Will Johnsen, curator of all good things over at Seattle’s Members Only blog, was gracious enough to let me contribute my review of Phonte’s Charity Starts at Home to their site. This LP resonated with me in a different way than most, so pardon the self-indulgent turn my writing takes. Click here to read the full review over at Members Only.
Click album cover to D/L.
The last time I was at a house party, a dude who could not handle his liquor (four drinks in he was puking in someone’s bedroom) became very upset at a former girlfriend and proceeded to defile her character in all sorts of horrible ways in front of everyone in attendance. The last time I was at a club with a group of people whom I mostly didn’t know, I spent the majority of the night practicing my lip-reading skills (of which I have none) and nodding at what seemed like appropriate times during the course of a dozen meaningless conversations with people I will probably never see again.
Thank goodness, then, for music like Stevie and Sam’s SwimSuits, the soundtrack to a fantastical world where every hot girl at the party wants to go down on you, and every night out at the club feels like you’re kicking it in someone’s living room with a thousand of your closest friends. That’s the reality SwimSuits (and its other similar electro-R&B/rap ilk) exists in. It’s fun. It’s hedonistic. It’s impossibly expensive. And it’s a pleasure to see a crew from Seattle parroting the themes of more well-known taste-makers who share the same subgenre.
Stevie and Sam don’t do it as well as Frank Ocean or The Weeknd, but not for lack of trying. They’re not excellent vocalists yet, though both are effective in imparting the flippant casual cool that’s so vital to the mood. State Of The Artist’s TH lends his gravelly MC register to “Timeless Opulence,” a lifted bass-heavy slow-roll that celebrates a contented rap-life stasis derived from being high either off drugs or your own delusions of grandeur. Themes and aesthetic remain mostly the same throughout SwimSuits with Stevie and Sam bouncing their cocky brag-rap/sing off electronic soundscapes awash in keyboard waves and bounding with rapid high-hat and electronic adornments.
Unrelenting talk of debauchery aside, there’s a detectable element of innocence here. Almost like Stevie and Sam don’t quite know what it is they’re engaging in, even though they’ve seen it a thousand times before on television. Frank Ocean can’t help but bare a cautious optimism that’s betrayed by his old soul. The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye seems to have already hit bottom and is trolling the void for as many good times as he can before beginning the essential steps toward survival. Stevie and Sam still have room to grow into their indulgences, both musically and habitually. For this duo, a million different directions are possible and virtually all are promising.
Click album cover to D/L.
MC Carl Roe is an interesting entrant to the Seattle rap scene. A native of Elgin, Illinois, a conflicted youth in the Midwest followed by an enlistment and tour of duty in Iraq as a U.S. Army Infantryman is the path Roe followed before his arrival in Seattle, where he is now a hopeful and hustling artist in the local hip-hop scene.
206UP.COM became familiar with Roe back in January in the second edition of The TrackMeet (click here for that post). His winning entry, “Lock it Down, Sew it Up,” was a frantic double-time composition paired with boasts by the MC of his superior rap skills. After getting past the beat, which had a fairly dated feel, a hungry rapper with a very natural flow and knack for maneuvering complicated rhyme patterns was revealed.
The Broken Time Machine is Carl Roe’s official entry into the Seattle hip-hop landscape. It’s eight tracks long and has an old-school feel, with big beats and breaks, a few overwrought rock flourishes and Roe’s signature double-time. “Stuntman” (the previously-released single featuring J. Bre, another up-and-coming Town MC) is the best track, a commanding declaration of the two rapper’s dominance over their lesser competition, or “stuntmen” as they call them.
“The voice of the Army Infantry in hip-hop,” as Roe claims in his bio, his stint in the Army informs the lyrical foundation of TBTM. Deeply affected by his Iraq war experience, the MC is unashamed of allowing his music to act as an outlet for his anguish, especially on the emotive “We Own the Night” which has an Evanescence-like quality (for better or worse).
