Flatbush Zombies Breathe Life Into Brooklyn Hip-Hop

It’s ironic that a group named Flatbush Zombies are helping to breathe life into Brooklyn’s hip-hop scene. Meechy Darko, Zombie Juice and Erick Arc Elliott began to make a name for themselves last year after their video for the wildly dark “Thug Waffle” spread across the Internet.

Now they the trio represents a new and diverse generation of BK MCs that include the likes Troy Ave, eXquire and Dyme-A-Duzin. Before MTV takes the 2013 Video Music Awards to the Barclays Center on Sunday, August 25, we hit the streets of Brooklyn to soak up some culture from the borough’s emerging hip-hop talent. Every day this week, we’ll spotlight a brand-new artist for our Brooklyn Hip-Hop Week, and the Zombies are next up.

They couldn’t be more excited. “I feel made pompous when I tell people that it’s the best place on earth. It’s the most cultured, there is no place like this, there really isn’t,” Darko told MTV News.

Where I’m From
“Brooklyn; possibly means everything to me. I learned everything I need to learn from this place. From the streets to the people, words can’t even describe how I love this place.” — Meechy Darko “Flatbush has every culture — Haitian, Jamaican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Trini, Jews.” — Zombie Juice

The Brooklyn Influencers
“Mos Def, to me, his first album is the most influential hip-hop album to me.” — Erick Arc Elliott

“[Fabolous’] embodiment to me is swagger; he got the tracks for the bitches… That’s a core Brooklyn rapper, he can rap his ass off and he has the total package.” — MD

The Brooklyn MC Is…
“I think of blue collar, I think of hustlers. I think of all parts of the spectrum when it comes to finances.” — MD

2013 VMAs
“For MTV to be here, it’s so crazy. When I first heard that, it blew my mind. I watched it for years elsewhere and not it’s in my city, not only that it’s in Flatbush, that’s crazy to me,” — EAE

Check MTV News and RapFix.MTV.com all this week to hear from your favorite Brooklyn artists, all leading up to the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards live from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on August 25.