SYNTHS, BLEEPS, AND BLIPS: Naw, we're not talking about party politics. We're talking about the bright, accessible electronica of Ratatat, and about how you should have bought tickets months ago for their sold-out concert tonight. Ratatat's eponymous debut and their '06 release Classics get regular and beloved play in Seattlest's living room; we haven't heard LP3, but it's probably just as perfect to put on if you want to dance a little while you make......

Hip hop's The Saturday Knights are a Seattle band and proud of it, from Tilson's Sonics cap to the samples from the Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Hymal" and Band of Horses' car commercial. We weren't really dying to hear anything on Sunday night except TSK's Tilson, Barfly, and DJ Suspence, and they lived up to our expectations. New to us was Tilson's elegy for Isaac Hayes, sung over a sample from the theme to Shaft.......

IN A WU TANG WAY: Not being of the hip-hop persuasion ourselves, Seattlest asked our resident hip-hop guru Katelyn how relevant it may be to people that Gza of Wu Tang Clan fame is playing at Neumo's tonight. She basically said it was relevant "in a Wu Tang way." We don't know what that means, but if you do, then Neumo's is your place to be. 8 p.m. doors // Neumo's // $20 YOUR BRAIN......

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......

"Chromeo @ Capitol Hill Block Party, 7/26/2008," by Seattlest Donte. Ahh, Saturday! A chronologically arranged discussion of the Block Party, Day Zwei (Day Eins here): The Physics: It's weird to see them in daylight, but then again, their happy, casual version of hiphop meshes well with a sunny day and a stomach full of the Champagne of Beer from the nearby beer garden. Justo and Thig had Monk Wordsmith (Thig's brother) on stage with......

Yes, you read that correctly. Donut! Eating! Competition! Are your artery walls closing in yet? Don't worry, because all calories from the donut consumption on Saturday will be null-and-voided by the blast of hiphoppy surfer punk rock played live by The Saturday Knights while you cram your mouth full of cakey, frosted goodness at the downtown Top Pot on (appropriately) Saturday. Last year, Bob of The Blakes won; this year, our money's on a......

FOOD ORGY: Get thee to the Seattle Center this weekend for the annual Bite of Seattle. Over a hundred booths, multiple beer gardens, cooking demos, live entertainment... all in the name of of good, local eating? Sounds like a great weekend event to us! Take advantage of the Just A Bite area, offering mini versions of local restaurant specialties for $3.75 a serving. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri & Sat; 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun // Seattle......

Philly rapper Freeway at Chop Suey on Saturday: gruff, powerful, in control. Prodigious beard. His set was a pleasure to behold, with thick, thumping, meaty beats over which his growl sounded just right. Such sparkly bling, too! Our only complaints are that he cut off "It's Over" way too early and there were a couple too many a capellas, but the man can keep filthily perfect time and impresses regardless of the beat behind him.......

BOMBS BURSTING, ETC: Happy Independence Day! Grill up some zucchini, down a beer or three, and enjoy your day off. Ivars is doing their exploding chemicals thing after sunset, so if you're into that, sedate your dogs/chickens/goldfish and enjoy the 23 minute show over Elliott Bay. Or wherever: check here and here for your options. 10 p.m. // Your Roof // Free(dom) GANGSTA RAP—SERIOUSLY: Get your gangsta self to Chop Suey on Saturday for Crooked......

We had a laid-back, happy time at Dope Emporium on Saturday. It felt like a hiphop block party: a family affair with barbeque, a beer garden, and kids running around doing cute things like breakdancing. There even was a producers' battle from which MTK (of Himalayan Rickshaw Run fame) emerged triumphant. Check out some photos from the event, taken by Seattlest and Terry Creighton.......

The Budos Band opened up the night in style! Photo by Seattlest's Abbey Simmons. The Saturday Knights/Budos Band show at Nectar on Friday night was sold out by 9:30 p.m., as in guest lists closed, no further entrance, and crowds of people partying outside the gates. Seattlest arrived at a normally respectable hour of 10:45 p.m. to find the Budos Band's shiny brass horns blaring, congo drums thumping, and every inch of Nectar packed with......

THAT'S SO DOPE: Dope Emporium is a free festival of all things hiphop: DJs, MCs, spoken word artists, graffiti artists, and more. It's going down as part of Artopia, an arts extravaganza in the extremely dope neighborhood of Georgetown, so hop on a bus and experience some of the best Seattle hiphop has to offer. Our picks: Candidt, Orbitron, B-Girl Bench, Waves of the Mind and Dim Mak. Hot! 2 p.m. - 10 p.m.,......

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,......

Common Market released Black Patch War in early May, but it's taken Seattlest awhile to get fully on board with the album. You too are forgiven for sleeping on it this long, but further snoozing is not recommended. Ra Scion has posted the lyrics to three of the seven songs from the album over at his blog, six minutes to sunrise, with footnotes and everything, and it makes for a riveting read if you're so......

An enthusiastic crowd of youngsters showed up at Nam's album release party at the Vera Project this weekend to appreciate energetic performances from The Physics, Bambu, super-talented super-group Good Medicine, and Nam himself. Though The Stranger billed this night as a Good Medicine show, every artist on the bill pointed the glory towards Nam and his "de-boo" album, Exhale. The album is as earnest, lovable and hard-working as Nam himself and plays well live,......

