It’s fresh to see two cats with strong ties to Seattle blow up something major the way Grieves and Budo are doing. Inking a deal with the best known independent hip-hop label in the country (Rhymesayers) will do that for you. The duo’s next full-length offering is titled Together/Apart and will hit the paved and dirt roads of all this land’s hamlets on June 21.
Month: May 2011
SHOW: Shabazz Palaces & THEESatisfaction @ Santos Party House NYC, 5.12.11
Click flyer for more info.
Best live look yet for Shabazz Palaces? Quite possibly. The enigmatic crew brings its live presentation to The Apple for the third (?) go-round, this time to one of the Lower East Side’s most venerable party establishments, Santos Party House. Oh yeah, the equally talented Cat and Stas of THEESatisfaction will dazzle, as well. This one’s in my own backyard, so how couldn’t I?
DOWNLOAD: 3 Songs With MTK – Notion
Click album cover to D/L.
Get familiar with Seattle MC Notion on this pleasantly bumping three-track EP featuring production by MTK. Notion’s high-pitched rasp rides with admirable precision over MTK’s soulful thump, though guest MC Chev (one of the best local rappers flying under the general public’s radar) kills him on his own sh-t on the EP’s best track, “Right Here.”
VIDEO: “Head Up” – Rockwell Powers & Ill Pill
The official video for “Head Up,” the best track from Rockwell Powers and Ill Pill’s Kids in the Back 2 (read the 206UP.COM Review here) and download the LP at this location.
I dig the washed-out color combined with the nighttime high-def. Classy visuals for a classy track. Read what the MC himself had to say about it:
These videos were all filmed within a five block radius of my apartment in downtown Tacoma and all the shots are of places I am on a weekly or daily basis.
Head is especially telling because while writing Kids in the Back 2 I would often walk around downtown at night before I would sit with my pen. If you’ve been to Downtown Tacoma at night you know that 5 days week its quiet and tranquil. I would walk around the city and think about what I wanted to write about and what images I wanted to use.
The other shot in this video is from a live show (our recent album release party), and that is important to me because I always write lyrics with the intent of performing them. Especially with personal songs like this, I always picture the end result of the creative process which to me is sharing the music on stage.
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