A film about Northwest hip-hop from

NEWCOMER

This 82-minute feature film is an intimate introduction to Seattle’s vibrant hip-hop underground. It was assembled from hundreds of tiny performance clips—shot for Instagram—into a single, continuous concert mosaic, and stars 93 of the top hip-hop artists from The Town.

Here’s how KEXP describes it in their review: “NEWCOMER stretches the idea of the concert film to an artistic extreme: Sub-minute snippets artfully arranged to resemble a field recording of Seattle’s rap scene, the pieces fractured and pieced back together in a truly engrossing way. The narrative flows through venues like Barboza, Cha Cha Lounge, Vermillion, Lo-Fi, the Showbox, the Crocodile, and dozens more. It’s Khris P pouring Rainier into a Solo cup while he raps; bodies packed into regional landmark ETC Tacoma; SassyBlack improvising a song urging concertgoers to buy her merch; the delightfully awkward dance moves of white people in KEXP’s Gathering Space; Chong the Nomad beatboxing and playing harmonica simultaneously; Bruce Leroy bullying a beat next to the clothing racks at All-Star Vintage; Specswizard rhyming about his first time performing in front of a crowd while standing before The Dark Crystal playing on a projection screen. The film is about the moments we experience—as lovers of live performance—just as much as the performances themselves.”

NEWCOMER was directed by Gary Campbell and was an official selection at the 2020 New York Hip-Hop Film Festival and the 2020 Golden Sneakers International Hip-Hop Film Festival in Hamburg, Germany. Throughout November 2020, the film screened for four weeks on the Northwest Film Forum theatrical screening site in honor of Hip-Hop History Month.

You can watch the full movie below.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

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Stolen from KAOS Vol. 1

Stolen from KAOS Vol. 1 is a beat tape from the Tacoma-based Fish Tank Friends collective. (As in, more crazy great music from the Tac.) One side of this cassette is a live mix from Baloogz and the other side a mix from Crockett King. The latter makes frequent and deft use of delightful tape effects, little gotchas where you think the tape is momentarily stuck in your player about to be stretched and shredded. I had friends over for dinner and this was on in the background and the guests kept asking who this was. I was at a SassyBlack show recently where she said that when you make beats from weird sources, you gotta really love that shit, and it’s clear that Crockett King does: At one point there’s an extended flute solo, mixed with church hymns, while on top a man sings jazz classic “I Put A Spell On You.” The Baloogz side is equally engaging, taking the mix down a path that’s a bit more trap and space goth. I’ve been listening to a lot of cassettes lately and this is one of my current favorites.

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