It’s a safe bet Carl Roe’s style will not resonate with everyone. His flow and beat choice operate at-odds with contemporary hip-hop, and of course there will be the requisite criticisms centered around his skin color. No matter. What Seattle has in this artist is an MC focused intently on the craft and how his particular life experience fits in to it. In hip-hop, that’s all you can really ask for.
The primary goal of those truly astute comedians who center their acts around observations on on race and racism is to extract some degree of deeper understanding from their audiences. For them, there is no greater offense than crowd ambivalence. The disappointment in audiences’ failings is the reason Dave Chappelle divorced a fifty million dollar contract and fled to Africa to save his sanity. It’s the reason Chris Rock’s early stand-up routines were philosophically based in a contemptuous rage for the world and many of the people sitting before him. And it’s the same reason Das Racist (composed of three well-educated men of color) allow themselves to fall into lackadaisical stage performances at shows where, it’s important to add, the audience is typically composed of white, college-aged males who are all too eager to repeatedly chant the chorus to “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” but not consider why the song is so devastatingly funny. If Das Racist concerts were frequented in the majority by folks of color, it’s certain you would see an entirely different display of the trio’s very substantial rap skills rather than the lampooning they derive from the attendant status quo.
As far as underground rappers go, Blu represents near perfection. Ever since Below The Heavens, his 2007 collaboration with producer Exile, West Coast kids rocking Jansports and Vans have used the MC’s albums like warm blankets, Golden Era-type soundscapes perfect for draping over themselves during chilly winter nights on the Pacific Ocean. Blu has been at the center of the next wave of the underground Cali rap tradition, the same one that celebrated crews like The Pharcyde and Hieroglyphics have carried since the early 1990s…
Click album cover for Bandcamp link.
Check the preview video for SEALAB 2012 (officially dropping tomorrow). This album marks La’s third time out with his third different producer. Jester gets behind the boards for a full 12 tracks this time, lacing the MC with sample-heavy joints that are less aggressive than Roll With the Winners but more contemporary than Gravity. The title of the album references the eponymous cartoon series from the early 1970’s and the Adult Swim redux from 2000.
La is still a problem on the mic, his metaphors and boasts sticking to the beats like darts on corkboard, but LAB is definitely the weakest of his three LP’s. It’s become clear that La can outpace the majority of Town rappers and it’s this blogger’s belief that dude can rhyme about anything and make it sound interesting. For the duration of LAB, however, La concerns himself mostly with two things: weed and sex. And, while this may have been the point, it doesn’t mean it’s as engaging as his previous albums.
The other issue is with Jester’s production. What made Winners such a dynamic listen was the jab-hook-uppercut combination of La’s all-out rhyming-like-his-life-depended-on-it steez and Blu-Ray’s throwback sample slap. Jester’s beats often lack the same authority. Not to say there aren’t highlights: “Dutches” and “Magnums” feature heady, hazy synth and both tracks refreshingly stand apart from anything found in La’s back catalog. And “Goods” is the most radio-ready the MC has ever sounded with a track that pops along in the same mode as Biggie’s “Juicy.”
The other notable aspect of LAB is the presence of some fairly heavy-hitting cameos. I won’t ruin the surprise in advance of the album’s release, but I will say “Diamonds” is a triumphant posse cut that features two of La’s prominent brothers in both rhyme and ethnicity. It’s dope to see accomplished MC’s co-sign for La on his own album, but the greater testament is the fact that their presence isn’t (and never was) necessary to affirm his skills. On his way to local rap stardom, La has held his own consistently. With a few adjustments on the next go-round, his star will grow even brighter.
