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

Tag: Blake Lewis

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

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The Sickle & the Sword

The Stranger picked The Sickle & the Sword as one of the “Top 5 Albums of 2013,” saying that:

RA Scion had a busy year in 2013. In spring, he released Adding to the Extra, an album produced by Todd Sykes (one half of Tacoma’s CityHall), which marked Scion’s return to the “old boom-bap” and introduced a new and very talented rapper to the scene, John Crown (he is on “Amalgam X”). But in the fall, Scion dropped a huge, beautiful, and deeply spiritual/philosophical LP, The Sickle & the Sword, which was produced by New York City’s Rodney Hazard. Three reasons for loving this record: One, the dubby, ghostly, gorgeous track “Bloodletter” is one of RA Scion’s highest achievements as an artist; two, it has a unified sound (thanks to Hazard); three, it takes a lot of risks and does not fear overflowing or even failure. Hazard and Scion need to join forces again.

The Sickle & the Sword was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

If We Try...

Hmmm... There’s not a lot of information about this record in the museum encyclopedia.

This TOWN LOVE website was created in 2021 as a pandemic-era project. It was a volunteer-led effort to help document and celebrate the complete history of Northwest hip-hop between the years 1981 and 2020. This public archive we built is now available for free online for everyone to read and explore.

If you'd like to contribute, and you know something about this particular record--a story, a memory, or a favorite lyric--please email us a short write-up, and we’ll add your thoughts to the archive when we get the chance.

Thanks for your help in preserving the history of our scene!

If We Try... was created in and features appearances from:

Did we get it wrong? It happens. Send us an email and let's get it corrected right away!