Welcome to this week’s edition of 206UP.COM’s The TrackMeet. If you were paying attention last Friday, then you already know. If you weren’t, click here to see what you missed. (And where the hell were you last week? HUH??)
Anyway, congratulations to last week’s TrackMeet winner, Living Proof with their track, “Full Speed.” The name of the song is apt, as Proof pretty much ran away from the other two competitors, garnering over 50% of the votes. (You must have large families with internet access who love you.)
Now get busy listening and voting for your favorite this week. Here they are…
Taking a cue from Yeezy’s G.O.O.D. Friday series, Dyme Def brings you its Pay Day drops. Look for a new single and/or video from Dyme Def every two weeks. Now if the three bad brothas would just add 206UP.COM to their press list so I can stop mooching 2DopeBoyz…
(Oh yeah, there’s a bonus track from Brainstorm below, “On My Job,” an outtake from the forthcoming producer/emcee’s Celestine Prophecy.)
Helluvastate is Tay Sean (of the Cloud Nice crew) and TH (of State Of The Artist). Get hip now before your friends do. This joint is dope and you can expect the entire mixtape to be, too. I can’t say any more than the homie Joe Gustav (of Posted In The Parking Lot and SSG Music) said in his excellent piece on SSG. Get with that here. And get with the free single by downloading below.
“Dope Fiend Jazz” is a 35 minute brainstorm session between OCnotes and Rik Rude. A crafty interpolation of jazz samples and Rude’s off-top oral street conceptualizations. Or something. I’ll let them tell it:
Visualize…
Its another rainy day in the square. Rude and Notes walk the back alleys to the murder mart to pick up a sweet and some of the finest pois-ons the city has to offer before returning to the laboratory. The sweet gets rolled, the cork pops, the machines get turned on. An agreement has been made. Today our scientists have decided to try a new experiment in spoken word and electronic African rhythms. One take, free form, freestyle, jazz. This is pioneer square….Dope Fiend Jazz.
The L gets blazed. Rude steps in the booth, OC gets on the pads. The record button gets pushed. No pens, no paper, no pre made beats. This is Live improvisation. New experiments in space and time. Dope Fiend Jazz.
Shout-out to the homies Rockwell Powers and ILL Pill for dropping this new joint in the 206UP.COM Inbox. From their forthcoming Kids in the Back 2 (look for it April 2011). Conscious and positive, Rockwell does good things for the 2-5-3.
Click Play to listen to “These Songs” by Rockwell Powers & Ill Pill. Click here to D/L.
Hip-hop industry rule #5,080: freely downloadable albums, mixtapes and singles are to be of equal (or greater) quality as the music consumers pay for.
This has been a rap maxim since the mid-aughts, when artist-friendly grassroots websites like 2DopeBoyz and DatPiff took the place of record label distribution deals. It’s an adage that has allowed for the rapid burgeoning of underground hip-hop scenes just like the one in our fair city. Making beats and rhymes and then distributing them freely to millions on the internet is the modern-day equivalent of singing into your hairbrush and dancing around in front of a mirror. (Okay, bad example for hip-hop, but you get the idea.)
So many random tracks sent by aspiring emcees come through 206UP.COM’s email inbox that it’s impossible for me to keep up. Probably 90% of them aren’t even worth the two clicks it takes to download, but I try to listen anyway, mainly because I appreciate that someone has invested their valuable time and energy into producing a piece of work that they think is a valuable addition to Seattle’s hip-hop landscape. A high principle, yes, but one that doesn’t preclude the fact that most of the sh-t is hella wack.
I’d like to keep 206UP.COM a place where an artist has to earn his or her stripes in order to be put on. In the past that hasn’t necessarily been the case as I’ve thrown-up material that, in hindsight, should have been dragged straight to the Trash. That previously noted principle, though, just keeps f-ckin’ with me. Thus the creation of this new weekly feature on the blog: The TrackMeet. Here’s what it is: every week (specific day TBD), I’ll post three tracks that may or may not be nice and leave it to you, the reader, to decide. All I ask of you is to listen to all three and then vote and post a Comment for the one you think is the hottest/dopest/filthiest/bangingest/whatever-est.
We live in a democracy, dammit, and every hopeful emcee should have a voice, right? WRONG! Wack-ass rappers should keep their day jobs. Help me break it to them (not so) lightly! And with that, peep the first three tracks on this inaugural edition of 206UP.COM’s The TrackMeet.
LANE 1: “Full Speed” – Living Proof f/Abstract Rude and Michele Wylen
From the group’s Myspace:
Living Proof is a two-man crew, Prem and Tope, currently repping Seattle and Portland respectively. With one full-length release and numerous live appearances under their belt, Living Proof is currently working on a second album in addition to a Tope solo album.
In 2011, SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON will release its very first studio album which we have been working on for over a year now. So far we had recorded 15+ tracks to pick/choose for this album. Now, in the next couple months, we are planning to get some collaborations done and I must say we’re very excited!!! To appreciate your love and support, I had remixed one of our songs “Little Birdy” last night. I would like to share this one with you. This is available for FREE download… at least for now.
Check out the first drop of 2011 from State Of The Artist. “Chief Seattle” (prod. by Ski Team) is a re-up from the crew that brought you the best 2-0-6 party album of 2010. Will we see major growth from SOTA in the first year of the new decade? Only time will tell.
Got-damn this track reminds me of a joint I heard years ago, but f-ck all if I can’t remember what it is. Something about the tone in that keyboard…Anyway, Scribes leaked this about a week ago. It’s the first track off his forthcoming LP, What Was Lost (dropping 2.4.11). Bean on the beat. JFK on the guest bars. Scribes sounds loose and ready to hang with the major SEA players, talkin’ about that age-old dilemma so many rappers (and any artists for that matter) face: “Wantin’ cheese/But I really want the songs that change/It’s the soul on the top of the game.”
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