Click album cover to D/L.
Viper Creek Club’s new Beat Tape made my morning commute much livelier. Thanks, Mat Wisner! All you local MCs: there’s some good sh-t here, I recommend you hop on a few joints. I especially enjoyed “Like This” with its big beat and warm textures. I would give it the ol’ college try, but y’all don’t wanna hear that. Trust me.
Click image for D/L link.
I have mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, producer Mat Wisner (of Viper Creek Club fame) makes undeniably danceable electro-pop/funk/rap sh-t. On the other, this track (and a whole sh-t ton of other rap music — much of which admittedly gets coverage on this blog) marginalizes pretty much every woman in Seattle. Some ladies might think this track is just swell, and others might feel justifiably pigeonholed.
There’s nothing wrong with appreciating beauty (feminine, masculine, mammalian, reptilian, whatever), but when the identity of a specific group of people is distilled to nothing more than the sexual, there’s no good in that. Ever. A fair amount of rap music made by men does an admirable job of representing a dualistic point of view with regards to male/female sexuality. This does not.
Click album cover to D/L.
Friday’s album release party for Viper Creek Club’s ViperLust went down with great success, I hear. Your loyal blogger wasn’t on the scene (for a number of reasons, the main one being I live over 2,500 miles away), but I’m positive Mat Wisner and Co. left it all on the stage (or turntables — whatever the case may be) like he always does. Metal Chocolates did their new thing with great style and a nose to the future.
The FREE album download for ViperLust has gone live. Get with that below. For 206UP.COM’s previous thoughts on VCC’s remixes, click here.
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.
Rockwell Powers and Mat Wisner (moonlighting hip-hop producer extraordinaire) combine forces for “Riot,” a glistening head-nodder. Rockwell’s blue-collar flow and Wisner’s hard-but-lush board-work are the perfect way to close out another big year in Northwest hip-hop.
Click image for D/L link
Viper Creek Club give “Got Ya Numb” the electro once-over. VCC’s Mat Wisner matches frenetic synth with Wizdom and Grynch’s frenetic vocals, but the best part is the emo keyboard element that slides in and builds during the chorus. Hip-hop, meet club music.
Click image for D/L link
Viper Creek Club take Mash Hall’s “Can You Stand the Reign” and submerge the original 90’s-loving nostalgia in an electronic wash of turbulent synth and voltaic thump. It’s equal parts unlikely and pleasing. Mat Wisner and company are crazy for this one.
Click image for D/L link
A lot of upstart rappers are still trying to find their voice (and opportunity to shine) in the over-glutted Pac Northwest scene. Puyallup emcee, Name the Uncanny already has one advantage over the others — a creative relationship with Mat Wisner’s well-respected electro-shop, Viper Creek Club. Check out Name’s six-track EP, Outrunning the Cold, available for free download. Click here or below.
Earlier in the year, Rockwell Powers and producer Ill Pill dropped, Kids in The Back, an album that will probably end up being the best release out of Tacoma in 2009. It’s a surprisingly polished and confident piece of underground hip-hop that deserves more burn than it’s gotten.
Now, Rockwell has released another collaborative effort, the Pocket Full of Stones EP, produced by Mat Wisner of the Viper Creek Club collective. Pocket is an eclectic exploration of hip-hop’s recent trend toward electronic and dance music; an updated version of disco for the 21st century. P Smoov is doing it locally. Kanye is doing it nationally. Some of it hits, some of it misses. Count Pocket Full of Stones as one that hits the mark, most of the time.
It’s available for free download. Click the album cover below for the link.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 