TOWN LOVE is an online art museum dedicated to celebrating the vibrant past and present of Northwest Hip-Hop. You can browse by artist or browse by year.

This gallery page is organized to highlight the creative work of

Artist: Dave B

As you scroll, items are sorted from most recent to earliest.

A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Delicate

Taylor Hart from West Coast cannabis hip-hop site Respect My Region selected Delicate as one of the very best Northwest albums from 2020, saying:

You wanna talk about someone skating over a beat? Let’s talk Dave B. He glides across the ice with his lyrics gracefully as if he were competing in the Olympics. The way the words fall out of his mouth it’s like he’s hitting triple axles with his tongue. His newest album, Delicate, is a stunning example of these talents. Dave B.’s the type of artist, for me, where I don’t even question whether the album will be good or not; I just know I’m going to listen to it and enjoy it.

Delicate was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

MCMXCII

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MCMXCII was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Punch Drunk

Hmmm... There's not a lot of information about this project in the museum encyclopedia. We'd love your help! TOWN LOVE is maintained by an awesome community of passionate volunteers who keep it all up to date.

Do you know something about the history of this record? Do you have a favorite lyric or a favorite memory? Send us an email on why this is one of the great hip-hop albums from the Northwest. Thanks!

Punch Drunk was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

BLEU

BLEU, the fourth record from Dave B, explores the anxieties of adulthood in our social media-drenched new millennium. It’s a deep, witty, and contemplative scroll through frustration and love. DJ Booth says that “Dave B’s rhymes call to mind the artfully constructed schemes of both mixtape-era Chance The Rapper and Aminé,” while The Stranger summarizes it thusly: “Witty lyrics, soulful singing, incisive rapping, and excellent production: BLEU is really fucking good.”

Here’s another take:

In their annual year-end critics’ poll, The Seattle Times ranked BLEU as one of the very best Seattle albums of 2019, saying:

With his fourth album, the proven emcee further bolsters his credentials as one of Seattle hip-hop’s top dual threats, splicing gospel-splashed singing passages into his nasally bars with aplomb. The 10-track introspective journey carries nods to late Seattle luminaries Kari Ca$h and J. Moore, with Dave’s unflappable flow belying the internal tension in his lyrics.

BLEU was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Pearl

Pearl is an ambitious, soul-tinged departure from Dave B’s previous work, harnessing the energies of a live backing band to gorgeous results. “I don’t recognize the man I’ve become,” he croons, while surrounded by sweeping, spectacular guitar solos on album closer, “Sweetest Thing.” It’s a romantic and bittersweet torch song, like many of them here, that leaves you swooning. In their review, The Seattle Times described Pearl as a breakup record, and it’s true that these songs ponder the pros and cons of singledom, dating, and commitment. But after a year of bad news and presidential oxygen suck, you’ll also hear a strong longing to tune out the Twitter tirades through idle distraction, to say “Fuck it, I just can’t deal,” and binge Nextflix, drink a little too much, and scroll and scroll and scroll through social media. When that dark cloud threatens to overtake you, “whenever you find yourself bored,” that’s when you spin the two-track tour-de-force of “Scrolling” and “Magnum,” the latter an extended outro of the first, bursting with experimentation, screwed, chopped and—for me anyway—heavily on repeat. Dave B has had his world turned upside down this year: Selling out The Neptune, performing on The Tonight Show, and touring across America and Australia. This record demonstrates how much he deserves every accolade and success, with many more to come.

Pearl was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

&

Tomorrow

At some point this year I stuck a sticky note on the front of this CD that says, “Killer tracks: #2, 3.” Later, I went back and added the numbers for pretty much every other track on this record. Tomorrow is an album built around all the amazing things Dave B can do with his voice, with phrases and verses providing all the momentum here, constantly pivoting forward, fast, slow, in reverse. On this release, his voice stands alone in Sango’s stripped-down ambient environment: distant synths enveloping the verses, and ever-present washes of reverb. I love the sounds of rain falling throughout the opening of “Cold Weather.” The “Rainier Beach Station” announcement from a Link light rail car grounds this record in a place: It’s the sound of Seattle’s south end, magic and multicultural.

Tomorrow was created in and features appearances from:

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