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Tag: Porter Ray

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When Words Dance

In their annual year-end critics’ poll, The Seattle Times ranked When Words Dance as one of the very best Seattle albums of 2020, saying:

For his first release since parting with Sub Pop — an intriguing match that never quite found its rhythm — the veteran emcee pulled from his vault this jazz-steeped set recorded just after completing his label debut. Porter Ray’s flow is like a butterfly in slow motion — appreciate the natural grace and beauty he makes look easy.

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Watercolor

Someone said the slow-burn groove of Porter Ray’s 2017 Sub Pop release, Watercolor was “decidedly wavy.” It’s a good descriptor of the push-pull forces at work here: just as songs begin to take off, they slow down again. It’s this ongoing tension that makes the record so fascinating and so perplexing.

This is headphone music, demanding your attention, full of hushed lyrics, buried voices under the verses, mumbles deep in the mix, and smooth ass bass lines. (Shout out to BRoc on the production.)

I’m a huge fan of Porter’s back catalog of mixtapes, but even then, it took me a dozen listens to make sense of this 18-track double vinyl. We live in a time of five-second sound bites and snap judgments, and this record defiantly rejects both. It builds slowly. It demands investment and patience.

Watercolor starts to kick into gear around track 4, “Past Life” (feat. Ca$htro), before easing down again into an instrumental interlude.

Watercolor slowly primes you to achieve that moment where you’re ready to receive bold truths. This record is musical yoga, held in stasis, where the smallest movements are rendered epic, practice through repetition, recurring themes, and verses throughout multiple songs and MCs. Just breathe. Those bangers come later: “Lightro,” “Beautiful,” “Sacred Geometry”—all on the latter half of the record—deliver in spades. The longer you spend in this dream space, the deeper the dream goes. Lay in corpse pose. It’ll come to you.

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HOME

Bruce Leroy makes ALL CAPS rap. He says as much in one line on HOME, a 2016 release from this Tacoma rapper, a collaboration with producer 1stBorn. Drums on this record are prominent, and often naked, punctuating tracks like exclamation marks. But it’s their smooth, percussive interplay with the verses, especially when Leroy hits the accelerator pedal, kicking his raps into sixth gear… it will leave you completely breathless. Or two minutes into “PREMIUM UNLEADED” when everything flips around and moves backwards. Gorgeous guest verses from Porter Ray, Jarv Dee, Khris P, Phinisey and others. Full confession: More than one smart person DM’d me to say I should write about this album, and let me tell you all those people were damn right. The more I listen to this record, the more there is to love.

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Studies

Studies is a mostly instrumental beat-tape-on-vinyl from Dil Withers that recalls the urban sounds of people on the street—walking talking and jostling—in a sun-dappled multicultural Latin city, as though listening to the sound of successive city blocks and open windows. A lot of this impression has to do with Dil’s deft integration of environmental noise. I was listening to this quietly on headphones while walking around and had trouble at times differentiating what was in the music and what was happening around me. I love the interplay between the bass with the off-kilter beat in “Flor,” and how midway through the record a choir sings a few bars from “Yesterday.” On “Drift,” distant jazz emerges from a cacophony of industrial noise, and oh! the descending horn in “Leaves.” This takes you on an imagined journey and leaves strong impressions of place.

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Electric Rain

Electric Rain, a summer release from Porter Ray opens with dialogue from a movie. It’s the type of sample you find on many of his records, but here it’s a murder scene and followed by some completely unexpected synth-heavy production courtesy of Tele Fresco. It’s hard not to see this transition as symbolic, as with this cover, with its imminently devouring sharp teeth… This album is one of reincarnation. Old Porter is giving way to something new. This is Porter Ray making addictive, sexy-as-hell Seattle-style dance music. “Cognac Aphrodisiac” is a must-listen, where an idyllic birds-chirping scene gives way to a full-fledged anime laser battle. JusMoni appears on five of these ten tracks, most notably on the entrancing “Bed Lion.” I’ve had this record on repeat for most of the year. You get to the luxurious floating piano on the closing song and then right back and start the journey all over again.

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Nightfall

Nightfall is a lovely six-song EP from Porter Ray. The rapping here feels effortless, against a backdrop of dreamy, hazy jazz, like the smoke trails floating on the cover. Movie dialogue samples and verses from Cashtro and JusMoni further elevate the noir mood. Released in 2015, I splashed out and picked up this beautiful limited edition red vinyl–still available through Bandcamp–which includes an all-instrumental version on the B side. Nightfall flows as a complete work from beginning to end. Most days, like today, I find myself flipping the record over, listening to side B, and then back to A and then B again. And again.

