Photo by Canh Solo
At Saturday’s sold-out Cinemetropolis Album Release Party, the second of a two-night run at Neumos, Blue Scholars had Seattle hip-hop fans eating out of their proverbial hands, as has been the case at all of the duo’s local shows for the last six years or so. The energetic all ages crowd followed Geo and Sabzi’s lead for nearly an hour and a half as the crew marched through a set list heavy on new material with a few select older favorites.
Geo is one of the best lyricists at taking simple ideas and extrapolating them into something larger and more complex. On “Fou Lee” one of the best cuts from Cinemetropolis, the name of the venerable Beacon Hill Vietnamese grocery store is used as an emblem for the source of Blue Scholars’ inspiration and sustenance, literally and figuratively. This is an intimate Town jam, in which the best reference is the MC Foods corner store at Alaskan and Columbian. I always get a laugh when I pass that spot. Directed by Canh Solo.
Cinemetropolis officially drops tomorrow, but if you ain’t got it already, then you probably aren’t a fan. The live jump-off is this Friday and Saturday.
Click flyer for more info and tickets.
Click album cover for Bandcamp link.
Breaking news from the Blue Scholars camp (via the good folks — and fellow colleagues — at SSG Music): the crew’s eagerly anticipated third full-length, Cinemetropolis, is now available for streaming and purchase at their Bandcamp page, a full two weeks before its official release date of June 14. Look for a full album review coming soon from 206UP.COM.
Blue Scholars just premiered the short film/music video for the track “Slick Watts,” the first clip from the group’s third full-length album, Cinemetropolis (dropping everywhere on June 14). Enjoy the visuals courtesy Geo, Sabzi, the Sonicsgate team, and a very special and not-so-conspicuous guest (hint: the song is named after him, dummy).
Click image to D/L the track.
“John Delorean,” or, “Blue Scholars on Time Travel.” What do the homies use Doc Brown’s souped-up DMC for? Not to gain betting advantages for the next twenty Superbowls, if that’s what you’re thinking. More along the lines of stopping at pivotal moments in time to right societal injustices. Psssh. Typical.
Press Play to listen to “John DeLorean.” Click here to download.
Via the good folk at KNOCKSTEADY (make sure to check their quality hustle, here). Surfing the Land of Twit yesterday, I was happy to come upon a live UStream broadcast, hosted by Dumbfoundead, and featuring Blue Scholars. The crew performed a few new tracks off their upcoming Cinemetropolis and answered some questions from the viewing audience. The clip above is just a bit of that show.
(For more SEA love from KNOCKSTEADY, peep Grieves and Budo’s recent appearance, here.)
Click photo for the press release.
Blue Scholars’ third full-length album, Cinemetropolis, is scheduled for a June 2011 release and it stands to be their most innovative collection of beats and rhymes yet. Drawing on inspiration from their mutual love of film, Sabzi (beats) and Geologic (rhymes) will create a “reverse soundtrack,” whereby the songs of Cinemetropolis influence a subsequent collection of video and multimedia projects.
The seminal Town crew is asking the people (and by “the people,” I mean “us”) to help bring this project to fruition, setting a goal of raising $25,000 in 45 days to help fund the project. Blue Scholars is perhaps the only current SEA hip-hop group with a large and devoted enough following to make something like this possible. In conjunction with Kickstarter, folks can pledge cold hard cash (as little as $1) toward the Cinemetropolis cause. In return, various types of swag are proffered.
Some might chalk this effort up to unchecked rap hubris, but if you know anything about Blue Scholars’ fiercely independent history, you’ll know this is an honest attempt at connecting with fans on a more personal level and another way to avoid the f-ckery of major label machinations. (The campaign personally reminds me of when my moms used to donate money to PBS during its annual pledge drives. Same thing.)
Consider making a donation (and read more about the Cinemetropolis project), here.
Click album cover for D/L link.
After a week of listening to far too much Odd Future than is healthy for one human’s conscience to bear, it was incredibly mollifying on the dome to come across this gem, the 10.4 Rog and The Good Sin collaboration, Late.
Renton’s 10.4 Rog has built a steady rep for creating a diverse array of soundscapes that are influenced in equal parts by J. Dilla’s complex boom-bap and the electronic wanderings of Radiohead. The result of Rog’s genre amalgam trips are progressive, visceral renderings of hip-hop that feel more instinctual than intentionally crafted. Very few producers possess this aptitude which, in the end, isn’t about how nice someone is with Fruity Loops. Folks like 10.4 Rog and oc Notes do this sh-t based on hunches and less on the basis of study.
