Speech time—my man Charles Mudede's blurb about Dyme Def from last week struck me quite a bit, check it: "Sooner or later, Seattle has to realize that it doesn't have to look elsewhere for quality hiphop. If you live in this city, you can relegate the rest of the nation to secondary status. All the hiphop you need is right here, right now." Hey man, when he's on, he's on—and right there he's dead on target.

Now I don't doubt that there are plenty of other pockets of brilliance in the U.S. (uh,pardon my nationalism right now) just seething under the radar (I'm looking at you, Jacksonville!), but if you can't recognize the gravity and—I'm gonna quote the Chef right here—mad styles and crazy dangerous, I mean, bust ya shit open beats native to our region... well, you're just another hapless victim of that classic Seattle Self-Esteem Syndrome. But it's not necessarily terminal—yet. I'm just saying, at this moment in time, the old guard has no clothes, and the blog-hop generation doesn't seem to have shit else; what we got cooking over here is smelling real good to me these days.

Having reupped on civic pride, flock down to the Rendezvous to pay your tithes at The Corner on May 22, and check what the hell the Physics have been working on, along with Mr. Reinvention, Specs Wizard (who's a part of the Building Project... more on that soon), brolic femcee (hate that word) Yze, Olympia's proud shitbags Junk Yard Gang, the controversial DJ Nphared, and your host Billy the Fridge.

The next night at Chop Suey is the CD release for the Knox Family (Jerm and Julie C)—check them, PDX's Mic Crenshaw, Black Stax (Silent Lambs Project and Felicia Loud), Razpy & the Vigilantes, and Black Aries (LaRue and Yirim Seck). Then, fellas, go to Showbox at the Market on May 24 and crack at the gorgeous young ladies under the pretense that you're there to see Slim of 112... and fail. But at least wish my fellow Quaker, BBoy from Soul Gorilla, a happy birthday!

May 26 at High Dive, gird your eardrums and prepare yourself for the Soundwaves Beat Battle (brought to you by the Subliminalz and Kuddie Fresh), featuring a nice mix of fairly established cats and utter, wet-behind-the-ears greenhorns: MTK, DJ Nphared, Marcus D, Jack the Ripper, Isaac Meek, Tope, TilesOne, Joey Defone, Boombox Massacre, Tay Sean, Baked Beatz, Buddy Ross, JD Flow, Hydef, KD Cuts, S.Swift, and Dan Fajans will all be duking it out for the prize. Also catch Subliminalz's Young Cel and Duranged Pitt throwing down live, plus Dragonfish Killswitch on the wheels. This will pack out, as these contests tend to, but will doubtless be a bit of a (it's not delivery!) DiGiorno sausage party; I'm just not sure that ladies love cool beat battles—and where's the female producers at anyway? Racist!