The danger in scribbling down a hasty review of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch The Throne, especially for a writer who is quick to react to the bellow of so-called “significant” pop music projects like this album (tentative raised hand), is that said writer might immediately be taken by the triumphal calls of a track like “Lift Off” which, upon first listen, glistens with an orchestral rap radiance befitting such a pair of pop icons, when, in reality, the track is just a jumble of overwrought synth bloat, a wasted Beyonce cameo and lame half-sung half-rapped auto-tuned nonsense. On the other hand, the danger in waiting for the gold and platinum dust to settle before writing about the album is that one could be swayed by the reviews that came before, especially the negative ones accusing Jay and West of recklessly indulging themselves in their fame and excess, thereby further diluting hip-hop’s greater meaning within the mainstream context. So what’s a writer to do? I suppose some comfort can be taken in the old proverb about history ultimately determining the legacy of its people, places and things. It’s impossible to tell now if Pop Music will canonize Watch The Throne, but if there’s one thing this critic has gleaned from listening to the record at least a dozen times in succession, it’s that it’s much more fun to deliberate over the question than it is to actually listen to the music. And that alone should tell you something about this project…
The Physics’ long-awaited second LP, Love is a Business, is that rare collection of music that isn’t even a week old but already feels comfortably familiar. It’s a lot like that well-worn paperback copy of your favorite novel you stuff into your carry-on before every vacation; or one of the few remaining CD’s you’ve chosen to leave displayed on your bookshelf, a tangible reminder of how carefully we used to curate the music that meant something to us, standing in defiant opposition to the daily haphazard sprawl of un-zipped files littering our computer desktops. Love is a Business is, at the risk of sounding jadedly cantankerous, a throwback to when hip-hop mattered. The fact that the online method of this album’s delivery won’t vary from every other release today is not a lost irony. Still, this is a record that feels like it should first be held in your hands, read over carefully with your eyes, and then discovered with your ears, song-by-song, in the comfort of your ride or living room. You know, the way discerning heads used to distinguish the hip-hop that mattered most.
Given The Physics’ deliberate musical track record, this isn’t a surprising notion. The trio of producer (and sometime MC) Just D’Amato, and MC’s Thig Natural and Monk Wordsmith run a musical storehouse much like the celebrated local micro-brews referenced in their lyrics. Since the group’s 2007 debut album, Future Talk, their goal has always been to develop artisanal rap for well-paletted listeners using carefully concocted musical recipes with no disposable ingredients. That promise of quality was realized in subsequent EP releases, 2009’s High Society and last year’s Three Piece. Love is a Business is a further distillation and refinement of The Physics’ formula that relies heavily on layered compositions and soulful R&B progressions. It’s a richer listening experience than that of the crew’s past work, with subtle nuances and off-beat affections that suggest an act at the height of its maturity and creative zenith.
The first thing to note about LIAB’s vibe is how every one of its 13 tracks is given greater significance within the context of the album as a whole, a characteristic the majority of contemporary hip-hop records sadly lack. The first two songs on the album (the title track and “These Moments”) are exercises in quiet restraint. They lack hip-hop’s standard propulsive rhythms and instead rely on richly-layered vocal textures and interspersed live instrumentation to provide distinction and balance to Business’ wide spectrum of flavors. Even “Coronas on Madrona,” one third of last year’s brief Three Piece EP (and perhaps the best Seattle hip-hop track of 2010), seems more fully realized within the confines of LIAB. That’s not to say the album doesn’t feature tracks that can’t stand on their own. The best of these is the Native Tongues-channeling, “Cheers,” where Justo executes a familiar dusty knock and easy bass groove with enough skillful tribute to stand up to even the most stubborn Golden Era revivalist’s skeptical ears. Similarly, album closer “Babble” demands its own attention with commanding horn blasts and an industry-affirming cameo from Phonte (of Little Brother and The Foreign Exchange). Both are excellent examples of hip-hop song making at its finest, but, unlike these tracks, most of the album’s other components would have difficulty existing independently of the whole. That’s meant as a compliment rather than a knock. LIAB is a linear, holistic listening experience, not something that can be broken down easily into separate elements.
