Okay, kids, we got a lot to cover this week, so please try to pay attention. Now, we’ve all probably got an opinion on
Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 by this
point, but whatever your take (it’s a healthy notch above Kingdom
Come for me, with some highlights worthy of The Blueprint
2—but certainly not the OG Blueprint), I know you’re
thinking of trying to get tickets for his October 17 show at KeyArena.
I sure as hell am. Crazy to think Hov’s never played in Seattle
before.
The album contending with BP3 is that other rap-classic
sequel that just dropped, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban
Linx… Pt. II. I remember seeing Rae 10 years ago on
the Bohemian stage, chiding the audience for daring to think that
Vol. 3 was a better record than Immobilarity—to
this day, a simply batshit notion—but a decade later, he’s
actually got an album better than Jay’s. Somewhere between the best
moments of Wu-Tang‘s 8 Diagrams and the sort of
fucked-off, old-head criminality only Rae’s co-d Ghostface has
done consistently well, Linx II is both a soothing balm for the
dinosaurs who want to live in their eternal 1995 and an educational
spiked bat of Shaolin grit for baby-faces to split their lips on. The
Wu are back? Which reminds me: GZA will be shadowboxing at
Neumos on September 23 with Oly’s Oldominion oracle XP, hungry
youngstas Kung Foo Grip, and my dude (also DJ for RA
Scion and Helladope) Dev from Above.
Method Man is coming, too, to Showbox at the Market on
September 17, with his blunt brother Redman, not to mention
Fatal Lucciauno, Spaceman, Jay Barz, and Marc
Sense. Come to think of it, Red and Meth dropped Blackout! 2 this summer as well—10 years after the original Blackout! arrived. (Goddamn, this reminds me of a summer 20 years past when
Back to the Future II, Ghostbusters II, and Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade all came out. Best birthday ever,
homie.) That same night, you got JFK aka Ninjaface ripping the damn lining out of the Comet—he’s riding high off
some good news: J’s much-anticipated, multiply delayed solo effort,
Building Wings on the Way Down, is actually, verifiably coming
out soon. Even still, big fuck-you to the guy who stole his and
hella other cats’ albums-in-progress from Aaron Angus’s studio last
year.
Yo, and if you’re still on Girl Talk‘s dils, he’s rocking the
first of two sure-to-sell-out shows at Showbox Sodo on September 18,
and you should take time to check out openers Brother Reade, the
L.A.-based rap crew of Jimmy Jamz and Bobby Evans. Their
dope 2007 LP, Rap Music, is slept-on to a degree I would
invariably describe as hella. That same night, Mad Rad are bringing their homies, Brooklyn’s bad-brained, tight-jeansed,
club-rap internet sensations Ninjasonik, to rock
Nectar—listen, I saw these fools in NYC, and I was definitely
feeling their acute degree of not giving a fuck (also: the music).
Seattle, I think you would, too. And you know I’m always
right.