Hollywood Undead
Hollywood Undead hails (unsurprisingly) from the streets of Hollywood, California, mixing brash hip-hop, rock and minor metalcore touches with cocky posturing and thug attitudes. Owing much of its popularity and exposure to the social networking monster Myspace, the group — whose members usually wear masks in public — started as the musical project of J-Dog and Tha Producer in June 2005. They uploaded some new music to their profile and very quickly started amassing song plays and online friends with tracks about drinking, sex and emo kids. The gang, as the guys liked to refer to themselves, also grew to include seven members: J-Dog and Tha Producer alongside Charlie Scene, Johnny 3 Tears (formerly called The Server), Funny Man, Shady Jeff and Da Kurlzz. Shady Jeff, however, made his exit after only a few months. As the band's online profile steadily increased, Myspace head honcho Tom Anderson wasn't immune and wound up featuring Hollywood Undead's song "No. 5" on Myspace's first compilation album, in addition to giving them the distinction of being the first act signed to the site's new record label (distributed by Interscope) in 2005. However, over two years later, the guys were apparently still putting the finishing touches on the album.