5 O'Clock Shadowboxers is the hip-hop duo in the tradition of duos such as Gangstarr, where one artist is the vocalist and the other supplies the instrumental tracks. In this case, the vocalist is Zilla Rocca of the Philadelphia-based hip-hop group Clean Guns (as well as the President of Beat Garden Entertainment) and the producer is Seattle resident Douglas Martin (the brains behind Fresh Cherries from Yakima, the experimental folk-pop singer/songwriter project and music blog). Over Martin's beats (self-described as "grimy, guttural, sample-based hip-hop prone to psychedelic freak-outs"), Rocca supplies a dizzying array of references, from television (The Wire) to movies (Sandlot) to quoting Wu-Tang Clan (the chorus of "High Noon"), coupled with an incredibly precise flow, clever punchlines and incisive, multi-syllabic wordplay.

The pair are currently recording an EP which will be available as a free download later on in 2008. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.