I made a beat, which became “She’s Calling”—the first track on our first album. I was driving in a terrible snowstorm from Minneapolis with Yoni, and somehow we ended up off the road in an embankment. We missed a tree by this much, and we almost died. It was the worst situation I’ve ever been in. Later on, we were at an AAA station. I remember we were like, “We gotta do this.” That, for me, is when cLOUDDEAD began. We didn’t even have a name for it yet.
– Odd Nosdam

Clouddead (styled as cLOUDDEAD) was an experimental hip hop group consisting of Doseone (Adam Drucker), Why? (Yoni Wolf) and Odd Nosdam (David Madson).

The group’s name came from a nonsensical knock-knock joke Drucker’s sister told him when she was five years old.

Generally Drucker and Wolf provide the group’s vocals while Madson produces the music. Occasionally Madson’s vocals can be heard, while Drucker and Wolf provide music, especially for the group’s second album.

Clouddead’s sound is notoriously hard to define, and although it is undoubtedly grounded in “traditional” hip-hop, influences as varied as electronica, psychedelic music and indie rock can be heard. Because of this non-traditional take on hip-hop, more conservative elements of the rap community have characterized Clouddead as “smartarse surrealism,” with some elements of the community rejecting the notion that the group can be classed as hip hop at all, ignoring Sole’s request to “just call it hip hop.”

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