Originally titled the Yah Mos Def, before pressure from rapper Mos Def persuaded the boys to change their name, the YMD's music was founded on the idea of rapping over old hardcore punk beats, and trying to see how many ways they could intersect the two worlds. Like the very comparable Beastie Boys before them -- in timbre and attitude -- the YMD consider themselves a punk group first and foremost, with much love for Minor Threat and Ian McKaye's brand of assaulting crowds with explosive 19-minute sets of screaming fury. Before forming the duo in 2004, Bryan Poerner had made a name for himself by releasing some CDs (including one by future bandmate Rick Mitchell's punk group the Clocks) on his independent label Track Star Records, named for his background as a track runner from middle school through college. Poerner paired up with Mitchell in an attempt to try something new for the fun of it and their live performances became noteworthy, patterned after the spastic abandon of hardcore, albeit in a less menacing, more fun-loving version. On-stage they became a hardly containable bundle of motion, headbanging, pogoing, and flailing breathlessly, while alternating mile-a-minute rhymes. In 2007, they took their formula to their lo-fi bedroom studio, and applied their near-hysterical raps to samples taken from punk and indie releases to create a raw amalgam of a recording for My Pal God Records titled Excuse Me, This Is the Yah Mos Def. ~ Jason Lymangrover