Seattle hip-hop says goodbye to one if its very best this Saturday at Chop Suey. Watch D.Black deliver a personal statement on his official outro below and click here to read SSG Music‘s excellent feature article on Black and his now former label, Sportn’ Life Records.
Click here to download the track.
More hustle work for Rockwell Powers and Ill Pill’s Kids In The Back 2, dropping April 16. Tacoma is the jump-off for the release. All you SEA cats who think you’re too good for the South Sound, swallow that pride pill and get thee to the 253.
Click poster for more info.
Viper Creek Club has gotten a lot of love from 206UP.COM for its highly danceable, innovative reinterpretations of SEA hip-hop tracks. I’m not gonna link to ’em all here — that’s what the Search bar is for, dunny. Suffice to say that Mat Wisner’s side hustle has resulted in the birth of a 10-track album, ViperLust, that will drop and be celebrated live at Neumos on April 1. Get yourself to the venue for that and check 206UP.COM for the download when it goes public.
Also rocking with VCC that night will be the ever-assiduous Truckasaurus, and a new electro-rap duo known as Metal Chocolates, the ridiculously intelligent offspring of oc Notes and Rik Rude that is too smart for both the club and most progressive liberal arts colleges that I hear are all the rage right now. For a little taste of their gray matter, check the Bandcamp thingy below. MC has an interesting promotional package available, too, the spoils of which consist of accoutrement both likely and otherwise. Check for that, here.
Mr. Lovework (aka. Gabriel Teodros) brings some of that new-new to the New World Seafood Restaurant this Friday. Celebrate the release of GT and DJ Ian Head’s The Lentil Soup EP. It’s more of that powerful positivity from the world-wise local cat. 206UP.COM will have more on Lentil when it drops.
Did you hear THEESatisfaction signed to Sub Pop? That’s the word around Town, anyway — certainly news worthy of an eyebrow raise. A hearty and heartfelt congratulations to Cat and Stas from 206UP.COM!
Check them out with labelmates (!) Shabazz Palaces at Neumos on February 17. A series of incredibly dope show flyers like the one above can be viewed on THEESatisfaction’s blog, here.
The two best Blue Scholars shows I’d seen before Friday’s epic Seattle throw-down at New York City’s The Bowery Ballroom (check out Photo By Tone’s amazing pictures, here) were The Long March EP release party at Chop Suey in 2005, and the New Year’s Eve party at Neumos in the same year. Those concerts stood out because of the massive amount of energy their respective crowds brought, an element that’s absolutely vital to a successful live hip-hop show.
Blue Scholars was still in the natal stage when the ’05 show at Chop went down, with a small but devout following who went bananas that night for a group that would ultimately herald the beginning of a movement local music writers are now calling, “the new grunge.” It was my first time seeing them and I got caught up in the excitement. The New Year’s Eve show was nearly as animated, but probably much of it due to the jubilant atmosphere associated with the holiday.
The Bowery concert was different, however, for a couple of substantial reasons: First, Geo and Sabzi’s live presentation is incredibly refined these days. The setlist, the cuts between songs, how Geo moves across the stage, Sabzi’s well-executed stage dive near the end of the performance — everything is tighter, tuned-up, and built exclusively for keeping the audience engaged. I’ve seen much more well-known hip-hop acts execute shows that couldn’t touch what Blue Scholars are doing now; they’re becoming true entertainers.
Secondly, the venue couldn’t possibly get any bigger for this rap group. And by “bigger” I mean more relevant. New York City is the Mecca of hip-hop, we all know this. And for a group from Seattle, Washington to come into The Bowery Ballroom, a fairly prominent Manhattan venue, on a Friday night and sell out the joint…Well, has that ever been done before? Granted, I would estimate the crowd was at least fifty percent Townfolk, but it’s still an achievement considering notable groups from Brooklyn headline shows in New York venues half the size of Bowery and can’t rock them the way Blue Scholars did the well-known Lower East Side establishment.
I had a group of nine people with me, five of whom had never heard Blue Scholars’ music before, let alone seen them live, and they all came away impressed. While there was an enormous amount of 2-0-6 love flowing through the building, there was also an addictive energy — attributable wholly to Geo and Sabzi’s vibe — that swept up those who had no association with the area code. Blue Scholars did what so many other regionally-specific hip-hop groups strive to do: they represented their town to the fullest.
Check out the videos below (courtesy Youtube member, toneriggz):
Dark Time Sunshine and Candidt are the originators of two of this year’s best hip-hop albums out the Six. DTS’ Vessel (the most forward-thinking 2-0-6 hip-hop record this side of Shabazz Palaces) and Candidt’s Sweatsuit & Churchshoes (a refreshing exercise in West Coast b-boy funk — album review coming soon) keep hope alive in rap’s underground. Catch both acts at Hell’s Kitchen Tacoma tomorrow (Wed, 9/15).
Plan your Saturday evening around this outstanding lineup, and enter to win a pair of tickets from 206UP.COM and the good folks at Columbia City Theater! It’s easy: just send your boy (that’s me) an email with “Tanya Morgan Giveaway” in the subject line to 206upblog@gmail.com, or hit me up on Twitter with the same. I’ll throw your name in a hat and pick a winner at random no later than Friday (8/27) at 5 pm PST. Now, peep the flyer and read what I have to say about Tanya Morgan!
Tanya Morgan is a rap group. And, atypical name aside, they might just sound like the closest thing hip-hop has nowadays to A Tribe Called Quest. You might cry “Blasphemy!” and you’d probably be right, but it doesn’t change the fact that TM’s stellar 2009 LP, Brooklynati, captures the spirit of Quest in their heyday.
Judge for yourself this Saturday (8/28) at Columbia City Theater. Joining TM will be local crews Def Dee and Language Arts (originators of what 206UP.COM still thinks is the best Seattle hip-hop album of 2010, Gravity), and City Hall (a South Sound crew composed of EvergreenOne, Todd Sykes and DJ Slimrock). The whole party-rocking affair will be hosted by Prometheus Brown and feature a DJ set by Town stalwart Larry Mizell, Jr. Enter to win tickets on 206UP.COM or go cop ’em, here, then thank the loyal folks at Member’s Only for putting on what might be the best night of your life.
Here’s the video for “So Damn Down,” off Brooklynati:
What retirement? D. Black is back (this time with B. Brown) with The Blackest Brown EP, dropping Tuesday, 8/31. As it was on Ali’yah, positivity is the rule of the day on these three advanced tracks, but don’t expect anything soft. True, the beats are soulful, but they still knock hard. And Black’s ringing demand for a positive uprising in his community is more vigorous than ever. Hip-hop in Seattle needs D. Black — let’s hope he delays that early retirement.
Download “Special” (featuring Fatal Lucciauno), here.
Download “You’re The Light” (featuring SK), here.
Celebrate the release of The Blackest Brown EP at Neumos, on August 29th.
Get acquainted with Bent Twig, a duo out of Camarillo, CA who are quietly establishing themselves in the Pacific Northwest hip-hop scene. Their release party for The Asymmetry of Life (reviewed here by 206UP.COM), is this Thursday night (5.27.10) at High Dive in Fremont.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 