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What We Leave Behind

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Hard Shells

The Highly Hollerables are comprised of producer and Grammy nominee Amos Miller and Jaesun Easton (aka Smurf). Their well-deserved cult following is the result of two self-released projects (one on cassette and one on vinyl), each with amusing food packaging cover art that alludes to their “snackable” raps. Hard Shells is catchy, smart, ’90s boom-bap made on all-analog gear. Their animated video for single “Things I Think About” was brilliantly created using Apple’s iPhone Animoji avatars. The B-side of the vinyl includes instrumental versions of these very solid tunes.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

The Highly Hollerables

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

SuperSquare

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Rogers Thriftway

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Crow Hill

Seattle hip-hop blog 206UP picked this record as one of the “Top 10 Albums of 2010,” saying that:

A soaring achievement considering the bare-bones tools Air 2 A Bird (Gabriel Teodros and Amos Miller) had to work with when making this album in Brooklyn. In its creation, Crow Hill captured the very essence of hip-hop: eloquent poetics, masterful improvisation, and a revolutionary spirit (albeit on a quieter and more reserved scale). This album proves that hip-hop executed with class and panache can be just as effective as the bombastic variety.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

The Beautiful Baby EP

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From Slaveships to Spaceships

From Slaveships to Spaceships, a 2009 release from Khingz is a Soufend gem of the Seattle hip-hop canon, and seriously, go listen to it right now on your streaming service of choice. It opens with a strong series of strings stabs, and a defiant definition of “The New Blaq.” Many songs here are meditations on the meanings of freedom, of blackness, and identity. The soul samples of “Reach In” channel the best Kanye production, and the verses throughout, the bared soul and sensitivity channel him, too. In 2009 this was one of 206UP’s albums of the year, and I’m not surprised. It’s a recent discovery for me and has quickly become one of my favorites of this whole summer, shaking my car speakers. The sexy-ass bass line on “Blaq Han Solo” will have you fantasizing about that girl you just want to eat nachos with, who you’ve been wanting to call, and just then, at the end of the song, it breaks into a phone call where Khingz is doing just that. Both Gabriel Teodros and Justo add some featured magic. There’s so much I love here: the rapid-fire spitting on “Hydroplanin,'” the reversed guitars on “Electric Tantra,” and the beat “Grillz, which is killer, but frankly, this whole record is off-the-charts good. I could itemize why every song is a banger, but really just go listen to it for yourself.

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Lovework

In the most recent issue of City Arts, you’ll find a poem contributed by Gabriel Teodros honoring the memory of J. Moore. Consequently, I found myself listening to Lovework on headphones at the moment when I ran into Gabriel himself outside of Neumos at last Friday’s memorial show.

This record recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and it sounds as fresh and honest today as it did in 2007. Exploring wide-ranging “big” issues from sexism to classism, immigration to geopolitical struggles, Lovework is also very damn funky. Press play and two songs in I’m already chair dancing. The way the bass drums and the bass guitar interplay throughout “Beautiful” is simply sublime as is the syncopated rhyme scheme in “East Africa.” Here’s a musician who understands the responsibility and opportunities of the microphone to influence hearts and minds. Seek this record out.

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Ame Instrumentals Vol. 1

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Piece

If, “Rap music is the invisible TV station that black America never had,” as Chuck D famously described it, then Laura “Piece” Kelley is an award-winning, prime-time news anchor. Her 2003 debut album titled Piece contains instructions on how to survive in the complicated 21st century United States. The album includes themes of race, class, drugs, and gender. No subject is taboo for Piece, she is fearless like a psychotherapist, and her lyrics prove that although some topics are difficult to breach, healing can only come by confronting society’s demons. A good example of this technique is found in “Gray,” which is one of the three acapella tracks on the album. In “Gray,” Piece combines raw slurs and coded phrases that have been used to drive division and represent racial conflict in America, but then she amazingly patches these awful words together into a quilt of unity and understanding.

