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: Nerdy B

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Brothers of The Same Mind

Early ’90s Seattle hip-hop group Brothers Of The Same Mind reached such heights that NYC-based The Source magazine featured them in their October 1990 issue, as the “Unsigned Hype” group for that month, declaring them to be the next big thing in rap.

The Source shouted out the group’s “excellent street-wise production, unlike anything we’ve heard from the Emerald City,” while adding that “the Brothers can hang with many popular NYC rappers at their best.”

In 1991, on the strength of local and national praise, the group released their acclaimed debut, a seven-song, self-titled cassette. This album is a Northwest classic, full of hometown pride: The cover photo was shot in the Central District at East Portal Viewpoint, and the music video for their hit single, “Cool Drink,” was filmed at Seattle’s Gas Works Park. The video found regular rotation on BET, and the Brothers appeared in The Source a second time later that year.

Here’s a record that is insistent and relentless, comforting the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. It was delivered straight to the streets of Seattle, by five local legends—MC Class, DJ Swift, B-Max (aka Nerdy B!), Mellow Touch, and Sin-Q. This is that real, real Seattle rap.

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Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt

This lost album was supposed to have been released in 1989.

On the heels of their success with 1987 song “King In Def Poetry,” buzzy production duo Incredicrew—Cornell “CMT” Thomas and Danny “Dee Rock” Clavesilla—signed a multi-album deal with Chilly Uptown’s label Ever Rap, with the intention they’d be in-house producers for a number of upcoming hip-hop projects. The first of these was a one-off single by Nerdy B and Chelly Chell called “He’s Incredible.”

It was one of Seattle’s first major rap songs with a female MC, and it was a big hit locally. Nasty Nes said that when he played the song on his radio show Fresh Tracks, his phone lines lit right up with requests to hear it again.

Based on that first single’s hype, Nerdy B, Chelly Chell, and Incredicrew went back into the studio to record a full album of furious scratching and charming verses. One of our favorite aspects of this vinyl is how elements from the song “He’s Incredible,” reappear throughout many of the other songs as a repeated motif.

However, financial troubles with the label’s distributor meant this 1989 project—and the whole Incredicrew deal—was shelved and these master tapes sat forgotten on the shelf for 31 years. The Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt tapes were finally rediscovered, remastered, and released by Ever Rap on vinyl in 2020.

It’s hard not to wonder how Seattle’s early ‘90s rap landscape and this early “NastyMix” era might’ve looked quite different had this record been released as planned!

This vinyl contains 11 tracks of Nerdy B’s furious scratching and Chelly Chell’s clever rhymes. There are also two versions of their classic hit, “He’s Incredible,” a song that got Nasty Nes’s phones ringing off the hook. Against a backdrop of Nerdy B’s furious scratching, Chelly Chell raps hypnotically, “We got beats and bass, yeah, now we’re on wax… Now how ya like that?!”

It may have taken 30 years, but yes, finally.

Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt was created in and features appearances from:

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