A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Blake Anthony

Blake Anthony is a superb self-titled selection of smoking anthems from this prolific Tacoma-by-way-of-Topeka talent. He effortlessly raps over a seamless backdrop of reggae, jazz, and trap beats. Respect My Region says this EP is “an experience like you stepped into Narnia, warping time,” while adding that you can sense the sound of bong tokes in the background. The laid-back lead single “Black Coffee” racked up more than 200,000 plays on Spotify, and B.A. sold out his record release party at Columbia City Theater. You know his name now. Start paying attention.

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

A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Bobby Ro$$

Bobby Ro$$ is a vibe-heavy hustle through the landscape of art, blackness, and self-love. On it, Porter inhabits a trap music avatar of the much-loved PBS painter and uses snippets of interviews with cultural luminaries such as Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Maya Angelou as a narrative lattice to paint himself into the canon of black art. NPR calls him “A skilled rapper and a multimedia threat,” while Respect My Region says that “Perry Porter paints a masterpiece with his latest album.”

Here’s another take:

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

Since the breakup of his rowdy mosh-rap group Sleep Steady, Perry Porter has established himself as one of Seattle-Tacoma’s unique talents through infectiously fun hybrid rap/live art shows. The charismatic rapper/painter (or is it painter/rapper?) looks and sounds increasingly comfortable grooving in his own watercolored lane on Bobby Ro$$, which arrived this summer with a track-by-track color wheel guide to match the variegated album’s many moods. The man can still annihilate a trap beat with the best of ’em (see: breathless five-alarm banger “Sink or Swim”) while alternately cooling down with beatific cuts like the closing “Watercolor,” which samples artist Kerry James Marshall discussing the dearth of “self-satisfied” Black people depicted through art. Porter, who often paints vibrant, bright-colored portraits of Black women, is refocusing the narrative while doing equally beautiful things with 808s and acrylics.

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