Results tagged “dj”

Who will triumph as the West Coast champion of the DMC turntablist competition tonight? And--perhaps even more interesting--what interesting tricks of the turntablist trade will he or she bring to the tables? 206 Zulu somehow finagled to host the left coast heat of the international championships here in Seattle, at the Vera Project. The only kind of scratching Seattlest does personally is of the "where it itches" variety, and DJs from all over the West Coast will be competing, so this should be a real treat.

ART & TRAUMA: The Center on Contemporary Art in Ballard is kicking off its series of "After Dark" events with Slow Healing—a documentary/multi-media presentation about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have returned from the field with Traumatic Brian Injuri (TBI). There'll be a slideshow at 9 p.m., followed by Butoh dancing and SEA SHOW.

Friday's show at Nectar Lounge was a great showcase for both classic and fresh, emerging talents in local hiphop. Alpha P, a gratifyingly professional, unflaggingly high-spirited crew of twelve headlining the show, were working NW underground hiphop in the 90s; the other acts on the bill included Tacoma-based Jay Barz (a raucus party act, himself), pissed-off Neema of Unexpected Arrival, fast-talking Premonition and the bulging vein on his neck, and charismatic story-teller Kublakai--interviewed by Seattlest here. Though the show started late, DJ Hanibal won us over when he played Snoop and Dre's "Nuthin But A G-Thang," which we'd coincidentally just finished reminiscing about with our show-going companion.

Saigon descended upon Neumos Wednesday night in true East Coast style, backed by three hype-men, two photographers, one DJ, and for awhile two dancing "homegirls". (Yes, his shirt did come off for a brief moment, and we did get to see those famous bulging arm muscles.) A sparse but expectant crowd watched as the New York rapper and his posse blew through an aggressive set that included the extra-tight club favorite "C'mon Baby" dropped at the stroke of midnight, and "My Favorite Things," a funny exercise in calculated OG optimism.

Yesterday Seattlest took a few minutes out of a "working at home" day to run up to 45th and the taco truck in the Winchell's parking lot (man's gotta eat), and since the Seattlest household got a turntable for Christmas and Golden Oldies is right there we stopped in after eating (man's gotta rock out). Our record collection is pretty thin, consisting of maybe a dozen or twenty records which is great because we have absolutely no desire to amass those huge boxes of vinyl that DJ's and nerds tend to acquire, but, you know, maybe one box wouldn't be so bad. One box of rotating content, maybe?

We didn't go to a single concert at the Showbox last year. Ok, so we saw Obama at the SoDo, but that's not nearly the same thing, even though there were bands preceding the politics. It's most unusual for us to have a Showbox-free year, that's for sure.

Seattlest attended the late-night Graffiti Rock beat battle at The Sunset on Saturday night, casually organized by P.U.S.H., primarily so we could remind ourselves what Ballard looks like.

Seattlest hopped over to Fremont last night to experience Kublakai's much-anticipated , and a couple beers in our belly. It was a good night's work.

Counterpoint at Tuesday night's Garfield/Inglemoor game, played at Garfield's temporary home, Old Lincoln High.

On Saturday, we took our godson, his mom and his dad to Baby Loves Disco. Since we don't have a kid of our own and don't have any experience with kid-themed events, 17-month-old Eli agreed to let us interview him about the party.

DJ Nphared spins for Sportn' Life artists, including D. Black and Fatal Lucciauno, and he also DJs for Grynch. Seattlest enjoyed his mixes at the Parker Brothaz show on Monday, so we set out to learn more about this guy's ethos.

Kingzmen came out in matching striped jumpers, which was cute. They certainly have charm, Nphared's beats were beautiful again, and if the Kingzmen tighten up their presence just one notch further, they'll make our list of groups to be excited about. Here's who we ARE excited about: GMK. Bright, bursting energy, hustling like a pro. This guy is flying, he's got the spark, and everything about his act works really well. He only had fifteen minutes on stage, but after the Parker Brothaz (not bad, just... flat), it was clear GMK deserves to headline. The Parker Brothaz were formulaic, packaged, commercial ("Where's your iPhones? Where's your Sidekicks?" is the refrain in their latest single), but admittedly smooth. Smooth, but not inspiring. GMK, on the other hand, got the crowd swooping and bouncing right along with him. Good man, good man. "Baby wanna drop that? Go ahead, drop that." Encore!

Okay, friends and neighbors. December is a huge month for local hip-hop, and not just because of Blue Scholars' The Program. This week, Chop Suey's got you covered for Monday and Tuesday with the Parker Brothaz tonight (GMK will be there! We love that guy!) and freestyle master Eyedea & DJ Abilities tomorrow night. Over in Fremont, Nectar's offering Waves of the Mind and Gabriel Teodros/Abyssinian Creole on the 13th (there are nine acts on the bill, as a heads up) and an apparently two-night-long extravaganza featuring One Be Lo and Grayskul (along with some big name producers and djs) on the 15th and 16th.

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs.

Hoo-eee, was Chop Suey's stage packed on Friday night! Promised: Macklemore, Gabriel Teodros, Rajnii, Language Arts, Knowmads, Hella Maze, and DJ Marc Sense. Performed: all of the above, plus XPerience, Khingz, and some group called 2012. Sometimes it can be exhilarating and refreshing to have so many artists jumping on and off stage in one night. In this case, it was confusing and overwhelming, and we hardly know where to start when telling you about the night. Mostly, everyone was very loud and there was a lot of yelling. Not every hip-hop night can be an awesome hip-hop night.

