Click image for D/L link
Hot sh-t. Logics drops his best track yet with (more than) a little help from Prometheus Brown and Adrian Sims. Marcus D hooks the beat up — some of that NY grimy soul sh-t. Remarkable considering dude does his dirt in Auburn. (And I don’t mean the University.) This is essential cold air, hunched-down-in-your-bubblegoose music.
Hit Play to hear “Focused.” Hit the image for the free D/L.
Portland’s DJ Jacks Green with a brief four-track salute to Northwest hip-hop. Sol, Scribes and Geo provide bars on three of the tracks (previous post: “Kickitwitchu” featuring Sol). It’s FREE, so why wouldn’t you click?
Cabin fever strikes Blue Scholars again. The recent inclement weather in The Deuce Dot had Geo and Zia feeling restless and creative. The recent unseasonably warm weather in The Empire City had Sabzi dancing on rooftops and playing with a pineapple (?). The result: a Pro Brown freeverse over a loping Sabzi track that sounds like a OOF! throwaway. (Also, the DJ raps — well, sorta — for the first time.)
Peep the clip below and download the track, 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):
The name of Blue Scholars’ upcoming LP is Cinematropolis (set for release in Spring 2011). If the title is indicative of the album’s conceptual bent, then we may be in for a sort of film/music amalgamation, which wouldn’t be surprising given Geo’s love (and talent for) movie criticism and Sabzi’s own interest in visual media (check out the DJ/producer’s recently launched multimedia project, Townfolk.)
On the group’s recent drop, “Lumiere,” Sabzi samples The xx track to great cinematic effect. Geo’s vocals are understated and would probably win an emo rap battle, if there were such a thing. Click the image below for the D/L link.
Click image for D/L link
The Sacramento hip-hop duo DLRN (formerly known as “Delorean” — name change presumably due to the existence of the indie rock outfit of the same moniker) has released a new EP called The Bridge which can be had for free here. Similar in style and substance to the group’s debut release, No More Heroes, this new eight-track collection is heavier on soul and collaborative endeavors, including the song “Reset” featuring Seattle rap hero, Prometheus Brown (aka. Geo of Blue Scholars).
South Sound emcee Logics blesses the Northwest with a full-length mixtape. Nice to finally have this much material compiled in one place from this cat. Geo has been telling the public for a minute that the rapper also known as Young Ghangas is hungry. Hit the album covers below for the D/L link and see what’s on his menu.
How many of you out there used to read the Massline Blog? Back when the Massline fam-damily were presumably much-less busy, they kept us Townfolk informed and entertained by posting the latest on artist news, shows, and album releases. They also kept us in stitches from the hilarious photo diaries and funny-because-it’s-not-funny social commentaries that Sabzi and comedian Hari Kondabolu would post. (Not to say Geo doesn’t also have a sense of humor, but it’s unclear if he’s as funny as Sabzi and Hari because his posts were far fewer in number. And Hari is, after all, a comedian, while Geo is a very serious and political-minded rapper.)
It was good stuff. My Lady even had a brief conversation with Sabzi himself last year at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan’s East Village, just before Blue Scholars headlined their very first show in NYC, where she told him how funny the Massline Blog was and that we both enjoyed reading it. Sabzi told her, “Thank you for the excellent feedback” (<— actual quote from DJ Sabzi). Alas, it appears the Blog is no more.
Tonight I was mindlessly surfing the internet and somehow ended up on Hari Kondabolu’s Myspace page. Much to my delight, Hari has included one of the funniest of the aforementioned posts. (Click on the photo below to read it.) In this adventure, Hari and Blue Scholars journey into Queens (where Hari grew up) in search of the best Masala Dosa and Burfi, and then to locate a bottle of the (apparently) elusive Mazaa Mango Juice, the magical elixir of Hari’s youth.
Enjoy. And RIP Massline Blog.
So this is what it sounds like when Blue Scholars go on vacation. The highly-anticipated and much locally-hyped OOF! EP dropped on Tuesday and, much to the unsuspecting ears of this listener, surprises abound on this mostly-fresh bite of Hawaiian-style 206-rap.
For a short six-tracks (plus accompanying instrumentals), producer Sabzi breaks out his happy-vibe synths and basslines, and emcee Geo sets down his copy of The Socialist, straps on a pair of board shorts and flip-flops, and, with drink in hand, reminisces on his formative years spent in the nation’s 50th, and most beautiful, state: Hawaii.
