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: Soultanz

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Eviction Notice

Pour yourself a tall glass of Hennessy, curl up on a comfortable couch, and digest this album like you would a theatrical production. With Eviction Notice, Campana brings forth a deeply personal and emotional, autobiographical full-length offering, underscored by the loss of a friend and musical homie Thee Ruin, whose name is featured on the cover, spelled out in stars above a dark desert road. For a record so much about the loss of direction, this music has such a grounded sense of place. Such physicality in the instruments. The knocks we face in life teach us lessons, and on tracks like “Look Around” with its pop chorus, Campana comes out swinging, and on “Organics” he’s shaking the dance floor.

Eviction Notice was created in and features appearances from:

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Gab The Most High

This artist needs no intro. I’m assuming y’all already big fans of the self-proclaimed “queen of Seattle,” Gifted Gab. Throughout the year I’ve had love affairs with other records, but it’s Gab The Most High, released in May, that I’ve consistently returned to again and again. Few records have felt so confident, demonstrating such complete command of instruments, writing, rapping, vocal sampling, and on. Gab is a magpie, collecting threads from multiple genres: funk, R&B, and reggae; and then layering in new textures, including showing off a soulful singing voice. The album release party featured a full Motown-style backing band.

Gab The Most High was created in and features appearances from:

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Gab The Most High Swishahouse Remix

I’ll confess that I wasn’t super hip to the whole Screwed and Chopped scene before Gifted Gab started hyping this record and the unique remixing style of DJ Michael “5000” Watts. Starting with Gab’s startlingly great release Gab The Most High, Watts slows down every track by 1/3, and then introduces skips and repeats and scratches. Anyone who knows me already knows how much I love the source material, and here, slowing the music down illuminates the tiny musical details, and the repeats put the focus on the nuances of Gab’s lyrics and wordplay. Listening to these remixes makes me love the original album even more. (And this isn’t just a few tracks—Watts remixed the whole damn album.) This Swishahouse remix confirms Gab’s right to serve as Queen of Seattle. Please give her the Royal Warrant pronto.

Gab The Most High Swishahouse Remix was created in and features appearances from:

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Northern Natives

I’ve been spending some time lately with the gorgeous and sensual Northern Natives self-titled five-track EP. This one unfurls like smoke curls in slow motion… It’s a showcase of five songs by five artists, and as a compilation is a surprisingly cohesive work, with R&B and pop influences, big synths and dance floor shaking tracks from Samurai Del, Soultanz, CiDi, DNZ and Sendai Era. If I’ve learned anything from these record write-ups, it’s how deeply talented and interconnected the Seattle scene is. City Arts declared this “Album of the month” in December and I’m not surprised. These amazing producers and contributors represent the future of our scene and hip-hop at large.

Northern Natives was created in and features appearances from:

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