It's a great weekend for hiphop, Seattle! On Saturday, Grynch is headlining a show with D.Black, XPerience, Khingz, and the hilarious Sonny Bonoho at Chop Suey. It's a well-balanced bill full of funny, talented performers who draw big crowds on their own steam, so on a line-up together--well, Chop Suey will be alive and on fire Saturday night! On Sunday night, Dyme Def officially releases their crazy-good new mixtape, 3 Bad Brothaaas, at Nectar. Naturally,......

Three shows have claims on our affections for Friday night: Onry Ozzborn’s solo set at Nectar, We Wrote The Book On Connectors at the Blue Moon, and the hippest hiphop night to grace Belltown in awhile, “The Corner” at the Rendezvous Room. We’ll let you make your own call between those three, but let us just say this: The Corner involves old-school players and new-school fools in the same plush, stylish room. With the volume......

Right on the heels of the announcement that the Mars Volta was added to the Sasquatch lineup, and right before tickets go on sale this Saturday, the three-day music festival has seen fit to delineate who will be playing on which day: Saturday, May 24th R.E.M. / Modest Mouse / M.I.A. / The New Pornographers / The National / Ozomatli / Beirut / Dengue Fever / Fleet Foxes / The Breeders / Okkervil River......

After months of wild speculation, the official 2008 Sasquatch lineup has finally been announced: R.E.M. / The Cure / The Flaming Lips U.F.O. Show / Death Cab For Cutie / Modest Mouse / M.I.A. / Flight Of The Conchords / Rodrigo Y Gabriela / Michael Franti & Spearhead / The Breeders / Built To Spill / The Hives / Tegan & Sara / The Presidents / Ghostland Observatory / Ozomatli / The New Pornographers......

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......

If you're not planning on hitting up the Garden Show tonight, you should definitely be at Neumos getting your mind blown by the hardcore hiphop of New York's Saigon, Dyme Def, and Cancer Rising. Helloooo, Saigon: 8pm // Neumos // 925 E. Pike // $20 adv // All-Ages......

U-N-I, the L.A. headliners at last night's show at Chop Suey, is the profoundly West Coast hiphop equivalent of human superficial fascia: loosely, intricately webbed, sticky, and pliable. Tricky, surprising beats backed Thurzday and Y-O's tight rap in a dizzying but relaxed kind of way. The night was solid for such an unsung show, with performances from some of 2008's most promising local acts: J. Pinder (his ballsy, impeccable timing meshing perfectly with high-power......

At last, 2007 draws itself to a close! We've spent the latter half of December rocking out to an unhealthy amount of local hiphop and, accordingly, nursing a terribly un-hiphop head cold. We've had plenty of material upon which to reflect, however, including our experiences at Days Four and Five of The Program; allow us to offer you this monster post on that very material, after which we promise to only tangentially mention this five-day......

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 Sunday night, Seattlest and a bunch of other Seattleites showed up at Chop Suey for the "Jive Turkey Extreme" Cancer Rising cd release party. The Valley (a Seattle rock band) opened, but we missed their set due to an emergency Piecora's artichoke-heart and sun-dried tomato pizza slice run. Ah, well. No matter. We were still among the first hundred people to buy our ticket and therefore obtain a free copy of Cancer Rising's hot-off-the-presses......

Sometimes, the hip-hop planets align and send their benefactions down upon Seattlest. This was probably why we ended up standing in line behind Nam at Chop Suey on Saturday night, waiting to get into the Little Brother show. (Watch for an interview with him later this week!) However, we give full credit to Northwest hip-hop promoters Obese Productions for the line-up that allowed us to finally see The Physics AND Grynch (at right). AND Dyme......

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......

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......

Props to Dyme Def. The Seattle rappers' newest video was highlighted yesterday on music magazine FADER’s daily blog. That's instant exposure for the music blog obsessed like ourselves. You bad, man. You bad.......