Stoned & Dethroned, the long-awaited fourth collaborative effort between SRFSCHL team member Nacho Picasso and the dudes that brought him to the dance in the first place, Blue Sky Black Death, has arrived. It bears a strong passing resemblance to everything that came before; if that surprises you then you’re probably the one that’s been sleeping.
New year, new logo, same breezy outlook on life. Brothers From Another start off 2015 with 3-Peat, an EP that belies the cooler weather outside. More than ever before, this suite of songs sounds like a victory lap for the trio of Tiglo, Cole and Beeba.
Herein lies the debut music video from Hightek Lowlives, the unexpectedly accomplished electro R&B act responsible for 2014’s Humanoid Void, an album that stands up in quality against any R&B release from last year from any city of your choosing. Believe that. Front man Otieno Terry looks, sounds and acts like a star in the clip.
Flyer than most, surfacing above the clouds in a supernatural state, but always just that: Natural. THEESatisfaction dropped “Recognition,” the first video from their upcoming album EarthEE (due February 24 on Sub Pop). This clip serves as deference to the movers and the shakers, the inspiration and the makers, of Black American art everywhere. Filmed on location at the Schomberg Center in Harlem, and the homes of John Coltrane, Sun-Ra and Marian Anderson in Philadelphia, the video is fittingly humble and resplendent in its simplicity.
International playboy Kublakai with a new drop from his already-kinda-sorta-released Wheels Up (due digitally on February 2). Kubi, friend of this website and penguins everywhere, posted this heartfelt essay about the creative process behind Wheels Up. Dare we say, based on the first three tracks from the album, it looks to be the best, most honest body of work yet from the underground hero.
Raz Simone’s music is all about quiet moments amidst madness; distilling turbulent thoughts into the things that matter most. “So Many Things,” as it turns out, is actually about a slight handful. From the forthcoming Cognitive Dissonance: Part 2 (due January 28).
Happy New Year, family!
Thanks for checking back in with 206UP. We have some big things planned for 2015, the first of which is a site re-design! So we’re going on hiatus for a few days while we get our ducks in a row. Stay tuned to our Twitter feed for updates and we hope your new year is off to a healthy and happy start.
– Chul
206UP turned five years old this year and I, as my mother and carbon dating would assuredly tell you, turned 37 in human years.
As far as the blog goes, it has never been more self-sustaining. We (and I say “we” because, unlike the previous four years of the site’s existence, there are voices contributing now beyond my own) are a production company, a resource for insight into live shows in Seattle, and a nationally recognized tastemaking outlet on par with the Pitchforks, Consequences and Wonderings of the online music world. (In a strange twist, however, none of the editors at those sites ever return my calls.) I kid, obviously, but still… Things are going really, really great in the 206UP office.
In my personal life, I can’t recall a year when I experienced wider swings in happiness and anger. The happy part came when I got married in May (I know, mazel tov!). And the anger part heaved and fluxed throughout the year with the ease of a sighing elephant, as blatant transgressions within our society dominated feeds and headlines.
How’s that for light and dark?
Thankfully, however, hip-hop goes where we go. And Seattle, being a microcosm of the rest of the country, did as much to illuminate the sustaining, healing aspects of the culture locally, as other more pronounced voices did their part nationally. The most important music, in my opinion, spoke to our most important concerns. Below the jump you’ll find albums that did just that, and yet others for which escapism was an equally important task. In either endeavor, this is the hip-hop from Seattle that best held us down in 2014.
Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images News
Great things happened in Seattle hip-hop in the year 2014 and many of those things took the form of cohesive, fully-realized albums. We’ll get to listing some of those tomorrow. Today, though, we’ll be talking about the two records that mattered most to 206UP, both within the last 365 calendar days and, as we’ll clumsily attempt to illustrate, time immemorial. One has specific ties to Seattle (it’s this blog’s top hip-hop album of the year). The other, while not intrinsically tied to the Town, was such a monumental — and surprise — release that it demands mentioning here. Both records flirted with the dimension of time the same way a drummer like Questlove flirts with rhythm: easily manipulated, altered to slow or speed our senses, and employed to imprint thoughts, memories and ideas onto our subconscious so that images like the one above become mere fossils in a morality tale we hope to never tell again in real life.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 