A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Delicate

Taylor Hart from West Coast cannabis hip-hop site Respect My Region selected Delicate as one of the very best Northwest albums from 2020, saying:

You wanna talk about someone skating over a beat? Let’s talk Dave B. He glides across the ice with his lyrics gracefully as if he were competing in the Olympics. The way the words fall out of his mouth it’s like he’s hitting triple axles with his tongue. His newest album, Delicate, is a stunning example of these talents. Dave B.’s the type of artist, for me, where I don’t even question whether the album will be good or not; I just know I’m going to listen to it and enjoy it.

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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

Da Rocinha 4

Taylor Hart from West Coast cannabis hip-hop site Respect My Region selected Da Rocinha 4 as one of the very best Northwest albums from 2020, saying:

Sango has become my favorite artist to listen to while I practice yoga. Even though his albums are produced electronically, they have this organic ‘from the Earth’ feel to them. This year, one of his newest releases, Da Rocinha 4, became my go-to album for my sun salutation asana.

The album has an energizing quality to it while simultaneously having this calm aura that curbs my anxieties. I often find myself leaning deeper into my stretches and counting the tempo to determine when I switch sides. It also happens to have the perfect run time from start to finish to fit my routine. Any album that gets incorporated into my daily life like that absolutely deserves to be one of my top 24 albums of the year.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

BLEU

BLEU, the fourth record from Dave B, explores the anxieties of adulthood in our social media-drenched new millennium. It’s a deep, witty, and contemplative scroll through frustration and love. DJ Booth says that “Dave B’s rhymes call to mind the artfully constructed schemes of both mixtape-era Chance The Rapper and Aminé,” while The Stranger summarizes it thusly: “Witty lyrics, soulful singing, incisive rapping, and excellent production: BLEU is really fucking good.”

Here’s another take:

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

With his fourth album, the proven emcee further bolsters his credentials as one of Seattle hip-hop’s top dual threats, splicing gospel-splashed singing passages into his nasally bars with aplomb. The 10-track introspective journey carries nods to late Seattle luminaries Kari Ca$h and J. Moore, with Dave’s unflappable flow belying the internal tension in his lyrics.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

The Town Love Hip-Hop Awards

At the start of January 2019, Crane City Music invited Seattle’s hip-hop community to pick their favorite WA state hip-hop records from the past year in a public vote. A total of 267 records were in contention for the top prize. A total of 5,498 votes were cast. Parisalexa’s Bloom took home the top prize, narrowly beating out Kung Foo Grip’s 2KFG and Travis Thompson’s YOUGOOD?

The top 20 winners were revealed via an elaborate laser show countdown event held in February at the Pacific Science Center Laser Dome in Seattle. The laser show itself was choreographed by Joseph Reid and Gary Campbell. The event opened with a playlist of ’90s Seattle hip-hop and a short tribute to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s legacy and the 30th anniversary of his debut, SWASS.

A 14-minute film was made by Taylor Hart that captures highlights from the night.

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

In The Comfort Of

CityArts declared In The Comfort Of as their Album of the Month for March. They describe the magic of this record as Sango’s “wholehearted embrace of change as an agent of evolution for the city and the nation.” DJ Booth touches upon the emotional intensity of the music, “capturing the peaks and valleys of personal growth with an unfiltered lens… Sango reveals himself as a true empath.” Pigeons & Planes praises the “infectious Latin rhythms, romantic and lush, while still having a sleek electronic sheen… it is a perfect project to get lost in.”

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De Mim, Pra Voce

De Mim, Pra Voce, is a sample-heavy solo effort from Sango. (Fav track “Devolva” is the most strongly reminiscent of his work on Tomorrow with Dave B.) Here’s an artist who understands the transformative power of the conjured environment. On this release, smooth, languid and huge floor-shaking bass meanders in opposition to stuttering, chopped sounds from the Latin world, creating unexpected motion, unhurried, while at the same time full of momentum. It’s a tough trick to pull off. Think drum-n-bass on your headphones as you sit, lost in thought, on a train racing past exotic countryside. “Eu Te Devoro,” surfs the waves, periodically plunging you underwater. “Vista Da Gávea” marches you through carnival night and carries you through to the light of the next morning’s dawn.

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Tomorrow

At some point this year I stuck a sticky note on the front of this CD that says, “Killer tracks: #2, 3.” Later, I went back and added the numbers for pretty much every other track on this record. Tomorrow is an album built around all the amazing things Dave B can do with his voice, with phrases and verses providing all the momentum here, constantly pivoting forward, fast, slow, in reverse. On this release, his voice stands alone in Sango’s stripped-down ambient environment: distant synths enveloping the verses, and ever-present washes of reverb. I love the sounds of rain falling throughout the opening of “Cold Weather.” The “Rainier Beach Station” announcement from a Link light rail car grounds this record in a place: It’s the sound of Seattle’s south end, magic and multicultural.

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