Obvious attention was paid to the high grade production value of this record, but as any head will tell you, a hip-hop album ultimately travels only as far as its lyricism will allow. “Love” is in the title of this album and Thig Natural and Monk Wordsmith make sure it remains a prevalent theme throughout, giving careful consideration to what the love of their musical hustle means in relation to daily lives consisting of nine-to-five grinds and romantic matters of the heart. The slow roll of “Red Eye” is a familiar story of a lovesick traveler looking forward to coming home to the physical comforts of his woman. It’s a sophisticated outlook on domestic love that portrays a mature monogamy refreshingly devoid of pretense or prudishness. On the other hand, the playful bounce of “Clubhouse” is less about the strictures of commitment and more about f*cking for the sake of f*cking. The lesson here is that both types of relationships have their time and place, but careful regard for the consequences of each is not a mutually exclusive act from engaging in either.
The other important lady in the life of this crew is the physical environment responsible for nurturing the trio since childhood. Namely, the group’s home base of Seattle, Washington. There’s a deep love and necessity for their town that goes beyond a simple regard for a few favorite local restaurants and coffee shops. Tracks named for actual locations in the city (“Seward Park,” “Coronas on Madrona”) give the impression that this album couldn’t have been made without the influence of the group’s native area code. Thig Nat’s easygoing, composed flow is derived straight from a definitive West Coast nonchalance, especially of the type found in the Pacific Northwest. On “Cheers” Monk Wordsmith recounts an interaction with people from another city who wonder aloud if there are black folks in Seattle. Indeed there are, and Monk shows he is one of many highly skilled underground rappers with a hustle steeped in the city’s rich, albeit lesser-known, hip-hop tradition. Love is a Business is an important entry into that heritage, an album that should be cataloged and archived as a moment when Seattle rap officially entered adulthood.
Click album cover to purchase at Sub Pop Records.
Two years ago…
An unsolicited email from a stranger. An exchange of contact information. The arrival of a mysterious package containing two enigmatic CD’s, the contents of which were bafflingly abstruse then, and continue to be now. This is one story, in brief, of how Shabazz Palaces came to exist in this writer’s musical conscious. There are other stories, too, but they are immaterial to the individual experience. As Palaceer Lazaro, the lead creative voice of SP says explicitly on Black Up, the group’s debut full-length album: “It’s a feeling.” These are words worth paying attention to. Do you remember how you felt the first time you heard Shabazz Palaces? If so, put all of your questions about the music and perceived answers to the side, for feeling Black Up is really all that matters.
Click album cover for Bandcamp link.
Amidst the massive amount of success Blue Scholars has experienced since its formation in 2002, MC Geo (aka. Prometheus Brown) and DJ/producer Sabzi have remained stubbornly — defiantly even — proletariat in their musical aims. It’s a testament to the duo’s acute devotion to the rank-and-file they prefer to serve that there have been no Clear Channel radio-ready singles, no flirtations with major labels and their “fucked-up” (as Geo once put it) three-sixty deals, no appearances on late night television, and no wavering from the Socialist underpinnings that have provided the ballast for the group’s lyrical content since its inception.
In fact, in support of the crew’s third LP, Cinemetropolis, Geo and Sabzi asked “the people” to subsidize the album’s production via the Kickstarter platform, a move that could have been dismissed as rap hubris run amok if it had been made by any other group without a history as communally-oriented as this one. Fans replied to the tune of about $62,000 in donations in 45 days, a response that indicates Blue Scholars has become a sort of mini-movement in addition to just being a rap group. This particular album cycle is literally being powered by a loyal fan base that asks for little in return other than the group’s best efforts at dopeness on wax, which is exactly what Cinemetropolis represents thus far in Blue Scholars’ discography.
