I’ll be damned! Summer’s done snuck up on us after all. Now all you
poohbutts are bitching about the heat. Well, on Thursday, July 17,
Seattle’s live hiphop hotbeds have much to offer: Capitol Hill’s Comet
Tavern hosts the send-off date of the Less Is More tour featuring
Northwest road warriors Tulsi, Specs One, Animal
Farm (minus crew member Hanif), and DJ Able; at
Fremont’s High Dive you’ll find “The Come Up!” featuring up and comers
such as that fast rhymin’ George Zelaya (“The Real Grunge Rap
King”), Know Choice, Notion, and Ripynt. Mr.
Zelaya I haven’t written too much about—I don’t have any of his
shit—but a cursory listen to the hardcore choppage up on his
MySpace page (myspace.com/georgemusic) tells me
he’s far from a hobby rapper.
Friday, July 18, you can hit up the Showbox at the Market and catch
Outtasite—who that, you ask? Well, Michael “Outtasite”
Singleton is a protégé of none other than Sir
Mix-A-Lot, and played backup to Mix’s now-defunct novelty-rap-rock
supergroup with the Presidents of the United States of America,
called Subset. (Whose music, I gotta confess, I hated on without
ever having heard a note. My bad. But even though I loved Swass and Seminar, and was all about PUSA—in 1994—I still
contend that it sounds like a horrible fuckin’ idea.)
Now I’m not mad at Outtasite the rapper, he’s solid—but the
“hard rock,” guitar-laced jammy jams his group cranks, while mostly
avoiding the easy trap of poorly conceived rap-funk-rock stuff by dint
of his legitimate rhymes, still strike me as overly slick, dudebro X
Games fare. But I’ve only seen the guy’s name on the Showbox’s marquee
(featuring Sir Mix, just as of Friday), so there must be a number of
folks that do vibe on it. Godspeed! What’s funny, though, is I know
over half of the hiphop heads reading this will have NO idea what I’m
talking about—so, no, I did not make any of that shit up.
If you want to feel the heat of battle, hiphop fiends, get ye to the
Sunset Tavern in olde Ballard on Saturday, July 19, for the third PUSH
Beat Battle. There you will see, among others, local producers DJ
Nphared (Grynch, D.Black, Kublakai), TilesOne (Cancer
Rising), Sebino (Grieves), P Smoov (Mad Rad), Joey
Defone (Bedroom Stompers), Rudy (minus the Rhetoric), and
Budo (Macklemore, Ricky Pharoe) going head to head in a grueling
contest of skill. If that is not enough blood sport for you jackals, as
an added bonus there will also be a segment called “Who Can See Mic
Phenom?” Those not up on slang should know that this is not an
inquiry about Mic’s ability to be perceived by the naked eye (that
would be rather easy); this, rather, is where one of Seatown’s fiercest
battle rhymers takes on all comers. Are you built like that? 