My Philosophy

The year is wrapping up, and you, my friend, have but a scant few
chances remaining to not be a complete failure at life—seriously,
the ice caps are melting, and your opportunities to look cool before
the Great Culling are limited. Allow me to help out here. Hit up Go!
Machine at the Crocodile on December 4 and 5; both nights basically
boast the best of Seattle hiphop’s budding vanguard. You can prepare
for all this craziness in a few ways: calisthenics, hot yoga, gettin’
right with the god of your choice, and downloading P Smoov‘s
40-minute mix, Face Scrunchers Vol.1. It’s one continuous mix of
previously unreleased slaps with a couple unheard vocal
joints—solo, and with Grynch and They Live! (oh,
yes, that conflict-of-interest train steams ahead).

I would also highly recommend downloading “Icing,” a little under
two minutes of some of my favorite hiphop to emerge locally all year,
brought to us by the tasty combo of OC Notes and
THEESatisfaction. Over a jazzy backdrop of warm vibes and coldly
hollow claps, the three spin a confection as sweet as its namesake. OC
Notes is definitely looking to buck his slept-on status in the next
year, and Thee Stasia and Cat Satisfaction just get better with every
leak (and “fills a void, no more missing link” as said on Dark Time
Sunshine‘s “The Wrong Kids”).

Just saw that DV One‘s latest savagely mixed podcast up at
www.djdvone.com includes the
J.Pinder/Guilty Simpson joint “Safe Place,” a highlight
from Pinder’s up-and-coming album Sky Is Falling; if you’d like
to hear it before the LP’s spring release, you know what to do.
Download it and every other one from this week on forward, so help you
god. Also, DJ 100Proof just dropped an ill new tape called
This Is Not Music, This Is a Trip over at the new
www
.dj100proof.com—tunes from Midnight Starr, Daft
Punk, and Strafe all set it off something sweet, so get that
in ya.

Oh yeah, Kid Cudi will be here December 8 at Showbox Sodo;
they had to move it from the Market to Sodo because, incredibly, it
sold so many tickets. I mean, bully for Showbox and all parties
concerned, but god damn—did these people actually hear Man on
the Moon? Aside from a couple bearable moments, it’s like chasing a
dropped E pill through an infinite Urban Outfitters furniture section,
like some huge white studded belt twisted by devilish hands into an
endless Möbius strip, the listener the haplessly stoned ant doomed
to walk its length for all time. Maybe it’s Cudi truly doing Cudi, in
which case he’s an unimaginative hipster of the most cliché
variety. Thanks, Kanye, for ending the G-Unit hegemony—but in your wake, the default industry setting is
becoming a bizarre synthesis of the worst instincts of so-called emo
rap, club-dumb R&B, and its glossy pop-rap cousin. What’s
worse—the cumulative psychic toll of mindless thuggery or that of
a carefully styled narcissism? Are there any better options available?