We are traveling to Seattle tomorrow for a short trip. Thought we would post about some of the music we are into from the area! Look out for future posts about regional music.
What’s not to love about Seattle? Crisp clean air, picturesque terrain, clear blue summers, classic grey winters. We could go on and on. The geography of the NW Emerald City never ceases to amaze us, but it’s what the people have created here that really speaks for this city.
It’s taking everything in my power to not bust out a full wiki style blog post about the Seattle music scene and my opinions why it popped off in the Post-War Era. But shout out to the Baby Boomers for making it happen. Everyone in the universe loves Jimi Hendrix, so thats enough evidence. Instead of the boring history lesson, I’ll just share a brief story with y’all.
The year was 2002, I had just started getting into hip hop foreal (when I say foreal I mean listening to my brothers’ collections and never to the radio). Through extensive digging through digital record crates (aka pirating music online), I came across a track “Odds on Favorite” by Boom Bap Project. MY GOD what a track. Ask anyone, we played this jam in our shared bedroom atleast 20x a day. Boom Bap Project became my favorite hip hop artist. Fast forward a little bit, their next album Reprogram came out right as I was about to head off to college. I couldn’t wait to be a Seattle hip hop evangelist for all these southern folks. There was a dude I met in school who was from the 206 named Steve. We chatted it up a little bit about the great NW (by then I had visited quite a few times for various reasons). He told me if I was onto Boom Bap, I HAD to check out some other ish. Per his recommendation I got hooked on Blue Scholars and Gabriel Teodros. I think I still have facebook message he sent me about those guys.
Since then I’ve been shouting to the rooftops about Seattle hip hop. It’s real, it’s honest, it hits, it bumps, it’s unique, and most importantly THEY SUPPORT EACHOTHER. You’d be hard pressed to find these guys trying to emulate. With the recent success of the homie Macklemore, I think people are just now starting to really take a second glance at 206 hip hop. Here is a list of some seattle cats we dig, ya dig?
The list goes on and on. There are many more amazing artists, I suggest you all do a little digging and see if you find anything you like! Here are some bonus indie/rock mentions:
Tried to keep this post as short as I could, but I’m longwinded. Peace.
the #phamdodson adventures 