"I love to bring that Old School fun and energy into my music," Phoenix-based hip hop artist and coffee shop poet Vocab Malone says. At live shows you can catch him cracking corny jokes, busting random freestyles, and even being, well, happy! But can hip hop music really be happy? Vocab says "yes". Really, Vocab is just describing the style of his new album: playful and joy-filled at one point, yet dark and serious at another, energetic and silly, but also depressed and melancholy. In short, it's an album of strong contrasts ... Happy Hardcore. Vocab enlists an array of talent to accomplish this: Pigeon John, Red Cloud, Lightheaded, Man of War, DJ's Manwell and Bombay, and the versatile Cre One, who handles production for the whole album. After a number of notable compilation and guest appearences, a slot at the National Poetry Slam Finals, and a Summer tour, Vocab is set to release his fourth album. This is his first project on Makeshift Records, also home to Patrick Andrew (PFR). Vocab's previous album, The Notepad Nomad received extensive airplay and charted on Radio & Records. It also generated possitive press from The Arizona Republic, East Valley Tribune, The Phoenix New Times, URB, and a wide variety of indie publications and local television stations. If you want something that looks back to a simpler time in hip hop while still pushing ahead - all the while declaring God as the centeral focus - then search no further than Vocab Malone's Happy Hardcore.