The local act opening for Dolan and Buck 65 was Rudy & the Rhetoric, now out on CD-R. They sound clean, rehearsed, and synthy; the MC (Rudy, we presume) looks freshly scrubbed and straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, one of the outdoorsy pages, where the guys are fully clothed. We had no idea Ken dolls could rap, but he was pretty good, and the DJ (the Rhetoric?) did some cool scratching. Overall, they were surprisingly polished but we had a hard time taking them seriously, especially since the MC kept wincing at the crowd's lukewarm reception.

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs.

From the PI this morning: "Three shot inside Capitol Hill club." Apparently, a fight broke out on Sugar's dance floor around 1:30am; three people were injured, and police aren't saying much more than that. Someone was firing a gun the club, so this isn't one of those ambiguous cases of violence within fifty feet of the club doors. The night's event was Sin Sunday, an 18/21+ weekly event featuring a DJ spinning hip-hop and R&B mash-ups.

We've said it before. It's impossible not to have a good time at a Presidents show. Seriously. You can try all you want. You can stand in the corner, scowling at everyone and thinking of all your dead relatives, but once that toe starts tapping, it's all over. Soon you'll be smiling and before long you'll be rocking out along with everyone else. Such was the scene last Friday night at the Pyramid Alehouse Get...

Admittedly, the only reason we know this is because we submitted a poem and it's on a bus, and so we were invited to the party. Sadly there was never any chance that we were going to stand up in public and read it. Its only purpose is to disrupt the glances of bus riders lingering over the list of things you're not allowed to do on buses in Spanish, the announcement of whichever UW STD study, and the Mechanic of the Year Award. Okay, we really did it for the Slog -- we would have liked to have dedicated it to them officially.

After kittens yawning and cross-species friendship, dear sweet Jens Lekman may be the most precious thing found in all of nature. The Gothenberg Swede makes orchestral pop songs in the vein of Morrissey or the Magnetic Fields without even being gay (just European). To promote Night Falls Over Kortedala, one of the best reviewed albums of the year, Jens has been touring around the States with his almost-all-girl backing band:

Well! Seattlest lives for weekends like the upcoming one. On Saturday night, we've got Seatown representing rather well at Chop Suey. Assisting North Carolina all-star Little Brother in making the night oh-so-memorable are 206's tough-spitting Dyme Def, rhyme maestro Grynch, The Physics (thank you, God!), and DJ Top Spin. That's right, mutha-flippin Grynch will be there. Seattlest is going because we missed The Physics a couple weeks ago and truly regret that. We are also going because we have heard too much about Grynch to have never heard him live. Who IS this very white guy who throws it down like that? Check out "How I Feel" on his MySpace. We like!

Last night, Seattlest hit up the Red Bull Big Tune 2007 Championship at Neumos just like we said we would. The idea of the competition was to showcase U.S. hip-hop producers in the form of a beat battle, tournament-style; in between rounds we were treated to the skills of DV-One and Just Blaze, and also to a mini-concert from giants De La Soul. We were not expecting this last, and it was kinda fun. Our favorite part was seeing Neumos packed with locals excited about hip-hop, though. "The whole city's here," Courage of Eastern Sunz commented before the rounds began. "Do you know what the prize is?" No, we did not, but later we discovered the winning producer would be going home with some expensive sound monitors and a recording date in LA with a hip-hop star. Sweet.

Heads up, Seattle: there's a Beat Battle going down at Neumos tonight (Thursday)! It's called something dorky like "Red Bull Big Tune Championships," but don't let the name fool you. De La Soul will be there, Brainstorm will be there, Daps1 (we hope) will be there. Vitamin D's on the bill, and Sabzi of Blue Scholars is planning on strutting his stuff. Neumos has DV-One of recently (some would say wrongfully) convicted fame on the bill as the host DJ... It should be a fantastic time. We'll report on Friday.

Get this while you can, local hip-hop fans: GMK's anticipated new mixtape, Perfect 10, finally dropped and it's available online for free download, thanks to the largesse of host DJ B-Mello.

There's nothing like the prospect of a smart hip-hop show to build up our anticipation on a Saturday night. One where we know that the act we're going to see can't fail to deliver, cranks that up a little higher than we can generally handle when we're forced to first stop by a friend's party before the show. To all those in Shoreline that we bored with excited chatter about Lyrics Born and Blackalicious at The Showbox, we're so sorry.

Katelyn Hackett attends local hiphop shows. She will write about them for Seattlest.

Lottie's Lounge, located in Colombia City, is a coffee shop, diner and bar, rolled into one. It's an experiential panacea for those who like to center their lives around one neighborhood joint-- not that Colombia City doesn't already have a lot going on. Lottie's is smack dab in the middle of a re-gentrifying neighborhood, filled with junk stores, boutiques, dive bars and...Starbucks.

No, Seattlest didn't quite make it to everything on the checklist we created last Friday, but we did manage to stay out past midnight on both weekend evenings, proving we've still got it after all.