from a side project or rarity that you haven’t heard before. If you’ve never heard of Heiruspecs before, I couldn’t think of a better way to get acquainted with one of the gems of a loaded Twin Cities hip hop scene.