If Rog’s nine tracks on Late are the result of a naturally occurring head-in-the-hip-hop-clouds faculty, then emcee The Good Sin’s rich baritone is the anchor that keeps the songs tethered to the ground. There’s a brilliant dualism at work here: while the stark contrast in tone between Rog’s atmospheric instrumentals and Sin’s heavy voice is readily apparent, the two also work in perfect unison when Sin occasionally lets his mind and words wander inside the producer’s compositions.
For the most part, Sin is a cat still trying to find his voice, at least contextually. Dude can rap on most anything as his past drops and mixtape (Ready or Not) have shown, but listeners still don’t really know who he is. Late reveals the emcee to be a true poet who is equally comfortable exploring spoken-word’s ambiguous nebula (the album’s opening and closing, “Wake Up” and “Endpiece”) as he is rapping on concrete subjects like getting money and getting over (“Pages & Wages”). The Stranger’s Charles Mudede recently compared Sin’s rap ethos to that of Geo of Blue Scholars because of their similar working-class bearings. The comparison is appropriate in that vein, but Sin also possess a certain poetic now-ness to his style; a lyrical method that blends the esoteric and the concrete. It’s exciting to find that type of complexity in The Good Sin, who was previously most notable for his strong delivery.
Hip-hop is not typically something I listen to when laying in bed trying to go to sleep. While it’s by far my preferred musical genre, most of it is too immediate and glaring to be relaxing. Late is something much different, however. The album can be explored with a full ear attuned to the beats and rhymes, or it can be put on in the background and allowed to seep in little by little. It’s one of those rare pieces of music where my mind didn’t have to make the conscious decision to LIKE or DISLIKE. It just knew from the moment it filtered through.
Late is available for FREE download. Click on the album cover above or the Bandcamp link below.
Click album cover for D/L link.
Malice and Mario Sweet’s Happy 2 Year EP is a giant leap forward for Seattle R&B/soul music.
R&B is a genre that is criminally underrepresented when compared to The Town’s other musical excursions. Not to say that its few agents aren’t worthy of praise (Choklate, JusMoni and Isabella Du Graf, here’s looking at you), but for a city that’s shown an incredible wealth of untapped talent in hip-hop, it’s curious that the R&B set has stayed relatively dormant.
Allusions to Happy 2 Year were made in late December when Mario dropped the album’s first single, “Speed Of Light” in the 206UP.COM Inbox. A cursory listen left a minimal impression on me, though the perfect harmonizing between Mario and Malice (partners in music and life) immediately stood out. Admittedly, I’m guilty of not giving this track its proper shine, because repeated listenings have revealed it to be so much more than the brief Inbox interlude I first took it for. There are complex layers of rhythm and vocal pacing here, and a perceptible level of care and intention in the song’s creation that can only be evidence of an ethereal bond shared by the two artists responsible.
Further, when you consider “Speed Of Light” in context with the rest of the EP, an even greater understanding of the album’s import is revealed. H2Y is not only a reciprocation of love between Mario and Malice, it’s a love letter to a few decades’ worth of R&B/soul artists. From the late 80’s/early 90’s R&B vibe of “DateNight” to the new school “world music” (I hate that term but I’m using it here for lack of a better one) inflections of “Happiness” (which features a rapping [!!!] Choklate), to the highly danceable post-Prince funk of “Living Life” (where a few brief guest bars are delivered by Geo of Blue Scholars, who sounds curiously comfortable amidst the tracks’ radio-readiness).
Ironically, though, the best moments on H2Y are when Malice and Mario are left to their own solo departures: the adequately titled, “Malice” and “Mario.” “Speed Of Light” wasn’t a prime example of what either singer could accomplish vocally, but their self-titled individual tracks solve that mystery. “Malice” charms with the confidence of a songbird who’s been flying like this for years, just waiting for strange ears to attend. Producer 10.4 Rog builds the perfect track for her with his airy Dilla-esque vista. “Mario,” on the other hand, only gives the listener a brief glimpse into what informs the duo’s masculine half. Images of Donny Hathaway, Smokey Robinson and Maxwell are conjured (how’s that for fair company?) in a track that lasts less than ninety seconds. Here’s hoping Mario indulges his expert falsetto again later (and more fully) over the same Roy Ayers instrumental.
Like the best-thrown anniversary parties, the occasion for love’s celebration between two people can be enjoyed not only by the lovers themselves, but by those that the couple allow into their midst. With Happy 2 Year, Malice and Mario Sweet have thrown a musical anniversary party and we (the listeners) are the honored beneficiaries. And as it is with the refined brands of champagne and decadent cake at such affairs, we are left exclaiming, “More please!”
Download a FREE copy of Happy 2 Year here, for a limited time only. Below is the music video for “Speed Of Light.”
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.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 