As many of you may remember, a few months ago, we here at The Witzard hosted, assembled, and compiled a 7-track remix contest/compilation dubbed The Witzard's Andy Cooper "COMPANION PLAN" Remix Comp. playlist. It included a selection of original genre-eschewing submissions from Places & Spaces' Naturetone, Djar One, Broken Machine Films Presents... (Illuminated Paths) Australian beat-maker Dros, Mike East, UncleRussie, and Three Tree Posse AKA 3TP's Getro. After receiving a moderate amount of praise from The Witzard's trusty readership, the participating producers, and Andy Cooper and his label, Rocafort Records, I decided to start planning for The Witzard's second remix contest. I soon reached out to my friend, frequent collaborator, and Baltimore-based producer John "Jumbled" Bachman.

Together, we collectively agreed to field an instrumental composition to be flipped, sampled, re-constructed, etc. for this second remix "challenge," as Jumbled cleverly dubbed it. It took a little while to get an artist to fully understand and agree to our remix challenge concept, but we soon settled on New York-based Blues/Jazz quartet Cowboys & Frenchman to supply our "source material." Unfortunately, after more than a month, our deadline came and went, and we only received one full "COMPANION PLAN" remix submission from Mantis The Miasma, which we're now liberating on these very pages. Cowboys & Frenchmen's original composition, "Companion Plan," from their 2017 album, Bluer Than You Think can be heard or purchased at their label, Outside In Music's Bandcamp page.


Mantis The Miasma is a 19-year-old rapper, producer, and lyricist hailing from LA. He's one of the founders of a Hip-Hop crew entitled NeSCIENCE, along with fellow emcee Azure The Paradox and producers Zaki AKA Chillzaki & FITH. Although, he only started recording and releasing his own music as recently as 2016, Mantis The Miasma has already been championed by fellow emcees Lt Headtrip, Short Fuze, and Warren Britt, as well as Twitter personality and Hip-Hop critic Elmattic (@thisiselmattic). Mantis' discography includes his MIASMA EP, singles "Caged," "Drowning," and "Wrath," and his most recent release, a proper full-length entitled Worth of My Birth AKA W.O.M.B. "On this album, Mantis The Miasma performs over many eerie, dark beats, while delivering wordplay-dense and rhyme-heavy verses filled with the pain of his youth," Mantis wrote within an emotionally-raw emailed press statement.

Mantis The Miasma self-produced 6 of the 11 tracks contained within W.O.M.B. while the remaining 5 were produced by IsaiahD, Penacho, Musikal, Prophet, and FITH. Just this past weekend, Mantis The Miasma released his first music video for "Drowning" from Worth of My Birth. Filmed by JD and edited BY S Dreadnoug & Mantis The Miasma, "Drowning" is a metaphor-heavy treatment filmed in the middle of the desert, which emphasizes the album's recurring themes of depression, isolation, emptiness, water, and much, much more. Worth of My Birth is now available to stream or download on Mantis The Miasma's Bandcamp page, as well as multiple digital streaming platforms.