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.

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Artist: Incredicrew

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Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt

This lost album was supposed to have been released in 1989.

On the heels of their success with 1987 song “King In Def Poetry,” buzzy production duo Incredicrew—Cornell “CMT” Thomas and Danny “Dee Rock” Clavesilla—signed a multi-album deal with Chilly Uptown’s label Ever Rap, with the intention they’d be in-house producers for a number of upcoming hip-hop projects. The first of these was a one-off single by Nerdy B and Chelly Chell called “He’s Incredible.”

It was one of Seattle’s first major rap songs with a female MC, and it was a big hit locally. Nasty Nes said that when he played the song on his radio show Fresh Tracks, his phone lines lit right up with requests to hear it again.

Based on that first single’s hype, Nerdy B, Chelly Chell, and Incredicrew went back into the studio to record a full album of furious scratching and charming verses. One of our favorite aspects of this vinyl is how elements from the song “He’s Incredible,” reappear throughout many of the other songs as a repeated motif.

However, financial troubles with the label’s distributor meant this 1989 project—and the whole Incredicrew deal—was shelved and these master tapes sat forgotten on the shelf for 31 years. The Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt tapes were finally rediscovered, remastered, and released by Ever Rap on vinyl in 2020.

It’s hard not to wonder how Seattle’s early ‘90s rap landscape and this early “NastyMix” era might’ve looked quite different had this record been released as planned!

This vinyl contains 11 tracks of Nerdy B’s furious scratching and Chelly Chell’s clever rhymes. There are also two versions of their classic hit, “He’s Incredible,” a song that got Nasty Nes’s phones ringing off the hook. Against a backdrop of Nerdy B’s furious scratching, Chelly Chell raps hypnotically, “We got beats and bass, yeah, now we’re on wax… Now how ya like that?!”

It may have taken 30 years, but yes, finally.

Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

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King in Def Poetry

On his 1986 single, “I’m A Trip,” Mix-A-Lot positioned his computer music against the threat of talented turntable DJs. One Seattle rival were Incredicrew, a duo of teenage wunderkind producers: Cornell “CMT” Thomas and Danny “Dee Rock” Clavesilla, who we’d later come to know as Mr. Supreme.

This vinyl is one of the few early-period hits from ‘80s Seattle rap that’s doesn’t originate from the Mix-A-Lot/NastyMix camp. As a teenager, Danny Dee was a talented BMX rider. He toured around the country and was exposed early to NYC’s new breakdancing scene, years before the rest of the Northwest got hip to hip-hop.

Once home, he’d practice his own samples and scratching and breaks, eventually becoming official DJ for The Seattle Circuit Breakers, one of the Town’s first major breakdancing troops. Not long after, he and CMT formed Incredicrew, and they began producing beats for local rappers.

This was their first vinyl, with M.C. Kid P, a Reno-based rapper who spends most of his verses introducing the band and praising his DJs: “Yo Danny Dee Rock, show ‘em why your hand is like a knife…” In turn, Danny smacks down numerous sequences of famous samples, hyping up the party ever higher. It’s a fun song, presented in three versions. The B-Side cut “High Powered Hip-Hop” celebrates CMT’s work on the drum machine with a descending, dark sub-bass melody that dominates the tune.

Two fun facts: Incredicrew appear in Mix-A-Lot’s “Posse on Broadway” video as the rival crew in the infamous Dick’s parking lot scene. And this Incredicrew project was recorded in the very same room where, two years later, Nirvana would record “Bleach” and usher in the Tsunami that was Grunge. For a brief sliver of the waning ‘80s, rap had become Seattle’s primary musical export.

King in Def Poetry was created in and features appearances from:

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