2008 Woodie Awards
Blue Scholars lead hip-hop's Renaissance
Kaitlin Trott, Staff Writer
Issue date: 12/5/06
Last Updated: 12/29/07
When possible, go to the roots. The first way something is done is often the best, most fresh and charged with the energy that comes from knowing you're forging something new.
Back in the early 90s East Coast no one had to rap about jewelry, women, or Cristal. One emcee, one DJ and a message was the soul for the wax poets of the streets. Since then, it's been booty beats at C8, $2 mil. grills, and white men with three kids and tight tie-knots bickering over coffee and the liner notes in today's rap albums.
When possible, go to the roots, and the roots are what the all-artist-run label Mass Line Media is founded on. Blue Scholars, Common Market and Gabriel Teodros are on tour spreading the vibe that West Coast hip-hop isn't dead through raw flow and enough soulful boom-bap to shake the dust from the White House steps.
At the front of the renaissance are Blue Scholars. Emcee Geologic grew up in a Filipino working class family, distilling the prejudice and hardship of urban America into spoken word and battleground microphone work. By serrated wit and political paroxysms, Geo scrawls his poetry all over the blackboard DJ Sabzi lays out.
Sabzi, originally a punk drummer and jazz pianist, adds the right flavor to give Blue Scholars their versatility and (not) original sound. Focus on the melody, layer the beats, and deliver it through slick turntablism is what we find Sabzi cutting in through Geologic's rhymes.
But style isn't everything. When the Scholars start we know class is in session and there's going to be more truth reverberating through the room than four years in a lecture hall. They aren't about uplifting preteen party-anthems or skirt-chasers grinding into disinterested floozies; there's a bleeding world all around us if only we'd listen. They sharply and effectively go from preaching about low-income soldiers caught up in absurd warfare because of a backdoor draft to the broken homes and poverty in the ethnic neighborhoods tucked away from the land of the free. Sometimes the pill is hard to swallow. And sometimes you walk away with Geo's words snared forever on the other side of your eardrums.
It's about one DJ, one emcee and a message. And the message is catching on.
The Blue Scholars as torch-bearers for Seattle's hip-hop played the main stage at Sasquatch! and Bumbershoot in 2006. They've also recently expanded and re-released the 2004 Blue Scholars LP and blew through 5,000 presses of their new EP, The Long March. They're for all of us who thought hip-hop diluted itself into a formulaic coma, all of us that would rather read the papers than spend that time working to get some more ice around our necks, and all of us that know a revolution works best through music.
The Blue Scholars with Common Market, Gabriel Teodros and special guest DJ Daps, will rock the Hixson Union Building at 9 p.m. this Thursday. The concert is free with Whitworth student ID and $10 for the general public.
Back in the early 90s East Coast no one had to rap about jewelry, women, or Cristal. One emcee, one DJ and a message was the soul for the wax poets of the streets. Since then, it's been booty beats at C8, $2 mil. grills, and white men with three kids and tight tie-knots bickering over coffee and the liner notes in today's rap albums.
When possible, go to the roots, and the roots are what the all-artist-run label Mass Line Media is founded on. Blue Scholars, Common Market and Gabriel Teodros are on tour spreading the vibe that West Coast hip-hop isn't dead through raw flow and enough soulful boom-bap to shake the dust from the White House steps.
At the front of the renaissance are Blue Scholars. Emcee Geologic grew up in a Filipino working class family, distilling the prejudice and hardship of urban America into spoken word and battleground microphone work. By serrated wit and political paroxysms, Geo scrawls his poetry all over the blackboard DJ Sabzi lays out.
Sabzi, originally a punk drummer and jazz pianist, adds the right flavor to give Blue Scholars their versatility and (not) original sound. Focus on the melody, layer the beats, and deliver it through slick turntablism is what we find Sabzi cutting in through Geologic's rhymes.
But style isn't everything. When the Scholars start we know class is in session and there's going to be more truth reverberating through the room than four years in a lecture hall. They aren't about uplifting preteen party-anthems or skirt-chasers grinding into disinterested floozies; there's a bleeding world all around us if only we'd listen. They sharply and effectively go from preaching about low-income soldiers caught up in absurd warfare because of a backdoor draft to the broken homes and poverty in the ethnic neighborhoods tucked away from the land of the free. Sometimes the pill is hard to swallow. And sometimes you walk away with Geo's words snared forever on the other side of your eardrums.
It's about one DJ, one emcee and a message. And the message is catching on.
The Blue Scholars as torch-bearers for Seattle's hip-hop played the main stage at Sasquatch! and Bumbershoot in 2006. They've also recently expanded and re-released the 2004 Blue Scholars LP and blew through 5,000 presses of their new EP, The Long March. They're for all of us who thought hip-hop diluted itself into a formulaic coma, all of us that would rather read the papers than spend that time working to get some more ice around our necks, and all of us that know a revolution works best through music.
The Blue Scholars with Common Market, Gabriel Teodros and special guest DJ Daps, will rock the Hixson Union Building at 9 p.m. this Thursday. The concert is free with Whitworth student ID and $10 for the general public.
For this reason, The Whitworthian asks readers to be responsible and respectful in any comments posted. The responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not the whitworthian.com. Readers are also encouraged to report questionable comments by e-mailing editor@whitworthian.com.
Be the first to comment on this story