The very first truck I bought after I got a “real job” out of college was a 1994 forest green Toyota 4Runner. That vehicle’s tenure in my life was fairly uneventful; it couriered me to various milquetoast locations around the greater Puget Sound region. Locations totally unlike the ones in this video here.
The Pacific Northwest region is blessed with landscapes that run the gamut in natural diversity. Curiously enough, however, local rappers don’t mine the majestic scenery for everything they could when it comes to their music videos.
Young Ju-Ju Twist and his director Jacob Hill saw the similarities in Seattle’s urban landscape and its neighboring mountainous terrain to the east (or west). The dual cinematography in “Diary of Twizzy” is both synchronous and at odds with each other. If the endgame for Ju-Ju is stardom in the music world, how different is that feral deer wandering through the frame from the anonymous coattail rider bouncing up and down on stage?
Birds flock around to collect crumbs. And Raz has no time for them. “Bullshit” is episode seven from Cognitive Dissonance: Part 2. Xavier Ruffin co-directed.
Malice and Mario Sweet, the “foremost man and wife of Northwest R&B,” break into Doc Brown’s shop and hijack (temporarily, I’m sure) the DeLorean for a quick spin back to their wedding day. “Fantasee Island” was release in celebration of the duo’s sixth wedding anniversary, from their ’80s loving nostalgia piece, Enjoy Like Love.
Seattle OG Fleeta Partee with a new self-directed video. “Part of the Game” tells a familiar ‘hood story with old school precision and unflinching rawness. From the MC’s Lifemuzik Deux.
Herein lies the debut music video from Hightek Lowlives, the unexpectedly accomplished electro R&B act responsible for 2014’s Humanoid Void, an album that stands up in quality against any R&B release from last year from any city of your choosing. Believe that. Front man Otieno Terry looks, sounds and acts like a star in the clip.
Flyer than most, surfacing above the clouds in a supernatural state, but always just that: Natural. THEESatisfaction dropped “Recognition,” the first video from their upcoming album EarthEE (due February 24 on Sub Pop). This clip serves as deference to the movers and the shakers, the inspiration and the makers, of Black American art everywhere. Filmed on location at the Schomberg Center in Harlem, and the homes of John Coltrane, Sun-Ra and Marian Anderson in Philadelphia, the video is fittingly humble and resplendent in its simplicity.
Raz Simone’s music is all about quiet moments amidst madness; distilling turbulent thoughts into the things that matter most. “So Many Things,” as it turns out, is actually about a slight handful. From the forthcoming Cognitive Dissonance: Part 2 (due January 28).
Sam Lachow lets loose for another “80 Bars.” This time it’s “Part 5.” This time he means it.
All Star Opera is a quartet of MCs and producers whose hazy focus is trained on the state of their youth and the undetermined path wrought by living through that experience. Their new EP, Tie Dye Brain Cells, is a freewheeling motion of live instrumentation and loose rap chatter which generally pleases the ear. Check out the album below and peep ASO’s video for “Flight School” below that.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 