Sabzi dropped this “albumixtape” in the inbox this morning as a little gift to the fans. Thanks, Saba! Seems like The Woods is a preview of what’s to come in 2014 from Made In Heights, his side project with vocalist Kelsey Bulkin — an unexpected and welcome surprise! Happy Holidays and stay warm, family.
In my eleventh hour push to cram for 206UP’s annual best-of list (dropping next week!), I realize there’s a grip of worthy music that I missed out on the first time it came around.
Triceracorn is one such example. Producer IG88 and rapper Beige (best MC name ever?) compose the duo responsible for October’s Porcelain, a 12 track collection of ambient hip hop, rich with brave sonic ideas and existential angst. Beige explores a host of topics from love to substance abuse, all tackled from oblique angles and through metaphorical oddities. The LP also features a couple of nice guest shots from Sandpeople’s boom-bap philosopher IAME and Hellfyre Club’s resident wordplay professor Open Mike Eagle. Porcelain makes for perfect headphone music on a cloud-covered day.
Finally got a chance to listen to Love Child, the MADlines x BeanOne collab. Hip hop meets reggae stylings to bombastic and highly danceable effect. I don’t recall Mad ever sounding this confident or dexterous on the mic, even in the golden years of Canary Sing, the other half of whom lends guest vocals on “I-R-I-E”. Love Child will warm up your winter.
Caz Greez’s Misfit slips easily into the cloud trap, promethazine slumber rap of the moment. In fact, I fell asleep on the subway listening to it because of its hypnotic properties. Caz raps in a pitched snarl about various ingested stimulants and how they make him better at fucking women. Drugs are a good excuse for deviant behavior and they may be necessary to enjoy Misfit at maximum capacity.
The Physics dropped their new album Digital Wildlife today. 206UP is happy to tell you, dear readers, that one of the most well-crafted, musically adventurous, and, let’s face it, best, Seattle hip hop albums of the year is available for free. Visit the group’s SoundCloud below to download. More to say about DW in the very near future, but for now you should just listen. Happy weekend, family.
Haruki or Takashi? The former has a thing for cats. So, him. Time travel. Lucid dreaming. Shifting reality. Words and stories. Made In Heights read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and made a song.
Nu Era recently dropped a three-piece called A Start 2 The Beginning and it’s tight as fuck. Preview below and throw some change at the quartet for the tracks.
I expose my deepest darkest secrets and most aspirational dreams with B-Dub and Shao Sosa, your loyal weekly purveyors of that good Pacific Northwest rap shit.
Really tho, thanks to Razor Tongue Radio for having me on. Never thought I’d be asked to give my opinions on Seattle rap in a radio interview format, but it was definitely a lot of fun. Stay up on RTR at their official (yet still under construction) website, here.
Blue Sky Black Death recruit the dark side of the rap force for “Keys”: Deniro Farrar, Gucci, Nacho, and Mack Shine. This is sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate with BSBD as the casing.
If you Google image search the word “Araless”, this is what comes up. This is not a picture of the rapper named Araless. I don’t think.
Winner of a past edition of THE TRACKMEET, rapper Araless hit the 206UP inbox with his new track “Attention” (produced by Bellingham’s Goldenbeets). Boom bap with clear reference points for hip hop heads (check that Brother Ali flow in the second verse). I like this.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 