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EarthEE

EarthEE from THEESatisfaction is quite possibly our favorite record of all time. Writing about favorites is hard because of how much you want to say and how so much of what connects you to music is hard to define. Political, environmental, and human, this record approaches its themes in ways sublime and profound: It dives down and plumbs the vast depths of the ocean and the mind. There’s so much happening on the bottom end that this music pours out of your speakers like thick molasses, pooling on the floor.

SassyBlack and Stas Thee Boss may have ended their creative partnership, but we’ll always this magical sequence: When the dense vocal layering at the end of “Fetch/Catch” gives way to the punch-in-the-stomach drum kick of “Nature’s Candy,” and then, after a few bars of rapping, the song performs alchemy, reversing motion, escaping time. (Also, gorgeous cover by Rajni Perera and Dusty Summers.)

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FNDMNTLS

FNDMNTLS is a 2014 mixtape from vowel-adverse Porter Ray. This record is filled with studies–of stasis, and of the crystallization of memory. Take for example “Ruthie Dean” a 5 1/2 minute song of rambling recollection, while in the background the same piano loops over and over again. Porter’s stream of consciousness storytelling repeats reoccurring motifs across multiple songs: dice, his absent brother, shorty, the District, after parties, countless blunts smoked and bottles raised in honor of some lost time before, as Cam The Mac intones throughout “Blackcherry,” sex, drugs and money dominated his days. Or, as Porter himself says wistfully on “Meditate,” “I wonder where this rap shit is taking me.” This record was released around the time he signed with Sub Pop. Two years on, his first official SP release, Watercolor is finally, imminently due, and we’re about to find out where.

FNDMNTLS was created in and features appearances from:

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BLK GLD

He’s releasing a new EP tomorrow, so today let me cast some love towards Porter Ray’s skeletal 2013 debut, BLK GLD. Mixing downtempo production with literary rhymes, spoken softly over loops and beats, this record took me a while to get into. But now it’s probably the hip-hop record I play the most, as it slowly reveals its sublime truths. (Also, beautiful cover art.)

Seattle hip-hop blog 206UP picked this record as one of the “Top 10 Albums of 2013,” saying that:

Porter Ray is the most buzzed-about MC in Seattle these days. Lofty comparisons have been thrown around — “raps like Nas”, “the next Ishmael Butler” — but when it all shakes out, the best thing about Porter is that he doesn’t really sound like anyone else rapping in the Town. BLK GLD is not your garden variety rap debut, the kind of record looking to chart on Billboard and rack up hits on YouTube. Porter takes his time, laying out visceral, observational bars about inner-city life, over dense, elemental beats featuring dusty percussion and rare sample flips. To draw yet another comparison, Porter’s rhyme ethos shares much in common with Earl Sweatshirt’s: Both are still-budding MCs whose only fear seems to be making mediocre hip-hop. The youth is not wasted on Porter Ray.

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Tomorrow People

Today is one of those beautiful Seattle days with infinite blue skies and cool breezes, where all you want to do is lay on the grass or drive to the coast with the top down. The perfect accompaniment is The Physics 2012 album Tomorrow People. Contrasting many laptop-produced hip-hop records, here you have a group of musicians riffing and jamming and rapping together. Laid-back, organic, and gorgeous.

Seattle hip-hop blog 206UP picked this record as one of the “Top 10 Albums of 2012,” saying that:

Tomorrow People reaches for a broader context than The Physics’ previous album (last year’s outstanding Love is a Business) without sacrificing any of what makes the group so appealing. Soulful, funky, and beautifully nuanced, TP is 13 tracks of grown-man/woman hip-hop. MCs Thig Nat and Monk Wordsmith are thoughtful, conscious, and raunchy always right when they need to be. And producer Justo and don’t-call-them-back-up singers Malice and Mario Sweet put the finishing touches on each track so they shine at just the right angles. This is a crew with a rare nonchalance that never translates to dull, a sure sign of artists who truly know who they are. There is something for everyone on Tomorrow People. You could play this album for your grandma and she would probably love it, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Similarly, The Stranger selected Tomorrow People as one of the “Top 5 Albums of 2012,” saying that:

“So Funky,” the first track on The Physics’ latest album, Tomorrow People, is, for me, hip-hop in a pure state. It’s spare and it has a big and chunky beat, a raw and rubbery bass, bits of scratching, and no singing or chorus—this is a rapper’s paradise.

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