The best rapper to ever spit Young MC's lyrics... The undisputed King of Seattle (check the stats)... Mentally hiphop, smoothed out, on an R&B tip with pop appeal... What do these strange sentence fragments have to do with one another? Don't bother asking me if you see me Friday, November 10, because I'll probably be checking Tone Loc, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and Boyz II Men on the Paramount stage. Why the fuck wouldn't I? Hmmm... maybe 'cause there's another crazy show popping off that night, up the road at Chop Suey—namely Common Market, D. Black, Abyssinian Creole, Silent Lambs Project, and your one and only DJ Vitamin D. Now that's a mightily diverse (and dope) lineup, and it's all ages. Big ups to bills like this—God knows some of these kids out here need to appreciate some diversity in their hiphop.
The local beef just won't stop, don't stop—and if you spend as much goddamn time on you know what as I do, you might know that MCs Typecast and Inkubiz have recorded a dis entitled "Options." In his vitriolic verse, Type takes shots at a number of cats in the Noc On Wood Records camp, namely the brothers Tommy and Robbie Wood (label head and member of NOW flagship crew Nocturnal Rage, respectively) and Boise rappers Mad Ro. Inkubiz, if I'm not mistaken, drops some surprising subliminals on a variety of prominent local cats—since he doesn't call out names, I ain't gonna do it for him, fam; find the track on Type's page (or wait for his Mustache Immaculate LP in January) if you wanna read between those lines. The last thing I want to see is more disunity and ill will in our little dis-functional family (let alone encourage it), believe me; however, are these recent salvos merely reflections of our scene's well-known predilection for backbiting and haterism—or rather representative of some kind of a progression in the local dialogue? I'll let you tell it—but I do know that if it's a movement, then there's gotta be friction. Look it up, god.
I got surprised like a mufucka when I received Point Blank, the new street LP from the young beast Avatar. If you need to hear some gritty, grimy, gutter shit from the town, look no further, babypaw—real talk. This shit is crazy; the kid spits granite hard over some sick production (laced by Pro-V), with a gravelly-ass voice to match, sounding like he stole the Game's last carton of Newports, and smoked 'em with Kool G Rap and Styles P or something... and fuck off haters, I'm not really trying to compare dudes—just giving you some road signs so you can follow my drift, bums. Avatar Young Blaze is cosigned by Reese, who dropped the criminally underappreciated Army with No Faces almost two years ago, and who makes appearances on Blank, as well as Oldominion's Bishop I. This album is, in Av's own words, "mobbed out." If you're the rare Stranger reader who appreciates the finer points of coke rap, then you should know I'm putting this one on must-cop status. If I were Funkmaster Flex, I'd be "dropping bombs" all over it—unlike him though, I don't get a cut...
