Friday, May 11, is another landmark in Seattle hiphop, and not just because it’s the triumphant CD-release party for Bayani, Blue Scholars’ brand-new Rawkus Records—distributed album. I’m most excited because one of their openers is one of the most important entities in the entire catalog of 206 hiphop—and because a new generation of local rap fanatics will be present to bear witness.
Black Anger‘s Maxed Out Singles was the first local rap release I ever bought. I copped it at Orpheum, the now-defunct spot on North Broadway that also filled all my mix-tape needs (platinum props forever due to DJs B-Mello and Topspin). The distinctive cover caught me right off the bat—a Klansman in a noose, red on silver background. Once I popped it into my brand-new Discman (ha!), the familiar voice of B-Mello introduced the opener “206 Mixtapes (Worldwide)” with his trademark “Yes indeed!” Maxed Out stands to this day as quite possibly the best official local hiphop record—released on Olympia’s K Records. (It’ll never cease to amaze me that Calvin Johnson‘s sandbox was also at one time the Northwest’s heavyweight label for hiphop. Consider releases from Black Anger, Silent Lambs Project, the Dead Presidents, the aptly titled Classic Elements comp, and a handful of pre—Saturday Knights joints from Tilson.)
Black Anger was E-Real Asim, together with Kindu and Sayeed (two brothers also known as Bedroom Produksionz). Together, they crafted dark, brooding hiphop, blending the fiery proto-NOI consciousness of Ice Cube and Public Enemy with the fevered down-home paranoia of old Goodie Mob into a brew totally unique. Joints like “Violence (I Become It)” and “Third Eye” are bulletproof NW standards, with lyrics and production easily on par with national acts of the time. The trio were a staple in town, delivering truly memorable performances—I’ll never forget the Raekwon show at the old Bohemian where they utterly blew The Chef off stage. Eventually Kindu and Sayeed shipped out and relocated to Virginia (where Sayeed hosts on 91.3 WVST), and E-Real still performs and records as Universoul (grooming a new generation of Du-4-Self Recordings soldiers such as J-Mar Da Sik). As a whole generation of local heads who grew up on Black Anger (among many others) are today figures in the community ourselves, there’ll doubtless be a lot of us at the Showbox in full nostalgia-laden Stan mode, not to mention a lot of brand-new fans for a tried-and-true Northwest classic.
The best thought I’ve seen amid the recent cavalcade of hiphop bashing (Oprah), hiphop apologism (good ol’ Uncle Russell), and straight coonery (ya boy Cam’Ron, as usual) comes from our poet laureate Saul Williams. In his open letter to Oprah, Saul lays plain hiphop’s indelible connection to real-talk American values: “…Our love affair with gangsterism and the denigration of women is not rooted in Hip Hop; rather it is rooted in the very core of our personal faith and religions. The gangsters who rule Hip Hop are the same gangsters who rule our nation.” 