Laura “Piece” Kelley is not slowed by her twin goals on this album of rap to a beat and traditional poetry. By surrounding her rap work with orchestral production and singing, she avoids the trap of dull beats. In fact, the whole album is a fight against average rap. By focusing on the creative and the positive, she successfully indicts the persistent clone world of gangsters, players, and pimps without a verdict or even a trial. In the track “Endless Cleansing” she gives the listener simple tools for inner strength, “When life is a test there is hope for a lesson/What would we learn if we chose not to question?” There are little jewels like that hidden in plain sight throughout this remarkable album. “Caution” is another track that delivers this therapeutic quality. The chorus hypnotically repeats “If you believe it/Then you should be it and live it/Or leave it be.” What seems like a simple tongue-twister or play on words is actually a profound mantra about having integrity in everything we do.

Piece is a dense masterwork of hip-hop culture. The half-dozen different producers all bring heat and you won’t find any duds. “Cornerstone” has no production, but there is a beatbox performance that creates a live cipher vibe. I love the honesty of Kelley’s delivery and how she can say so much with so few words. In “Cornerstone” the line “Hip hop is colossal/Commercial is awful” makes me nod every time I hear it. (Someone should scratch that up DJ Premier style and make it the chorus of their own track.) She turns phrases and words like a magician, as she puts it, “Instant Aristotle in a bottle.” This album propelled Piece to great heights, earning her a spot on the Def Poetry Jam tour in 2005 at which she performed perhaps her best-known acapella track “Central District” at venues around the country. This track is indescribable and must be heard to be experienced; a rap with no beat begins with verses about her personal history of survival, moves on to discuss Seattle gentrification, and builds to a climax of words, rhymes, and breath. Piece is one of the best rappers out of Seattle, hands down. (Written by Novocaine132.)

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Amelation

Amelation by Amos Miller came out in 2001. This is the kind of album that Spotify would recommend if you were a fan of Macklemore, indeed Mack must have been sharing stages or at least cyphers with Miller during the 2000s. On Amelation, Miller displays a deep, reflective musicality that is absent from lots of hip-hop music. In fact, this release feels like it could easily go cross-genre thanks to the live drums, saxophone, and bass. For even more texture, Isaac Haley adds vocals and plays keys on several cuts.

“Step Back,” and “Tribute” are instrumentals, and “Chicken Song” seems like a cute inside joke which doesn’t really have lyrics other than a single sung line that is repeated a bunch of times. “Rocco Kain” is similar to “Chicken Song,” with only one sung line repeated, but “Rocco” is more serious, and it really creates a moody vibe. Setting aside the “Intro” and “Outro” leaves us with seven rap tracks to enjoy on Amelation.

“Looking at a fraction of the whole frame, content stretch continents,” is a clever line from the wordplay-filled “Paint My Eazle,” which starts the album. The wavy-sounding “9th Floor,” featuring Jamahl Harris is next, and the topics include incarceration and drug abuse. “I can’t let go of the pain that I feel, so I keep it true cause it’s really real.” “Woo Tay Var” displays Miller’s breath control skills, as he busts a frenetic, nonstop flow for three minutes, then lets the beat ride out for another two. “Lord I’ve Tried” strikes a confessional tone, while the lyrics roll with a Nas-inspired style.

President George W. Bush wouldn’t like him or his friends, Miller observes on the slow, piano-based “Nuthins Gonna Stop.” In fact the song refers to Miller feeling like he is “in a police state.” “It Ain’t So Budifal” contains a witty blast of rhymes similar to “Woo Tay Var,” reminding listeners that despite the musical coating to the album, there is still a hip-hop nucleus to Amelation.

For me everything really comes together on “Crickuts.” It’s difficult to explain, but I love songs where things evolve, and some kind of breakthrough or movement happens either musically or lyrically. The song actually starts out with chirping crickets, enhancing the storytelling nature of the track. The sweet background vocals of Nina Granatir complement Miller’s raps perfectly. Well Done. Written by Novocaine132

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