The group was unofficially knighted the de facto leader of Seattle’s underground hip-hop movement in the mid aughts, all of it due to the crew’s self-titled debut album, an accessible collection of Golden Era-styled boom-bap with a revolutionary spirit and anti-establishment bent. The group’s sophomore LP, Bayani, featured complex layers of rhythm and dense sonic textures that were darker in comparison. It was a dynamic listen on the headphones but didn’t translate nearly as well live. The album felt a little like growing pains with respect to the group’s sound, with fewer samples at the forefront of the production and more distinct musicality that provided unique description for the group’s identity.
With Cinemetropolis, Geo and Sabzi have separated themselves musically from every hip-hop group in Seattle’s now bustling scene and arguably from most acts nationally. Sabzi’s evolution as a producer over the last year or so has seen him shed the sample-heavy boom-bap skin of the group’s prior work in favor of more colorful compositions comprised of heavy synth and deep reverberating drum and bass that often sounds tropical. Tracks like the rolling, low end-heavy “Slick Watts” and “Seijun Suzuki” fall in line with the producer’s ride-friendly work for Das Racist (“All Tan Everything” and “Who’s That Brown?”), while the beautiful, sweeping synth waves of the epic “George Jackson” is akin to the arrangements of Made In Heights, his electro-pop side project with singer Kelsey Bulkin (who also lends vocals on Cinemetropolis’ title track).
It’s impossible to determine whether Blue Scholars has officially found its particular “sound” or if this is just one paragraph in the group’s musical narrative, which seems more likely. It’s unlikely, however, that a similar lyrical concept will ever pervade future albums. Cinemetropolis was intentionally engineered as a “reverse soundtrack,” whereby each of the album’s fifteen tracks will inspire accompanying short films and/or music videos. The group is interested in how film informs our perception of real life and vice versa, a conceit that generally holds the LP’s wide spectrum of subject matter together. The idea is especially interesting when you factor in the group’s reputation as a socially conscious outfit, a regard that has made both group members shift uncomfortably in their seats during interviews. Blue Scholars has appealed equally to rap heads that keep themselves in-the-political-know, and those less informed folks who might find themselves Googling Geo’s many references to revolutionary factions in colonized locations across the globe. Many of Cinemetropolis’ song titles are great fodder for the Wikipedia machine and there’s much to be learned strictly from that search button exercise.
Listen more intently to the lyrics, however, and a greater depth is revealed. Geo is one of the best lyricists at extrapolating big ideas from simple concepts. “Fou Lee” is named after a Vietnamese grocery store on Beacon Hill where Blue Scholars and other members of their team would stock up on food during the Bayani recording sessions, thus the track becomes an emblem for both creative and physical sustenance. “Hussein” may or may not be a specific reference to the 44th President of the United States, but it’s definitely about the MC’s desire for change much greater than what has occurred in the last three and a half years. Even a track like “Slick Watts,” which isn’t much more than a glorified interlude, might contain a reference to gentrification when, after a comprehensive Seattle neighborhood roll-call, Geo says, “Got some folks leavin’ / Got other folks comin’ / Somebody had to go and say somethin’.” The analysis might be a stretch but it’s not out of bounds given the MC’s point of view.
Certainly less ambiguous is “Oskar Barnack ∞ Oscar Grant,” a track that encourages the public documentation of police brutality in order to maintain some semblance of accountability of the boys in blue. It’s a far cry from “Fuck Tha Police” but far more militant than any other Blue Scholars track that exists in public. The choral chant of, “Shoot the cops / Shoot the cops / Shoot the cops / Take your cameras out your pocket people,” is blatant enough to be incendiary and enigmatic enough to remain halcyon. It’s a noble attempt at reminding the public of how powerful we are when maintaining a united front against injustice. It also perfectly captures the ethos of this group. The men of Blue Scholars have an amiability that immediately places them on a level relatable to most. It’s a combination of focused ire and off-the-charts creative acumen, however, that allows them to craft a hip-hop auteur’s monument like Cinemetropolis.
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