Jeanna DuerscherL The Roanoke Times

Tre' mendous, Poe Mack and Case Jones stand in their recording studio at Mack's home. The three are members of the local music group TrueNoke.

TrueNoke Music has seen rappers come and go. But at the core, the decade-old hip-hop production collective is about Byron "Poe" Mack and Casey "Case Jones" Jaffa.

For years, they mostly performed together, calling themselves Mack Jones. In the past couple of years, though, they've been working on their own projects.

Mack, 28, recently released a solo CD, "Day 6: The Greatest Unknown," working his strong voice and sharp lyrics over such unexpected song samples as "Sweet Home Alabama" and Toto's "Georgy Porgy."

Jaffa's new disc, "Love Jones," features some of the funniest rhymes you'll hear from a local artist, with an underpinning of 1990s pop-rock samples.

Even while they follow their own muses, they want people to know that their partnership is by no means over.

"Honestly, we're just all into trying new things," Mack said. "Mack Jones hadn't died, and never will. We're just trying to expand ourselves."

Any show where they share the bill, they will share the stage for at least a couple of numbers.

"Same old, same old, but new twists, new things," said Jaffa, 34, of Roanoke by way of the Bronx, N.Y. "Expanding is the main thing."

You can catch their solo acts and some old-school Mack Jones action Friday night in Roanoke, at Awful Arthur's, Towers Shopping Center.

Also on the bill is their TrueNoke colleague, Tre'Mendous, and Greensboro, N.C., rapper Ed E. Ruger.

Awful's at Towers has become a local home spot for them over the past year or so. And that marks another significant change in TrueNoke fortunes.

In years past, Mack Jones struggled to land gigs, telling The Roanoke Times in 2004 that most of their shows were underground house parties and self-promoted. That changed, particularly because of Barry Caldwell, who books shows at the Roanoke and New River Valley Awful Arthur's locations and is a huge supporter of underground, local hip-hop, they said. He's the reason they don't have to worry so much about booking shows on their home turf.

Now that the local show problem is solved, they hope to spread their music and influence farther. Short term, it's about playing music and having fun with their fans, Jaffa said.

"You never see nothing bad break out at our shows," Jaffa said. "It's just about having a good time in a good atmosphere. ... We touch on many things. We just, we don't talk about how much money we have, 'cause I don't have any. But if I did, I'd be rapping about it, believe me."

Jaffa delivers magazines to stores and supermarkets for a living. Jones works part time at Flat 5 Studio in Salem and spends a good bit of time producing acts at his home studio. They hope one day that they'll be able to turn TrueNoke into a major label.

"We're looking to do this ourselves and control our destiny as much as we can, ourselves, and not put it in the hands of a bunch of greedy SOBs, you know," Mack said.

Working with the myspace.com social networking site, they've reached out to out-of-town artists and nightspots, parlaying their contacts into a short, late-winter tour of Southern cities that they said was successful. Another tour is in the works.

Then there are all the local acts under the TrueNoke umbrella. Lately, singer Harmonic and rapper Betty White are aboard. Rappers Tre'Mendous and Mr. Dynamite remain a part of the collective, with Tre'Mendous and Mack forming the duo Mid-Atlantic Kingz.

"Everything's working out real good" with the Kingz, said Tre'Mendous (real name: Tracy Rivers). "We've got a lot of big plans."

DJ Samson has been working the tables for years, but Mack has added two other mix-masters -- DJ Dickie (also of Nancy and Two Meteors) and DJ Styles.

You can see all of them perform at spots in the Roanoke and New River valleys, and can find them online to check out their product through Mack's or Jaffa's MySpace pages.

You can also find TrueNoke records at Plan 9 Music, on Grandin Road.

All the while, Mack is producing at his home studio in Salem. He co-produced "Love Jones" with Jaffa, and produced Illbotz's final CD, "Ring Tones for Rotary Phones."

It's the kind of thing that attracts the interest of up-and-comers who want to be a part of things.

"We got some people outside the association who we're looking at," Mack said. "But we're careful about who we groom, because we've still got ourselves to groom."