The story of Big Tune is this: It began in Seattle in 2005; it has local hiphop impresarios Jonathan Moore and Vitamin D as its founders and the War Room as its place of birth; the battle
of emerging beat producers is its purpose. Thanks to Red Bull, this year, its third, Big Tune went national. It left Seattle and toured the top cities of the country. On November 1, Big Tune returns to Seattle for a final showdown between 12 producers from six cities (Seattle, Houston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago). Sabzi of Blue Scholars/Common Market and Brainstorm of Dyme Def are representing Seatown.
"This is my prediction," Brainstorm tells me over the phone. "If I get to the semifinals, then I'm going to win it." I ask him if this is just a boast. "No, not at all. I'm serious. Let me tell you something. For the Seattle round of Big Tune, I made about 20 beats and then had BeanOne test them. He picked 10 of the beats I made, and that is what I used to get to the final." (Brainstorm faced Sabzi in this particular competition and lost in the last round.) "Now, for the final show, I produced 100 beats, and have picked five that I will use. I put a lot of work into this and I want to win. And if I get to the semifinals, I'm going to take the whole show."
Brainstorm is young, 21, has a great mentor, BeanOne, and is not in Big Tune for anything but the honor, the challenge of making the best beat. "Sure, there might be industry people there and that is a good thing, but that is not why I'm doing this," he says. "I make beats because I have to. It's out of necessity. When we started Dyme Def, we needed music. Someone had to make it. We could not afford to buy someone else's music. So I started doing it. Big Tune is an opportunity for me to work on what I have to do—make beats." Industry names will present the show: De La Soul and Just Blaze. But what really makes Big Tune special is its commitment to the founding principles of hiphop.
What are these principles? Number one: Hiphop needs a space, a place to happen. This space can be a club, a house, or a warehouse. Number two: The space in which hiphop happens is utopian in nature; it is a space of joy, or, as Tricia Rose once put it, a space of "black pleasure." This pleasure is not simply pleasure for pleasure's sake, but a form of resistance. It is a happiness that goes against the imposed miseries of poverty, police corruption, and official and unofficial forms of exploitation. In short, hiphop is a celebration ("hiphop hooray... ho... hey... ho"). Number three: This space is open to experimentation. New ideas, new beats, new raps are welcomed into this celebration.
Finally: The space of hiphop is democratic. The new sounds and ideas are judged not by one or a few but by all in this space. Big Tune is faithful to these principles. It presents a space of pleasure, creativity, and popular participation. To win a Big Tune battle, a producer's beats must generate the loudest approval from the audience.
"Big Tune gives me an opportunity to make banger tracks," explains Sabzi over the phone. "And it's not just about that; it's about being a real producer and controlling the crowd. You have to be right on time and know exactly what the people are feeling."
The ultimate fact of Big Tune, a fact that was there at the beginning of hiphop but is absent from much of the music and shows of today, is this: "The speakers never lie." This accurate assertion, made by one of the founders of Big Tune, Jonathan Moore, expresses a reward system that has nothing to do with how a performer looks, or how much money he makes, but on how much or how little he moves the crowd.
"Sure, there is some politics in the Big Tune," explains Brainstorm. "Producers have their friends show up and screaming for their beats. That's gonna happen. But at the end of the day, you can't resist a good beat. You can't say no to something that makes you move." 
