Just when you thought you’d heard the nerdiest, most pocket-protecting variation on hip-hop ever (cLOUDDEAD, anyone?), another crew from California comes along to take the cake. LA’s The Shapeshifters are some freakin’ dorks. Kicking around since the early ’90s, the AWOL One-led crew ain’t all bad, though. Unlike the majority of the work coming from their NoCal Anticon brethren, The Shapeshifters Was Here lacks pretension, and features a few inspired, pure hip-hop tracks like “Run The Crowd.” Even their semi-embarrassing take on the Transformers theme “More Than Meets The Eye” contains a few lyrical gems, and mostly adept lyrical flow.