“We have proven everything anyone has told us is impossible is possible. We’ve done it,” MindsOne’s Scott Miller, aka Tronic, says. The group’s first full-length LP, Transitions, was released July 29th, preceding an East Coast tour. Throughout the process that has led them here, Tronic and Konscience (birth name Joe Latterner) have exercised creative control.

“Half the time was spent getting the distractions out the way,” Tron says of the year it took to create the album.

“When we put something together, there’s a lot of meditation,” Konscience adds.

Listening to the two of them speak is not unlike watching them onstage, each working off the other’s ideas, the conversation almost flowing in verses.

In 2006 MindsOne released Time Space Continuum, a cosmic EP. Transitions is “far out there, in comparison to other cats,” Konscience says. This album—whose title speaks to the growth the group has gone through, not only since ’06 but in life— is a panoramic if their EP was a collection of still shots. The scope, musically and creatively, has widened. And the ability to cope with transitions, handle and adapt moves life forward, explains Konscience, who graduated with a degree in sociology and currently works in social services. It is this sort of reality, of exercised perspectives, that lends truthfulness to the group’s work. “This is the largest and most diverse thing we’ve done,” Tronic notes. “Doing it taught us what it would take.”

After laying down the vocals for the new album in the renowned Chung King Studios in NYC, where such giants as Biggie, OutKast, Lauryn Hill, Run DMC, the Beastie Boys and WuTang Clan recorded, Tronic mixed the album, something few artists themselves do. The phenomenal work ethic each shares is exemplified through the quality of the product. “We’re going beyond what hip-hop is, to find out what it can be and what it could be,” Tronic states. The difference in the process of making music differs from mass-produced rap. “It would be like calling a cardboard box architecture,” he compares.

Their sound is grounded in the classic, from the artists who inspired them, to the saxophone that plays throughout “Get Flexi.” While piano plays forward, the scratch of a record flows around it, wound together by the poetic and well-meshed lyrics that the MC spits. The song hasn’t existed on wax for long, but the sound is timeless.

Educated Consumers (Washington D.C.), Dezmatic (Albany, NY) and DJ Slim Deluxe (Wilmington, NC) will join MindsOne in Wilmington on July 31st at Red Dog’s. From there, the crew is headed to Charley Brownz on August 1st and The Library at Chapel Hill on the 2nd before heading up north on the No Merch for Oil tour. The album release party is set for September 6th at 16 Taps. Check out myspace.com/NoMerchForOil or myspace.com/MindsOne for a full schedule and samples of music. Be on the lookout, now and far into the future of hip-hop.