Rapper Shelton Harris and his production partner Tyler Dopps made names for themselves on the strength of their 2013 five song EP The Fresh Start, a collection of glimmering, accomplished pop-rap anthems that belied the young ages of its creators. Dopps has a knack for looping addictive melodies over clean boom-bap and Harris is an efficient MC who rarely wastes a word, making beelines to raps-about-raps and the subject of being young and hungry while trying to come up in “the game.”

Their full-length debut album Lights — originally due last summer — is seeing its finishing touches added while a young and eager Seattle fan base, weaned on Macklemore and little else, awaits. Shelton and Tyler seem to be carrying the proverbial banner for a new local wave of positive, self-reflective hip-hop borne from the confessionals of Aubrey Drake Graham and the all-inclusiveness of Ben Haggerty.

Shelton’s popularity is an exciting new development that runs counter to the early aught backpack leanings of Seattle hip-hop artists (now entering their mid-30s and beyond) who helped nurture a devoted underground following. Shelton’s brand is also an alternative to the cloaked, substance-driven art-rap of movements like Thraxxhouse and Underworld Dust Funk, crews of a similar generation but whose points-of-view reflect a sort of updated streetwise version of Seattle’s grunge ethos of the early ’90s.

All of this adds up to a more balanced range of hip-hop in Seattle, a sign that the local scene is becoming even more of a microcosmic version of the greater hip-hop landscape in general — it takes all types, we say. Shelton Harris took time to hop on this week’s edition of THE SIX. Hit the jump for more.