A couple weeks back, I took a nice jaunt down Rainier on the number 7 for old times' sake (awesome as ever) and met up with the dude who calls himself Brilliant, I call Young Cosby, and you call GMK—he of the Perfect 10 mixtape, of the superenergetic live shows (with his man J-Magnum, Street Sounds cohost and Seattle's best hypeman), of Jake One's anthemic "Big Homie Style." Finally, after weeks and weeks and weeks of missed connections (my fault), I got to sit down with GMK (and producer Dot) at his pad and listen to his upcoming EP, Songs for Bloggers. I'm happy to report that—after having had a particularly sketchy cluck and his girl attempt to simultaneously occupy the single bus seat next to mine (though they only rode for two stops), followed by a brisk uphill walk to the Golden Mic King's domain (I am fat, mind you)—it was totally worth the wait. Songs won't be out for a few weeks, but you don't have to take my word for it, either. In either an incredible bit of local-rap espionage or some savvy blog-minded hype-beasting, I received an e-mail from a mystery person linking me to a "leak" from Songs; the Ghost in the Shell–jacking video for "Music Swinger," one of my favorite tunes from the oh-so-futuristic, free-form, and fully fonky concept record—appropriately, you can find it online. Check it and see what's next.

Also got a chance to dip over to The Council office where the OG J. Moore showed me the finished edit of the half-hour TV show chronicling the Red Bull Big Tune finals. Fifteen men (including the 206 champ Brainstorm of Dyme Def and runner-up Rising Son)—and one young lady—enter, one man leave! The tension, the passion, and the palpable hunger of these young producers duking it out for the money and the fame come across well in these 30 minutes (not to mention some damn tight editing and good narrative), and if you tune into BET on Saturday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m., you'll be able to judge for yourself. Goddamn, it's time BET had some decent programming.

The High Dive in beautiful Fremont has some decent programming itself this week—Friday, April 10, it hosts recent EMP Sound Off! finalists Dyno Jamz and Razpy & the Vigilantes, along with bands Eli Porter and Bottle of Smoke (a Pogues cover band, of all things). Actually, the jazz/hiphop eight-piece Dyno Jamz weren't just finalists—they won the whole goddamn thing. Congrats are in order, people. Scant days later, on Sunday, April 12, the Dive has Suntonio Bandanaz, Billy the Fridge, Knox Family, and poet/MC Josh Rizeberg. I damn near didn't even mention that show because somebody so relentlessly posted notice to every MySpace account I'm affiliated with. I'm already this close to canceling my accounts—be easy, homie.

The electronic version of this article has been updated since its original publication, which included a photo of someone who is most definitely not GMK. We regret the error.