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: Wffls (TMLO)

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Blake Anthony

Blake Anthony is a superb self-titled selection of smoking anthems from this prolific Tacoma-by-way-of-Topeka talent. He effortlessly raps over a seamless backdrop of reggae, jazz, and trap beats. Respect My Region says this EP is “an experience like you stepped into Narnia, warping time,” while adding that you can sense the sound of bong tokes in the background. The laid-back lead single “Black Coffee” racked up more than 200,000 plays on Spotify, and B.A. sold out his record release party at Columbia City Theater. You know his name now. Start paying attention.

Blake Anthony was created in and features appearances from:

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Bobby Ro$$

Bobby Ro$$ is a vibe-heavy hustle through the landscape of art, blackness, and self-love. On it, Porter inhabits a trap music avatar of the much-loved PBS painter and uses snippets of interviews with cultural luminaries such as Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Maya Angelou as a narrative lattice to paint himself into the canon of black art. NPR calls him “A skilled rapper and a multimedia threat,” while Respect My Region says that “Perry Porter paints a masterpiece with his latest album.”

Here’s another take:

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

Since the breakup of his rowdy mosh-rap group Sleep Steady, Perry Porter has established himself as one of Seattle-Tacoma’s unique talents through infectiously fun hybrid rap/live art shows. The charismatic rapper/painter (or is it painter/rapper?) looks and sounds increasingly comfortable grooving in his own watercolored lane on Bobby Ro$$, which arrived this summer with a track-by-track color wheel guide to match the variegated album’s many moods. The man can still annihilate a trap beat with the best of ’em (see: breathless five-alarm banger “Sink or Swim”) while alternately cooling down with beatific cuts like the closing “Watercolor,” which samples artist Kerry James Marshall discussing the dearth of “self-satisfied” Black people depicted through art. Porter, who often paints vibrant, bright-colored portraits of Black women, is refocusing the narrative while doing equally beautiful things with 808s and acrylics.

Bobby Ro$$ was created in and features appearances from:

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Nightsalone: Redwoods Vol 1

This beat tape from Tacoma beatmaker and producer Wffls was mostly composed in the middle of the night, during periods of solitude and meditation. Sampling from a wide variety of jazz sources, he took inspiration from the concept of “woodshedding,” where musicians find a private place to rehearse alone, and also from nocturnal forest landscapes of the PNW. It’s no surprise that the opening track “Alonetro // Nightcalls (feat. Marissa Kall)” received more than 50,000 streams on Apple Music in the first month.

Nightsalone: Redwoods Vol 1 was created in and features appearances from:

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Third Daughter

Few albums have as much to say about our present, turbulent times—our year of protests and rebellion, of identity, race, and responsibility—as does Third Daughter from DoNormaal. Emerging from the dragon’s maw of “gold rooster” she declares of multicultural heritage, “They still make Americans just like they used to.” During a recent DoNormaal show, one specific moment brought this record clearly into focus for me: On the chorus of the addictively catchy “ego slave,” she repeats, “March on, march on, everybody needs to step front, I’m going be the only one to take a step back right now.” It’s a line spoken by an iconoclast outsider, that when performed live, you witness as the careful orchestration of adoring masses, asking us to close in, while she, the matador on stage, the only one to step back, waves the daring red flag because the time for sitting on the sidelines in silence is over. On “dodo call” she bluntly questions, “But will you show up when the people call?” These anthems are contrasted with moments of too-close intimacy, (“revenge”) and virginal sweetness (“my teacher” featuring partner Raven Hollywood). DoNormaal complements her stellar songwriting with a cadre of the city’s most talented beatmakers: Luna God, Brakebill, Mario Casalini, Fish Narc, Joe Valley, and others. There’s so much to love here, from the vocal experimentation on “heat lullaby” to Wolftone’s guest verse on “don’t make me wait.” This remarkable record, blistering with confidence and clarity, demonstrates why DoNormaal is the titan of the local scene.

The Stranger picked Third Daughter as one of the “Top 10 Albums of 2017,” saying that:

Concise is nice, but when it comes to ambitious artistic declarations of purpose, I like them long, complex, and unwieldy. The 19 tracks on Third Daughter cover a lot of sonic, rhythmic, musical, and verbal territory, but they’re united by the voice at the center, reclaiming the rapper’s traditional role as MC, presiding over a retinue of producers (one for each song) and guests. That voice is compelling, commanding, even. The lyrics are firmly grounded in a quest to locate and express a self to can live—”young bitch in a pit of lions,” she says on “My Teacher.” “I don’t wanna give it up, standing still in the spotlight vulnerable as fuck.” Without the unified subject, it might just feel like a long, good playlist or promising mixtape. But this is an LP (a double LP, in fact, so fingers crossed for a vinyl pressing). It wants to be heard. And you definitely want to hear it.

Third Daughter was created in and features appearances from:

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Demo Mix '17

This seven-song mixtape, Demo Mix ’17, from Scribe Mecca, Yodi Mac and Wffls, is only available on physical CD-R. In an age when the public acts increasingly entitled to steam anything they want for free, it’s refreshing to see the conviction of these Tacoma musicians in producing a rarity: An underground physical release that you have to put effort into obtaining. (i.e. Go follow and DM the creators.) I will say you should absolutely go seek this one out. It hits the ground running: It seems impossible for these guys to write a bad song. There’s an overall laid-back vibe like you’re hanging out in a basement with a tuneful trifecta. Singalong raps like track 3, “Don’t waste your time you’re better off” or track 4, which recontextualizes samples from Rihanna’s Anti, are refreshingly out-of-step from what you’d expect from trap-centric Tac. (p.s. These guys should totally do a collaboration with fellow Tacoma resident Noo.) The last track, “ENEMIES,” recently found its way onto SoundCloud alongside a coveted Luna God remix. This whole mixtape is fire.

Demo Mix '17 was created in and features appearances from:

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The Shrouded Door

Listening to The Shrouded Door, a powerful new EP from Tacoma hip-hop duo B.A. the Scribe and Wffls, will leave you good and angry. Released on Election Day, it frames Donald Trump’s victory as no surprise—just the latest manifestation of a growing cancer in American society. It opens with the lines “Can’t look at my phone no more, it makes me mad.” We live in a country where law-abiding black citizens are murdered by police, where we tolerate injustice and your social media hashtag protests ain’t gonna do nothing. These six dense tracks are a call to action, a call to courage and hope. This is not a time to cower and hide. I’m reminded of a quote from our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt: “Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are, and be somebody; get action.” Great guest verses from Yodi Mac on “No Hands.”

The Shrouded Door was created in and features appearances from:

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