My Philosophy

Okay, let’s nut up here and be honest: There’s beef in these
Northwest streets. Straight up rap beef, a fault line of funk
that runs through our region, a deep-seated, grinding friction between
the tectonic plates of our overlapping scenes that threatens to erupt
into an orgy of violence at any moment. Club owners, bookers, make your
blacklists and check them twice; bar the windows, keep your eyes peeled
and your ears mashed to the asphalt for warnings of the
apocalypse—hell, if there’s any irresponsible gossip to
spread about artists currently struggling to succeed in Seattle’s
always hiphop-friendly environs, do it! Do it now! For fuck’s
sake, BATTLE STATIONS!

Just look no further than the titanic showdown going down at the
High Dive on May 2—billed as Sportn’ Life vs. Focused
Noise, the night makes plain hiphop’s savagely combative nature.
The Portland-based Focused Noise camp—fun boom-bapsters Animal
Farm, speech tactician Serge Severe, and universal souljah
Mic Crenshaw—faces off with the notorious Sportn’ Life
Records, composed of the “God Like” D.Black (soon to drop
Rejuvenation, a testament to self-transformation), the Black
Star Power of Spaceman, and the town’s most controversial (and
scariest named!) artist, Fatal Lucciauno. Did the staff of the
High Dive not get the e-mail?

You motherfuckers know I’m kidding right? Bottom line, y’all
need to go support this show—among the wealth of reasons
is the official-made, supertalented Northwest pedigree of the lineup
and its contribution to the very necessary dialogue between PDX and
206 hiphop.

But you gotta understand, last week’s flap about Fatal being
booted from the Dyme Def bill was to some maybe a small thing;
it was, however, a big statement, and one I’m not comfortable letting
just fade away into the golden sunset of good, studied PR. I praise
the ever-humble MC for his total grace under fire, but I’m pained
by the frustration I feel coming from him—frustration he has to
hold back in order to maintain. I take some solace in the knowledge
that this will no doubt spark fiery inspiration for the aptly dubbed
Forgotten Son and likely result in some incredible fucking music, as is
often the case with artists backed into a corner and shoved under a
microscope. But I ask myself, should I keep a smile for the sake of the
scene? Should I just accept that awkward dap and reassure those who
haltingly ask me, “We’re cool, right, homie?” At my advanced age, I’m
not feeling that shit.

I realize this situation was complicated and that communication
could’ve solved it, as it always can. It just seems that soon after the
artist was thrown under one of those slow, rickety,
poles-always-falling-off-the-damn-wires, accordion-waisted Metro
joints, the promoter was promptly laid underneath that bitch,
too—in both cases, for something that literally never
happened. Hiphop, once again, to blame. So: I am hereby registering
my discontent with anybody who wants to take bread out of my
communities’ mouth. Not from a place of malice or ill will, but of
candor. Since communication is that precious, and underutilized, then
that’s what I’m doing—communicating; you should feel free to do
the same.