Summer's end is always a rough one. The accrued good times and outdoor festivities start to take their toll, people's mood darkens considerably, kids gotta go back to school—man, folks are pissed! Shit, on the first day of class in a Spokane high school, some teacher allegedly handed out copies of the lyrics to "Commencement Day" (off of Blue Scholars' Long March EP) to his class and got suspended! The biggest gang on the streets—the cops, fool—is going buck wild out here, Taser wires and bullets just flying everywhere. Perfect time for good news, such as this, and stop me if you heard already: Shabazz Palaces have signed to legendary Seattle label Sub Pop. Seeing as how Sub Pop has an international rep for showcasing game-changing talent, and being that Shabazz are about the most revolutionary shit I've heard in years (not to mention the first ever recipient of the Stranger Genius Award for Music), I'm anticipating some cool developments. Check a new SP track, "Barksdale Corners," at the download section over at www.iwantyoumagazine.com, and catch 'em live this Friday, September 17, at the Stranger Genius Awards party at the Moore Theatre (doors at 9, show at 10).

I wanna give a big wassup to our homeboy Sonny Bonoho's ATL homeboy Playboy Tre—whose new album, The Last Call, is that good, soul, honest-to-a-fault country rap tunage he's become known for. Treboy Play even caught a quite positive Pitchfork review, so hopefully he'll be known as more than B.o.B.'s more charismatic hypeguy (and maybe do some more Bona Brothers stuff with Sonny). Since you're wondering, I also been slapping this new Mestizo album, Elecholo, pretty tough; the Machina Muerte generalissimo made one evil-sounding-ass record, all distorted, face-grating tones and punishing 808s, total post-Skynet Cali underground wasteland rap. One of the hardest tracks of the year, "Truth Be Told," sounds exactly like going through a black hole and ending up in '80s Oakland.

Let's bring it back here for a minute, though—not a whole lot of live hiphop going on this week from what I can tell, but on Tuesday, September 21, Ohio's own Lyfe Jennings brings his conscious-R&B stylings to the Showbox at the Market, and jazzy lady Dice is opening up.

Bellevue spitter AKrish dropped his Blue EP a while ago, sporting production entirely from Dyme Def's Brainstorm. (It's a much better matchup than Brain recently had against EVT producer Moonman at Big Tunes, where his Caucasian opponent dropped a beat that was little more than a loop of a sampled n-bomb—awkwardness and comedy ensued.) AK got some heaters from Brain and some quality cameos from Spaceman, Grynch, Chev, and more (and even bears more than a passing vocal similarity to NYC's Yak Ballz), but even with a capable flow, he never quite manages to match the personality of his more experienced guests.

Meanwhile, this dude Eighty4Fly has seemingly come out of nowhere and gotten some nice buzz going; his free Eighty4Fly Project EP is being downloaded like crazy right now—go find it. His electro-ambient post-Drake fly-rap is KUBE-ready in a good way, all slick, spacey bars and Auto-Tune hooks, so keep your eyes up.