A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Flowers in The Void

During this pandemic, our definitions for relationships and personal space have been upended. Flowers in the Void provides your ideal salve for all those confusing feelings—our desire for company, our desire for space… Whether realizing that “your love is like coffee on a Sunday” or crying out “please, I need someone,” you will recognize these feelings: Joy, anxiety, despair, listlessness.

Singer and rapper Liv† says that making this record was like therapy. Here, she wields an incredible set of tools to create impeccable moments of rap and R&B delivered against moody production that echoes all the ways time have begun to stretch and pass differently this year. (The beats on “One Track Mind” in particular.) We’ve had Liv†’s album on full repeat since it debuted: This record is simply note-perfect. But as she says in the opener, “It just ain’t enough.” The headphone-wearing, sideways cover photo perfectly captures how we’ve been feeling all 2020.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Black Girl Unbothered

“Chasing clout is not my dream,” raps Tacoma’s Liv† at the opening of Black Girl Unbothered. Regardless, this record has racked up significant local praise: KEXP describes the EP as “breezy, quietly confident, and romantic by immaculate design … as surehanded with shit talk as it is come-ons, celebrating the individuality of one very talented black woman,” while Dan’s Tunes succinctly notes the “combination of fluid heat.” In praising the production, Respect My Region says, “I melted the moment I heard that bass slap out those first four notes.”

Here’s another take:

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

“Middle fingers to the whole world / if you ain’t down with who I be,” declares this coolly confident R&B singer less than a minute into her latest EP. It’s a breezy assertion, devoid of arrogance, setting the tone for seven blissful tracks imbued with her contagious and unshakable glow. Throughout the short set, the singer and (for at least 90 seconds) rapper seamlessly flashes a variety of looks, from funked-up polyrhythmic head-swimmers to sensual neo-soul and the glitchy bounce of closing track “Euphoria.”

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