OOF! is truly a vacation for the local rap duo, an exercise in departure, both for Sabzi’s normally thick, boom-bappish beats and Geo’s political and progressive rhymes. It’s only because the disc contains two of the best Scholars songs to date (“Bananas” and “HI-808”) that they’re excused from taking it too easy on this outing.
Even the most highly-respected artists sometimes casually digress from their normally esteemed routines. Think Brando in The Freshman; Hitchcock directing Mr and Mrs Smith; Michael Jordan when he played for the Wizards; etc. In Blue Scholars’ case, last winter’s set of performances in Hawaii combined with Geo’s history in the islands resulted in the perfect circumstances for assembling this set of party-rocking tracks that qualifies as an official departure from the group’s normally heavier-handed musical discourse.
Mix in an abnormally hot Seattle summer and a local hip-hop scene that is bubbling over — as of this writing OOF! currently sits at #2 on iTunes best-selling hip-hop albums — and it’s enough to have this blogger, and other fans like him, scrambling around The Town trying to get their hands on a copy of the limited-edition disc (supposedly only 808 were pressed). I was one of the lucky few to get one and, once I set to bumping it, I was more than a little surprised at what came out of my speakers.
On OOF! we hear the group do things we’ve never heard them do before. All of a sudden, they do dance tracks! (The cheesy and nearly unlistenable, “New People.”) They do reggae! (Excuse me, jawaiian music, on the tropical, “Cruz.”) They even do sexy! (Geo and Sabzi take turns saying “wassup” to the ladies in their best nice-guy voices on “Hello.”)
Thankfully, they also find time for real hip-hop on the spare but still bumping “Bananas” (with a verse previously spit by Geo at Chase Jarvis’ Songs for Eating and Drinking party), the back-in-the-day hip-hop appreciation anthem “Coo?”, and the totally knocking “HI-808,” the crowning achievement of OOF! and possibly the most addictive beat the crew has ever put on wax. It’s an eclectic and unexpected collection, for sure, and it doesn’t all go down smooth like a pina colada, but it does the job.
Normally, Blue Scholars is telling us to put our fists up, to stand for social justice and political change. On OOF! they’re letting us keep our hands down, inviting us to sip a fruity drink, and groove to the music however we see fit. Actually, I’m pretty okay with it — sometimes my arms get tired from all that hand-waving. I do, however, expect the duo to carry on previous tradition with their next full-length. Come 2010, it will be time once again to take up arms and mics for the revolution.
For now, though, I can get down with OOF! But perhaps Geo himself sums up my feelings best: “It’s cool…But it’s not what I’m used to.”
Alright then, I’m back on the blog after a brief hiatus. Went camping east of the mountains (that’s the Cascades) with The Lady and some good friends. Lots of good eating, swimming, and lounging around in 100-degree weather, but very little in the way of Seattle hip-hop. (Lake Chelan might have the only bars left in Washington that Fresh Espresso hasn’t played.) And, while it was nice to be away from technology for a while, it’s good to be back on the blog, once again connected and in-the-loop with the goings-on around town. So without further ado…
Since it’s all about Geo and Sabzi today (and most likely tomorrow as well), I might as well hitch my wagon to the OOF! train and do my part to plug our favored sons of hip-hop in the 206.
The local rap giant that is Blue Scholars is once again coming down from the mountain to drop their highly-anticipated OOF! EP tomorrow. The limited edition disc will be available at the Capitol Hill all Caffe Vita locations. Get yours, son. All the information that’s fit to print is here on the group’s blog.
The Scholars crew is on their grind again, promoting the hell out of the EP, encouraging us fans to basically stalk them around The Town all day, and topping off the release date with a performance at local Hawaiian outpost Ohana, in Belltown. I’ll be there, hyped up on Caffe Vita espresso with loco moco in hand. Show your love, too!
I haven’t heard the entire EP yet, but if the first two pre-released tracks (“Coo?,” “HI-808”) are any indication, then it’s likely this disc may be the most light-hearted and party-rocking collection the crew has released thus far. Granted, my affinity for the duo lies mostly in the fact that they choose to be so intensely political and *ahem* conscious, but lighter subject matter is always welcome from any of my favorite hip-hop groups. It is party music, after all.
After I get in a few good listens, your faithful 206-UP!’er (that’s me) will be offering his always over-opinionated opinion. Until then, however, check out Andrew Matson’s (Seattle Times) review here. A-Mats also interviewed our favorite doods and both offered insight into the direction of the group, its evolving musical stylings, and the 206 hip-hop community in general. Peep those interviews here and here, they’re both worth reading.
More later — enjoy the sun and the OOF!
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