It's 7 on a Sunday night, and the Usual Suspecs are on the corner of Robson and Granville with a ghetto blaster blaring. They're hustling All-Star Flow, the latest mix tape from Edge-1, who is one-third of the group along with DJ Krisp and Webmatic. The latter is clearly frustrated by the city's hip-hop scene and happy to make his disgust known.

"You want to know what this city is built off of?" asks an angry Webmatic as passersby do double takes to see what the commotion is. "It's built off of blow jobs. Everybody sucks each other's dicks. People get shit that they don't deserve, and you know why? Because they're sucking somebody's dick, who's sucking somebody's dick, who's sucking somebody's dick."

"It's a vicious cycle of dick-sucking," adds Edge-1.

With the amount of effort they've put into this thing called hip-hop, their frustration is understandable. The group formed when Webmatic and Edge-1 hooked up in the summer of 2000 after meeting through a mutual friend. DJ Krisp came onboard in 2002. Later that year, the trio released a promotional mix tape called Jackin for Beats, which generated considerable underground buzz and led to offers of shows. In the two years since, the trio has produced six more mix tapes, featuring jams touching on such surprisingly serious topics as mortality. Today, the Usual Suspecs are getting set to release their debut album Heat Therapy, whose title track is an adrenaline rush of explosive rhymes and hard-hitting beats. Although the group has rocked countless shows throughout the city, performing with BrassMunk, 2-Live Crew, and Eminem/50 Cent DJ Green Lantern, mainstream recognition has been hard to come by. A huge part of the reason, say the Suspecs, is biased media coverage.

On the subject of other local hip-hop artists who have received praise in the press, Webmatic says: "We sell more mix tapes than these motherfuckers sell albums! How fucked up is that? We've sold thousands of these fucking things, and these motherfuckers are selling like 30, 40, maybe 200 albums and these people are getting more recognition. What I'm saying is that this is our place. Every motherfucker out here knows, but when it comes to people covering shit, like I said, it's who's sucking whose dick. It's who hangs out with who, at whose house on the weekend. That's who they give the recognition to, and that's bullshit."

"We're doing shit ourselves," Edge-1 continues. "We've done everything from day one within the circle, help-free, dick suckingí‚ ­free, dick ridingí‚ ­free. We get out on the street, push our own mix tapes, fund our own mix tapes, and get our own connections for shows."

But with every person who scuttles past the booming speakers, it becomes more evident that the hip-hop hustle in Vancouver isn't an easy one.

"Hip-hop does not exist here," argues an irritated Webmatic. "I read all these stupid little articles where everyone thinks Vancouver's exploding with hip-hop, and it's not. It's fucking garbage. All the shit out here is garbage. You can buy all the nice little Rocawear clothes that you want, but that does not make you experienced enough to talk about this culture."

Krisp chimes in: "Hip-hop is like a fashion out here."

So what will help change that? "It's going to take help from the media," contends Edge-1. "The media has to enlist people who actually know about the hip-hop scene because when you have people expressing opinions from one side of the spectrum that don't know about the other side, people in the middle are going to get confused because they have no idea what's real and what's not."

"You tell me how fucked up it is when somebody can come from Toronto and get more respect from this city than someone who has been putting in work," adds Webmatic. "How fucked up is that? They're not even from here!"

He exhales angrily, and as a group of teens walk by their setup, shouts, "Buy our mix tape! We're from Toronto!" The rest of the crew laugh.

In addition to downtown street corners, Edge-1's All-Star Flow is available at Dipt Urban Hook-Ups, Bassix, and Beat Street Records. Heat Therapy is expected to drop later this year.

"Once we cop the right deal and the album comes out, it's over," Webmatic says. "I can guarantee you, nobody in Canada has ever put together the type of music we put together. I can feel it. I know it. Put that shit in writing. It's over."