Immortal Technique Announces Rebel Armz Album & "The Martyr

Exclusive: Immortal Technique also updates "The Middle Passage" and explains delays.

Yesterday (April 1), Immortal Technique, Poison Pen, Swave Sevah and Constant Flow stopped by the HipHopDX office to speak about a variety of topics. During an interview with HipHopDX's Editor-in-Chief Justin Hunte, Technique revealed information about his next few projects and provided an exclusive regarding a Rebel Armz album.

"I've got people playing instruments on this mothafucka," Technique said of his highly anticipated album, The Middle Passage. Technique continued by saying that he had to scrap two songs from the project recently because of issues clearing samples.

"I really wanted to go all out and have an organic sound but it's still Hip Hop. This doesn't sound like an Opera album or some crazy shit like that. We didn't go off the deep end but technically, I had to scrap two [songs]. What came out of that was also the idea that if 'The Martyr' was so successful - because we did over a million downloads for it - if 'The Martyr' was so successful, we're gonna have to have a 'Martyr 2' now. That unreleased song is gonna go on 'The Martyr 2.'"

Next, Technique shared that he has plans to release a collaborative project with Rebel Armz, a group of emcees that includes Poison Pen and Diabolic.

"I'll be able to put out The Middle Passage, 'The Martyr [2]' and me, [Poison] Pen, Diabolic and the rest of the crew have been kicking the idea around a lot about doing a Rebel Armz album and I think it's overdue. So I'm gonna say [it] here on DX, since y'all like exclusives, that we are definitely gonna do it. This is the first time I'm saying it. The Rebel Armz album [with] Immortal Technique and the whole fuckin' squad is gonna happen. It's going down."

The Middle Passage has been delayed for several years. In 2010, Technique said he was working on the album, which was to be a "conceptual" project. By 2011, Technique explained that he hoped to release the album in the first quarter of the following year. “[It’s about] halfway done," he explained then. In that same year, Technique released "The Martyr" to critical praise and over a million downloads online. The Rebel Armz consists of various emcees including Technique, Chino XL, Swave Sevah and Akir.