A (#LatePass) New Year’s gift from the wily Sonny Bonoho. Hit the linked image above for a pared-down version of Sonny’s 2010 LP, Phonephreak. Click here to read what I had to say about it back in April on SSG Music. And if you missed the hyper-creative video for “Zig Zag” (feat. Money B [!!!]), peep that below.
Saw this over at Lar’s place. Some of us blog low-lifes don’t get hip to the new-new like Mizell do. Whatevs. Read what I had to say about Onry’s recent free full-length, NO HOAX, here. And if you like “The O O,” click here to cop the rapper’s brand new for-sale LP, Hold On For Dear Life.
Click image for D/L link
The title of this week’s post is erroneous by way of a not-so slight technicality. The download included here is not really hip-hop. It’s more along the lines of electro-pop with an underlying hip-hop spirit. Sabzi, the producer responsible for the music on Made In Heights’ free EP, Winter Pigeons (get it, here), is better known for his rap successes with Blue Scholars and Common Market, which adds a little more validity to this post. But enough with defending the liberties taken, let’s just move on.
Click image for D/L link
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.)
Mad Rad has evolved into Seattle’s most disruptive force in live music. Ask anyone who has worked security at the six Capitol Hill clubs from which the crew was temporarily banned in January of last year–or local multimedia authority Chase Jarvis, whose dinner spread the foursome nearly ruined during its performance turn at his Songs for Eating and Drinking event. At some point in the last two years, every major music venue in the city has been knocked on its ear as a result of Mad Rad’s antics, welcomed or not. The group has evolved into the easiest band to love or hate, depending on your tolerance level for the asinine. On its way to becoming King of Disruption, Mad Rad has also burgeoned a local following that borders on the rabid and created some of the most dynamic pop music Seattle has ever seen.
Photo from The Stranger
Candidt’s Sweatsuit & Churchshoes, one of the Northwest region’s most expansive-sounding hip-hop albums of recent memory (read the SSG Music album review, here), achieved something the majority of contemporary rap albums fail to do: successfully construct a bridge from hip-hop’s past to its present day. Candidt rooted his 21-track salute deep in his old school sensibilities, but also managed to freshen up the West Coast sound with his left-of-center flow and versatile production choices.
The original version of “The Youth Die Young” (the title track from Mad Rad’s forthcoming album of the same name, streaming, here) is a whimsical but not totally innocent paean to the joys of youth. It’s a celebratory but dubious anthem for the internet generation. There’s a cautionary tale lurking somewhere in the track that belies its upbeat vibe, as if describing a slightly aged Ferris Bueller who’s come to the sudden and harsh realization that the world doesn’t revolve around him. “The Youth Die Young” is actually quite a mature song for Mad Rad, perhaps a sign that the crew is evolving beyond its sophomoric antics of past days. Whatever. The most important aspect of the song is that it gets your ass to moving.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 