No doubt, 1997 was a year where Hip-Hop seemed to be at a significant crossroads. On the one hand, rap music's mainstream was bigger than ever: albums by superstars like The Notorious B.I.G., Missy Elliott and Wyclef were selling by the boatload. Music videos were multimillion dollar affairs and rap hits had taken over the pop charts. But for many, the Shiny Suit party was a major turnoff. The jazzy, cerebral aesthetics of just a few years earlier seemed like a bygone era, as the rap game became obsessed with floss and gloss.

And it was into that climate that Funcrusher Plus emerged.

"I got into DJ'ing from an old 8track tape my father made a couple of days before I was born," Company Flow's Mr. Len explained in 2003. "It was dedicated to me and I listened to it all the time. I found myself wanting to do what he did so I tried and tried. Producing came about because of Anttrx and Enuff Styles. They were friends of mine and taught me how to use their samplers. I used to go over to whoever's house - El-P, Kaos, whoever and make beats until I got my own sampler."

Rappers Justin “Bigg Jus” Ingleton and Jaime “El-P" Meline, along with DJ/producer Leonard “Mr. Len” Smythe, were a trio out of the NYC underground who had a love for classic rap lyricism and a "no bullshit" sonic approach. They were children of The Stretch and Bobbito Show on 89.9 FM; El-P and Mr. Len formed Company Flow as teens in 1993, before Jus joined and the now-trio dropped their debut EP Funcrusher. The buzz from that project landed them on Rawkus Records and set the stage for the group's full-length debut.

The album's lo-fi, no frills production and centering of lyricism flew in stark contrast to the R&B-flavored hits that were becoming the rage; and Company Flow helped cement Rawkus Records as a hotbed for non-commercial underground rap.

First single “8 Steps to Perfection," highlights Juss and P's lyrical bonafides, as their verbosity shines over the swirling synth backdrop and menacing bassline. The sound of Funcrusher... is almost defiantly inaccessible by pop standards, but that doesn't mean the group has no capacity for infectious, head-nodding tracks. "Blind" is one of the album's most attention-grabbing tracks, like a moment for the casual to catch up to the sonic density of the rest of the album. “Population Control” sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, as the group tosses conspiracy theories over thick, dark production that only allows for the lyrics to fire through the murky haze.

"Last Good Sleep" is one of the album's most personal moments, as El-P examines his own contempt for his abusive stepfather. Having recounted a parent who liked to drink and took out his pain on the woman in his life, El-P lays the experience bare. It's the story of a scared little kid and a young man he became, retrospectively angry that he couldn't defend his mother.

"Co Flow wasn’t really about having a bad time, Co Flow to us was about having a good time being bad," El-P told Red Bull Music Academy in 2012. "We saw the humor in uncomfortable situations. Basically, it was just us trying to say the most fucked up shit that we could say, but that we still meant. One of the things that we made sure was we were being ourselves."

Being themselves had always paid off. They'd landed on Rawkus because of what they'd already been able to do on their own with the Funcrusher EP. Company Flow knew who they were.

"When the Rawkus thing happened, Rawkus didn’t have any real identity," El-P explained . "Rawkus had been putting records out, they had tried some rock records, they had tried some dance records, they tried a couple of Hip-Hop records."

"So, we started meeting with people," he continued. "We went with Rawkus, because Rawkus was willing to give us the type of deal that we wanted. In our minds, we had cracked the code, we had found out how to get money while doing the music we wanted to do and not kissing anyone’s ass, and not having to deal with anyone and not having to fucking play the game."

"We were probably one of the first groups in indie Hip-Hop to be like, 'Alright, we’re gonna do a 50/50 split, we gonna own the masters, or fuck off.' And Rawkus were the ones that, when we held our terms up, they were still there."

Queens-born artist Matt Reid was a Hip-Hop head who'd been designing artwork under the moniker “Matt Doo,” and Matt Doo would create some of the most well-known indie rap album art, including the famous cover for Funcrusher Plus. He broke through big after designing the cover for Organized Konfusion's 1994 album, Stress: The Extinction Agenda, before collaborating with Company Flow.

“Artwork of this style had not really appeared on a rap album cover before,” Matt Doo had told Dangerous Drawings in 1997. “When the cover came out, people said, ‘Oh my God. Who is the artist behind this piece?’ Contemporary rap covers are pretty simplistic. I wanted to break boundaries.”

But after designing Tags Of The Times, Vol. 1, a Japanese compilation, Doo slipped into ever-worsening depression and committed suicide at the age of 28.

“Matt Doo did the cover for Funcrusher Plus, and also Organized Konfusion’s Extinction Agenda,” El-P would explain to a journalist years later. He also dedicated 2002's "Tune Mass Damper" to Doo. “A very talented guy who died. He got shot.”

It should go without saying that the legacy of Funcrusher Plus has little to do with commercial success (the album's total sales tallies are estimated at about 200,000 copies), but album would cast a tremendous shadow over independent rap of the late 1990s. It's an album that helped launch Rawkus, and set the stage for long-running careers for the individual members of Company Flow.

But things would deteriorate fairly quickly after the success of Funcrusher Plus. Relationships between the trio would sour after touring to support the album, with Big Juss striking out on his own in 1998. El-P and Mr. Len released the instrumental album, Little Johnny From the Hospitul before departing Rawkus and going their separate ways. El-P would launch his own label Definitive Jux, rising to great prominence in indie rap; and launched his solo career with Fantastic Damage in 2002. He would eventually form the duo Run The Jewels with Atlanta rap star Killer Mike in 2013. Mr. Len dropped his solo debut Pity the Fool: Experiments in therapy... in 2001; eventually forming Roosevelt Franklin with Kimani Rogers from The Masterminds. Bigg Jus formed his own label, Sub Verge Records, and launched his solo career in 2003 with Black Mamba Serums.

"If you go back and listen to Fantastic Damage, Pity The Fool or Black Mamba Serums; on each one of those albums you can hear what each one of us did on Funcrusher...," Mr Len told THE QUIETUS. "The influence we each had on the group as a three member group, it was good to not have that suffer and now, when it comes back around to us being able to be on stage together again, it'll make even more sense to people that have listened to it in the past and to new people who might have only heard Fantastic Damage or Poor Peoples Day from Jus and people that are just kind of stuck on anything I did."

Funcrusher Plus provided a template for any rap upstarts who weren't interested in what the radio sounded like or making something for mass consumption and easy accessibility. "Backpacker rap" would become a tongue-in-cheek term that some loved and some hated, but the no-frills, DIY aesthetic of Funcrusher... is a touchstone for all of it.