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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Tag: Darrius

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

The Don Of Diamond Dreams

In their annual year-end critics’ poll, The Seattle Times ranked The Don Of Diamond Dreams as the very best Seattle album of 2020, saying:

Ishmael Butler is a Seattle original. The enigmatic rapper/producer has been at hip-hop’s vanguard since Digable Planets’ Grammy-winning heyday in the early ’90s. During the past decade, the onetime jazz-rap leader and, ahem, Seattle Times paperboy became an influential alt-rap figure, further expanding the art form through Shabazz Palaces’ polyrhythms and Afrofuturist touch. This spring’s Sub Pop-issued The Don of Diamond Dreams ranks among the best work of Butler’s illustrious career, showing he hasn’t stopped moving forward in three decades.

Butler makes literary sport of hip-hop’s braggadocio traditions, name-checking 1920s French actors, and “catching mermaids without no hook” on the hypnotizing “Chocolate Souffle.” Elsewhere, the warped funk of “Fast Learner” is fit for an intergalactic space cruise or midnight drive through neon-lit streets. In a year when local hip-hop shined so brightly — and some in the mainstream might be catching up to his star-surfing ways — amid a tumultuous start of a new decade, there’s comfort knowing this Seattle visionary still carries a guiding torch.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star

The 1991 novel Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis tells the story of an alien who experiences time backward, and who is perplexed by all our human behavior throughout the 20th century, where people become sick after visiting the hospital, and where the Holocaust births millions of new humans. Shabazz Palaces’s twin 2017 albums are concepted around a similar tale: Quazarz, the extraterrestrial, trying to make sense of contemporary America: Our capitalism, our fake news, our police brutality, and our smartphone obsessions. Throughout the verses, you’ll recognize your own habits and values reflected back, and see them as equally perplexing and strange. This second record, Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star, was originally conceived of as bonus material for the first (Jealous Machines) before taking on a life of its own. Songs have a stasis, a hazy quality, echoes of spare drums, and barely-there beats that stubbornly refuse to groove. Still, tracks like “Eel Dreams” and the Kraftwerk-inspired “Moon Whip Quäz” find their own abstract way to rock, taking you on a mystical space-travel journey. Overall, there’s an ease to the music on this record, an exploration of artists hanging out and playing and innovating, unconcerned with convention or commercial viability. Influences pull from everywhere: improvisation, sampler-based free-jazz, indie, and prog-rock, fusing the sound waves into a truly unique sonic landscape. This record opens your eyes. We’re all Quazarz. Our world is a confusing and magical place.

Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star was created in and features appearances from:

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