OOF! That could damn well have been your reaction to
walking outside into the record-breaking heat or to the screaming blue
bastards flying over your crib here last week in Seatown—but it’s
also the name of the upcoming EP from local heroes Blue
Scholars. Having parted ways with Rawkus, Geo and
Sabzi are releasing OOF! (due August 25) and a
yet-to-be-named full-length (due next year), and rereleasing
Bayani through an ingenious partnership with local
coffee-roaster Caffe Vita and iconic New York hiphop label
Duck Down Records. “With the record industry in flux, conditions
are ripe for an alternative,” Geologic writes in their sharply penned
press release. “One where the artist, rather than becoming an employee
of a label or sponsor, contracts the label and sponsors to do work for
them. Everybody still gets a check. But it’s a relationship where the
artists (and their handpicked ‘team’) not only have creative freedom
but economic power.” “Or,” he continues, “we can keep chasing the
big record-deal unicorn.” Now pay attention, kids, ’cause
I know a whole lot of y’all are still out there in full force with your
nets and horn guards, hoping to land a big-bank deal like Cash
Money did with Universal 10 years ago: If you don’t recognize that
those old ways don’t work anymore (in any sense), then as the poet
laureate E-40 once said, you’re “playin’ football with basketball
rules.” Quit grindin’ backward.

Up on www.bluescholars.com, you can
download a two-and-a-half-minute ditty called “Coo?” off of the
forthcoming OOF! Over Sabzi’s simple, slinky guitar line and
cracking snare, Geo reminisces on times past and pontificates on the
state of music and society today; with a ferocity and a fun not heard
since the Scholar’s debut, Geo injects his narrative with hella personality as he calls out the complacency that allows bullshit to
fly—like them goddamn Blue Angels!

That said, there’s much fire for the people to be sampled this week
in the live sphere, the best I can think of being at High Dive on
Thursday, August 6: Fatal Lucciauno, Helladope,
Candidt, and Thee Satisfaction—four times the black
star power, in full effect. For that matter, big homie J. Moore let me peep the new J. Pinder record, Sky Is Falling, and
it’s dope; hear some of that new material in a rare set from the young
gun himself at Hidmo (on Jackson Street) on the evening of Friday,
August 7. (Speaking of J. Moore, make sure you catch him and DJ
Hyphen doing Sound Session every Sunday on KUBE at 10:45
p.m., not long after, ahem, Street Sounds on KEXP—call it
Seattle Sundays.) On Monday, August 10, at Chop Suey is the “Alpha P
Party Revolutionary” with Knox Family, Sarkastik,
Kas1, Inkubiz, and DJs Able and Punish.
It’s also a live video shoot for Suntonio Bandanaz‘s new single
“Boogie Up the Block,” so be sure and represent accordingly. Me? I’m
going to boogie up my own block right now, as my trusty fan just died
in a blaze of glory. RIP.