I discovered Riz Rollins not too long after I settled in Seattle in the early 1990s.
He lived in a mother-in-law cottage (which is now gone) that was near the Harvard Exit theater (now gone) right behind an apartment building (also now gone) that my cousins lived in. He worked at Orpheum Records (gone) on Broadway, which was next to Siam Thai Cuisine and Jade Pagoda (both gone—the former relocated to Eastlake and the latter to restaurant heaven).
At the time, hiphop was in its Afrocentric and Daisy Age phase, and Riz, with his dreadlocks and idiosyncratic spirituality (it blended elements of the black church with black hippie open-mindedness) appeared to be Seattle’s best representative of that progressive mood. The mood was defined by acts like the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, the Pharcyde, and, of course, De La Soul.
