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.

This gallery page is organized to highlight the creative work of

Tag: The Bar

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Son of Barkada

Hmmm... There’s not a lot of information about this record in the museum encyclopedia.

This TOWN LOVE website was created in 2021 as a pandemic-era project. It was a volunteer-led effort to help document and celebrate the complete history of Northwest hip-hop between the years 1981 and 2020. This public archive we built is now available for free online for everyone to read and explore.

If you'd like to contribute, and you know something about this particular record--a story, a memory, or a favorite lyric--please email us a short write-up, and we’ll add your thoughts to the archive when we get the chance.

Thanks for your help in preserving the history of our scene!

Son of Barkada was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

Barkada

I’m spinning this 2014 collaboration, Barkada, from Prometheus Brown (aka The Blue Scholars’ Geologic) and Bambu. Here’s a record that has become more relevant with age, with lyrics that deeply consider West Coast identity, immigration, the origins and future of America, protests and police; themes on the forefront of front pages during these first few months of 2017. These themes are communicated via a deeply playful playbook of technical prowess: “Coming (To America)” is almost exclusively built around with words that end with “o,” while opener “Live from Hawaii” contains more words than you could imagine that contain “bar-…” This is a fun album, ingenious and subversive. Hook your headphones up to it today. Also, I love the Photoshopped “record wear” effect on this cover art.

Barkada was created in and features appearances from:

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A film about Northwest hip-hop from

&

Walk into a Bar

Seattle hip-hop blog 206UP picked this record as one of the “Top 10 Albums of 2011,” saying that:

What began on mostly a freebie lark ultimately turned into this 10-track for-profit album with some of the best production value around. Prometheus Brown (known traditionally to Seattle as Geo, of course) and Los Angeles’ Bambu pay homage to their island origination on Walk into a Bar which was released on Bambu’s label (Beatrock Music) and aimed squarely at the Hawaiian Islands, a favorite performance destination for the two MCs. As per standard, Geo and Bambu choose their words carefully always using them to uplift and inform rather than degrade and dispirit. “National Treasure,” for example, is an important commentary on gender politics and features a beat from Vitamin D whose drums somehow always sound bigger than everyone else’s.

Walk into a Bar was created in and features appearances from:

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