Moor Gang/Cloud Nice affiliate Steezie Nasa dropped a brand new seven-piece three days ago. The usual Moor suspects have their fingerprints all over this one: MackNed, Rob Skeetz, et al. And Caz Greez lends bars to one track, thereby closing the circle on two of the Town’s best rap collectives.
The Bar’s Prometheus Brown and Bambu are featured on Power Struggle’s latest drop, “A Round For My Friends”. Nomi (frontman MC for PS) links fundamentally/organizationally with his Beatrock Music brethren. “Fight music ’til there’s nothing left to fight about,” raps Pro Brown. This is fist up, marching music.
Mike Champoux raps and produces, probably more successfully at the latter than the former. Still, though, his passion for the art form is clear. “All I Need” is a love letter to music and an outtake from his upcoming album, Michael, due in April.
Tyrone, the working class hero, dropped this single back in November. Shout-out to him for linking me to it in the New Year, though. “Work Boots” forgoes the space oddities, triple beam dreams, and hyperbolic monetary chamber rap of contemporary hip hop, for the always grueling, rarely rewarding rhythm of hard labor. The best thing about this joint is how Tyrone bridges the seemingly unrelated divide between all manners of hustle.
206UP.COM’s The TrackMeet is a regular feature here on the blog that pits three relatively new or unknown local hip hop artists against each other in a battle-of-the-songs style competition. If you’re a reader, it’s easy to participate: Just listen to the three featured tracks below and then vote for your favorite in the online poll at the bottom of the post. Voting lasts for one week. Each winning entrant will be featured on an upcoming TrackMeet Mixtape (the first edition of which you can download here). If you’re an artist looking to submit for an upcoming competition, click here for submission guidelines.
Somehow we’ve been off The TrackMeet for a minute. And by “a minute” I mean since last July. SMH. Anyway, submissions have yet to dry up because everyone and their grandmother’s bridge partner is trying to rap in the Town nowadays. Below are three such rappers trying to get a buzz. They put in the work and now it’s your turn, dear readers, to click, listen and vote! As always, links to download the tracks are provided.
LANE 1: “Wasted Time” – Mojo Barnes
LANE 2: “Summertime Shoppin” – Coop
LANE 3: “Untouchable” – Loc Saint
The Super Bowl story that’s not really a story: Marshawn Lynch and his (now trademarked) understated press conference appearances. Somewhere in here lives a thought piece on Marshawn’s brilliant upending of our country’s expectations of how Black athletes should present themselves to the public — the counterpoint to Richard Sherman’s outspoken cries of excellence. Why in God’s name aren’t we wringing our hands over this?!
Town rapper and producer Spekulation gives us the soundtrack for our rumination: “Bout That Action (Beast Mode Remix)” subverts our complex reactions to Marshawn’s curious behavior by employing a singular telling statement made by the man himself. The simple repetition of his sampled words, “Bout that action, boss”, are matched by the equally rudimentary drum pattern of the song, thereby distilling Lynch’s message to its fundamental constituent elements: He is, simply, ’bout that action, boss. And we should be, too. God bless everyone. And God bless the United States of Super Bowl America.
Update, 1.30.14, 4:45pm PST:
And the inevitable remix to the remix: “This Ain’t A Seahawks Anthem”, featuring Prometheus Brown rapping from what sounds like a busy sports bar lobby or the non-business end of his cell phone.
The rap internet’s been buzzing the last few days about Raz Simone’s don’t-call-it-a-signing creative partnership with Lyhor Cohen’s new label, 300. That’s pretty big news for a Town rapper who’s seemingly been on the cusp of stardom for a couple of years now. Here’s hoping Raz continues to be the vital counterpoint to Seattle’s current national — and international — hip hop envoy, you-know-who.
Raz’s team recently made his latest single, “Don’t Shine”, available for free download. Click here for that. And click play below if you missed the accompanying video which dropped a couple weeks back.
In case you missed the video for Mo’ Money’s striver’s anthem “Off The Block” from a couple weeks back, here it is again for your viewing pleasure. The track appears on the rapper’s new Everybody Needs A Lil Mo’ Money, available for free at DatPiff.
Mo’ Money is part of the LakeHouse Entertainment collective, a ragtag bunch of MCs, producers and skaters who ran a delightfully low-budget shop out of a lake-front home that has since gone the way of the mortgage foreclosed. Shout-out to RoofDogg who has generously kept 206UP in the loop about LakeHouse Ent’s whereabouts and who ensures the New Year will bring a grip of new music and videos from the crew.
There has been a recent movement in the Town toward documenting, both aurally and visually, the rap-related things happening inside the bounds of this fair area code. From the good folks at Mad NW who are responsible for the excellent local rap documentary The Otherside, to blogger Jack Devo’s online vault of Seattle music rarities, and finally to the burgeoning Do The Math podcast, created and hosted by 206 hip hop superfan Deven Morgan.
Meant to be a StoryCorps of sorts strictly for the Seattle rap nerd set, Deven is both honest and earnest in his love for Town hip hop. Episode 2 features the vital producer Jake One waxing nostalgic about creating records in the former heyday of Seattle hip hop. Do The Math seeks to highlight the so-called “second wave” of Seattle rap, the time and artists just after Sir Mix-A-Lot’s apex, but before the rise of Blue Scholars and Macklemore. These are the typically forgotten artists, best represented by the loose collective known as Tribal Music whose Do The Math compilation album, released in 1996, is both the namesake and spiritual foundation for Deven Morgan’s podcast endeavor.
I can’t claim any amount of authority over Tribal or Do The Math other than what I’ve read — and heard — since starting this blog in earnest four and a half years ago. I will say, though, that Tribal’s brand of hip hop is the type to which I’ve always been most drawn in life. DTM is a Golden Era revivalist’s wet dream, created on the tail-end of that movement’s waning years* a time when rap music, it seemed, was less about singular identities and more about the movement. That’s fairly nebulous, I suppose, but so becomes history when the great windshield wiper of the mind blurs and distorts your recall over time. Thank the rap gods, then, that someone is committing these things to permanent record.
*Technically it’s post-Golden Era, but things arrive late in Seattle. So be it.
On Laws of Attraction Thaddeus David verges away from his heavy, trap-influenced sound to something a little gentler. Rapid high hats still abound, but behind a more supple backdrop. SAT Beats pushed all the buttons on this one.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 