?uestlove and Black Thought of The Roots completely rocked it last night at Neumos. The DJ's set was fully loaded with hiphop and funk classics, aimed straight at the heart of the crowd's collective groove, and Black Thought's aggressive, wild voice is a pleasure to experience live. How could you not dance? One guy was so excited he was jumping up and down. (Not hopping, not bouncing. Jumping!) All in all, a night of dancing,......

OPERATION BRIGHT PINK FLAMINGO: If you were at Myrtle Edwards Park last weekend, you may have noticed a city-approved flock of plastic flamingos hanging out on the lawns. Lest you prematurely begin the spiral into "WTF, can't we just have normal public art," let us inform you that the flamingos were only visiting to remind everyone that real Chilean flamingos are available as of tomorrow to gawk at over in the Woodland Park Zoo.......

Photo of One Be Lo by Kyle Johnson. One Be Lo, a nationally acclaimed independent hiphop artist hailing from Pontiac, Michigan, is fond of our city. "In Seattle, I get an epiphany every day," he says, recounting his insights gleaned from dining with local Vietnamese families and browsing through the shelves of the Emerald City’s bookstores. The emcee leans in closer. "Seattle’s giving me my second wind." An avid learner and frequent public speaker,......

HUGE AMOUNTS OF CHEESE: The Cheese Festival is upon us! This is one of our top three favorite events of the year (#2: our birthday, #3: Christmas). Several reasons: a city block full of cheese, friendly vendors, wholesale prices on bottles in the wine garden (don't buy the red wine that says "bacon" three times in its description, we made that mistake last year), and (it bears repeating) a city block full of cheese. 10......

DJ Rare Groove spins for the crowd before Atmosphere's set. Slug's tidy ponytail gleams, silhouetted against changing red, green and aqua lights. He moves his body like he's got something to clarify. "Oh, you know this one too?" he asks the deliriously excited crowd, and of course the answer is yes. In Seattle, Atmosphere's emcee Slug--dark, emotionally tortured, pensive Lothario Slug--is a god. We seem to prefer our rockstars on the brooding but safe......

Nas--NAS, people--is playing Showbox SoDo this Friday, and there are three possible reasons why tickets are still available. (1) No one knows he's coming (an unintentionally secret show?); (2) Word's gotten sufficiently around about Nas' weak live performance (but still... Nas!); or (3) Everyone's blown their ticket budgets on hipster-friendly Atmosphere, playing Tuesday at the same venue (for $20 less a ticket). Needless to say, Atmosphere and Nas don't really bring out the same crowd.......

Photo of The Physics by Ryan Lewis. We love some hiphop with our coffee in the morning, and KEXP's John In The Morning obliged us today with a live set from easy-going, hard-working local stars The Physics! You can stream the set and interview on KEXP's website by clicking here and setting the time to 8:07am. What you'll hear: "Brand New Thang", "I Heart Beer", an interview (including some good-natured ribbing about The Physics'......

Late summer festival/extravaganza Bumbershoot announced another hiphop headliner today. Ludacris, the one and only, has been added to the line-up! The other three rap-alicious big names thus far are Brother Ali, whose recent show at Neumos was nigh unto a spiritual experience for Seattlest, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, and Kid Sister out of Chicago. Unless, of course, you count Beck as a rapper. (We don't.) Says Seattle hiphop artist Grynch to Seattlest on the line-up:......

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's controversial pastor and friend, gave a widely criticized speech yesterday on Black Liberation Theology, patriotism, and his relationship with Barack Obama. Obama gave a press conference of his own today, saying he's "outraged" at Rev. Wright's "appalling" comments. He emphasized that Rev. Wright was never his "spiritual advisor," though the pastor married the Senator and his wife and prayed with them the day Obama announced his presidential candidacy. Some......

It's an absolutely gorgeous day outside, and Seattlest put in some good hours at the park. The sunshine has coaxed our shriveled, hardened, wintry walnut of a soul to begin expanding and warming up in preparation for bona fide Springtime. So forgive us if we're a little over-emotional when it comes to directing your attention to a story in this morning's Seattle P-I about a Massive Monkees crew member named Phanna Nam (Peanut, to......

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......

Hiphop's King of Ballard, an inspired young emcee named Grynch, sat down with us over chicken satay (which he thought was delicious, and said so several times) to discuss everything from backpack rap to The Program. Here's what the man has to say. And catch his set tomorrow night at The Sunset--it's your last chance until June! Where in the family tree of hiphop would you place yourself? I think you can't really put......

Last weekend, two men were shot at an afterparty for a book-signing of an unauthorized account of Dr. Dre and West Coast hiphop down in Tukwila. One of the men died from multiple gunshot wounds and was identified to the press late last night as a 24-year-old from Renton named Deon T. Guidry. We've been following the story via the P-I, wincing at the familiar knee-jerk comments (Socially Inept writes, "People tend to get......

Along with all the hiphop this weekend and the hella rad Subtle laser show tonight, there's a few more music events of note. First up, tonight State Bird plays an early show (8 p.m.) at the Q Cafe in Ballard. How both the venue and this great group of Ohio tribal-folksters have been under our radar is beyond us. Also tonight: Cat Power plays the Showbox SoDo. We know that Chan Marshall's not half as......

We're excited about three hiphop(ish) shows this weekend: RJD2 at Chop Suey, Lucky I Am at Nectar, and Willie Will's album release party at Chop Suey. RJD2's got groove practically oozing from his pores. This producer, multi-instrument musician and singer came up in Columbus and was signed to DefJux as a hiphop artist. His recent albums take a turn away from typical hiphop sampling and his early focus on electronic sounds towards more of an......