World weary travelers Gabriel Teodros and AirMe wrote and recorded this track during a 24-hour layover in Washington DC en route from Addis Ababa to the Six. It’s a great window into the creative minds of two observant artists caught between shifting time zones. Watch for their Children Of The Dragon coming soon.
D-Sea is a rapper heretofore unknown by 206UP. Thanks to Mack E for putting us on. D’s new clip “Hold Up” was shot by Mack’s L.A.C.O.S.A. teammate Produktive.
Honor Roll affiliate Bryce Bowden dropped the first video from his BZA The Damaga album. “Thursday” was produced by Mello Music Group’s Def Dee and the video was shot by A.K. Romero.
Barkada is the answer to the question: “Can Prometheus Brown and Bambu just make an album of slick-ass fuckin’ raps over slappin’ beats?” The title track makes it so. Produced by 206 fixture Bean One and directed by Harry Clean of Detooz Films.
In an effort to not get sued by an unnamed grocery store chain, Brothers From Another picked a couple of harmless locales to serve as the backdrop for their new video for “Mad Park Beach Bums” — a track which comes free with their Tacos On Broadway EP — neither of which is actually the eponymous beach park of the song title. No matter: it’s a party wherever Tiglo and Cole happen to crack brews, even if it’s in front of one of those concrete highway barriers in that shitty stretch of I-5 between Lynnwood and Everett.
The soundscapes of Blue Sky Black Death often feel like they’re melting into each other, shifting form into things wholly different than where they originally began. It seems natural then that the production duo might remix one of their own albums, which is exactly what they’ve done on Glaciers Melted. This seven track EP dropped in late January and we’re just getting hip.
Donte Peace traversed the back alleys, rooftops and even basement laundry rooms for the sharp black and white contrast for this clip, “Ill Hill”. Frequent collaborator MaxTrax on the beat and Brian Tolliver with the HD eye.
It’s almost the weekend and I wanted to leave you, dear readers, with this brand new gem of a comedy album from Hari Kondabolu, a stand-up from Queens, New York. His brand of humor trends #racial #liberal and #progressive, which makes him sound like a bookish snore. Not the case! I’ve been to many of his shows (and many of his brother’s shows) and, while he certainly does appeal to the socially-minded, racially-conscious among us, he does so with an adeptness rare among contemporary popular comics. If Chris Rock circa Bring The Pain was the embodiment of outward comedic rage as a result of marginalization, then Hari is the smoldering inward counterpart. It’s no wonder he was a writer for the brilliant but (unfortunately) now defunct Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell.
Hari is removed from Seattle by less than a degree of separation — he used to live in the Town and counts Blue Scholars and Macklemore among his friends — so he falls conveniently within 206UP’s purview. In any case, Waiting For 2042 functions as both a comedic insider’s perspective on what it means to be a person of color in America and as a translation for those on the outside (read: white people) who wish to understand what it means. (Those people are rare, but they do exist and I’m trying to collect as many of them as I can.) As it turns out, some of my best friends are actually “you (white) people” and this album is required listening if you hope to keep me around for much longer.
Hightek Lowlives are the R&B/electro trio that low-key dropped the title track to their new LP, Humanoid Void, last fall. That track featured Seattle mainstay Gabriel Teodros (who also appears on the song “Believe In Me”). The rest of Humanoid Void falls into similar futuristic grooves behind the vocals of EMP Sound Off! winner Otieno Terry who — at first glance anyway — looks like the next star to emerge in the Seattle music scene.
Dave B and Sol lament tragic female figures on this new joint; I think the commonly used term is “jump offs”. In any case, the hazy, neon-lit beat is courtesy of Jake One and it knocks ever so smoothly in the din of a hot-boxed “Boathouse”. Not that I would know or anything.
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