Action Bronson with The Alchemist | Neptune Theatre | Friday, April 3, 2015
Words by Emery Desper.
(Due to complications, 206UP wasn’t able to get photos from the evening. Action Bronson would encourage you to smoke something and use your imagination.)
Kevin Lavitt is a producer, musician and singer who’s done the bulk of his work in Seattle with Raz Simone and the rest of the Black Umbrella family. His debut EP, Planets, is self-produced and features a number of area MCs and vocalists. The album’s eight tracks are heady, soulful doses of modern hip-hop and R&B, one of the highlights being “Strange” which finds singer and frequent Black Umbrella collaborator Ariana DeBoo stretching out her jazz vocals. Download Planets for free, here.
Thus far in 2015 Raz Simone is outpacing all other rappers in the Town in terms of artistic output and bold statements. He’s turned this very website into his own virtual PR firm with a steady barrage of video and audio drops. He’s rarely taken a day off, it seems, and today is no exception.
Baby Jesus — available for free download here — is Simone’s third album project of the year and deals heavily with ideas of self-actualization, self-worth and the redemptive properties associated with those two things. Like his Macklemore Privilege & Chief On Keef Violence EP, the message isn’t always cut and dry; it’s complicated by meddling factors like the power of your own subconscious, your environment and the demands placed upon you by the company you keep. A world of cognitive dissonance, indeed.
Click here to watch Raz’s latest video for his song “Hallelujah.” and stream the title track from Baby Jesus below.
Update (4.10.15): Check out the video for the title track to Baby Jesus, below.
The Physics dropped the excellent one-off “About You” back in early March and followed-up the audio yesterday with an equally sterling music video directed by the 96 collective. In the clip, Thig refines low-key stunting which has become so vital to his public persona, Justo enjoys a sandwich and elicits a chorus of “Awwws” when he’s shown holding his baby daughter, and a grip of local kids sing the word “Love” which adds even greater warmth to a song that already immediately connects to the heart. Singer Camila Recchio brings it all home with her affecting chorus. The Physics remain Seattle’s most sophisticated and effortlessly cool hip-hop groups — scratch that, musical groups — doing work.
Raz Simone recalls heartbreak in his latest song and video, “Pulling,” from the upcoming Baby Jesus project (due April 7).
If memory serves, 206UP was one of the first (if not the first) local website to feature a piece of rapper/producer/sound engineer Carl Roe’s music (that would be this internet-ancient episode of 206UP’s The TrackMeet — remember those?). Carl won that contest and, in his estimation, has been proverbially winning ever since.
Ones and Zeroes is his debut full length album and, as the album cover illustrates, it’s the sprawling portrait of an MC weathered by a hard life: Roe is an Iraq war veteran with a childhood that was far from sunny. Hardscrabble lyricism abounds on Ones and Zeroes, with bars reserved for dismissive bloggers, talent bookers and short-sighted musical peers (see: “No No,” “Ones and Zeroes”). But there’s also a well-woven autobiographical narrative (“Eye For An I,” “The River”) that likely informs the darkness found elsewhere on the album: the unsettling killer’s fantasy “Murder On The Clock” and paranoid, pro-Second Amendment “Fire Sale”).
The boom-bap production is parts soulful and rugged, matching subject matter, and beat credits include Brainstorm, DJ Semaj, Randy Ross, and Trox. Roe also enlists a bunker of loyal MC lieutenants including frequent collaborators Ripynt and Produktive. Ones and Zeroes is probably two or three tracks too long, but by far represents Carl Roe’s best work to date.
This contest is now closed.
206UP and ENT Legends are excited to be giving away a pair of tickets to Bay Area rapper Iamsu’s upcoming show at Neumos, Seattle on Wednesday, April 8, 2015. Entry is easy: See that flyer below? Just follow the instructions like the good citizen you are and we’ll consider you entered.
206UP will pick one winner at random no later than 5 PM PST on Monday, April 6, 2015 and inform him/her via Twitter.
Iamsu! “Eyes On Me” Tour (feat. Rome Fortune, Dave Steezy, Show Banga, & Mani Draper) | Neumos, Seattle | Wednesday, 8 PM, April 8, 2015 | All ages
Check out the video for “T.W.D.Y.” featuring Too $hort and E-40, below:
Jarv Dee, Mackned and Cam The Mac float through the trap like Moor Gang holy ghosts. “Don’t Know The Gods” is a taste of Jarv’s upcoming Satellites, Swishers and Spaceships.
The things that occur in mom’s Volvo. SMH. Porter Ray and partner making that “Corner Bop.” Directed by Black Constellation collective’s Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes. From Porter’s Fundamentals mixtape of last year.
Part lament, part performance piece, Raz Simone’s new video “All In My Mind” taps into the sexually and emotionally vacant sub-layers of the human psyche. Watch Raz ignore cops (and their mounts), curious passersby, even a bad woman in a flowing black dress, for the sake of connecting to the camera. Perhaps, in the midst of a month-and-a-half long stint as the most discussed rapper in the Town, that’s all he feels connected to at this moment. From his upcoming project Baby Jesus (due April 7).
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 