Anti-Pop Consortium formed in 1997 when Beans, High Priest, M. Sayyid and producer Earl Blaize met at a poetry slam in New York City. The four of them put out a series of mixtapes (proper cassettes!) on their own Anti-Pop Records and called them “Consortium” volumes 1, 2 and 3. The people who were picking up the tapes began to refer to the coalition behind them as the Anti-Pop Consortium and the group as we now know it was born.