At some point – I’m not sure when or how – hip-hop started blurring the line between the genre’s traditional beat patterns and the more experimental, time-signature-skewing ways of electronic music.

But I’m not complaining. As someone with lukewarm interest in electronic music, I’ll take any way to make it easier to digest. It’s like hiding a pill in ice cream for a child.

In this case, I’ve been enthralled by Five Deez and their release Kommunicator. The foursome from Cincinnati — Fat Jon, Pase Rock, Sonic and Kyle David – has put together an album that is sonically delicious. The style of Five Deez (from my reading, it’s an abbreviation for the “Fifth Dimension”) is part-hip-hop and part-house music, and they strike a nice balance that wouldn’t scare off fans of either.

Everything about Kommunicator sounds like a sci-fi experiment in sound and space, a peek into the future of hip-hop.

Five Deez | Fugg That
Five Deez | From Sorrow