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“We got the talent, microphones, turntables, and crates”

Seattle Hip Hop in the 1990s

IN the early 1990s hip hop merged into the national mainstream. The 1991 beating of Rodney King in South Los Angeles and the subsequent uprising and revolt, fueled by decades of police brutality and neglect, demonstrated the intensity of urban racial and economic tensions. During the late 1980s, “gangsta” rap had articulated feelings of marginality, isolation, and frustration that existed in Los Angeles as well as in other urban communities around the United States. King’s videotaped assault illustrated NWA’s song “F-ck the Police,” while the resulting not-guilty verdicts for the officers involved and subsequent outrage and civil unrest echoed songs like Ice-T’s “Squeeze the Trigger” and Ice Cube’s “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted.”

Several other US cities, including Seattle, experienced civil unrest in the aftermath of the King verdict, although not close to the destruction in Los Angeles. Over two nights beginning on May 1, 1992, rioters in downtown Seattle and the Capitol Hill neighborhood, mostly young white men along with some young African Americans, threw stones, overturned cars, broke windows, looted stores, and set fires. One young man who identified himself as Khalif said, “What we want is justice. When we kick down doors, windows . . . it’s for Rodney King.” A total of 150 people were arrested over two nights of disturbances, which mirrored the rioting in Los Angeles. The violence overshadowed the numerous peaceful protests in colleges and high schools around the Puget Sound area.¹

For some, the Rodney King saga showcased hip hop’s social range, as rap music not only drew attention to problems in the community but also essentially predicted the resulting civil unrest if nothing changed. To others, the episode simply represented criminals who had been allowed to run amok, fueled by the rise of crack cocaine and street gangs. In the aftermath emerged a federal initiative through the United States Department of Justice called “Weed and Seed,” ostensibly designed to combat the social and economic deterioration of the inner city. Seattle was among several cities selected to participate in the pilot program.² Adopted by the Seattle City Council in December 1992, the Weed and Seed initiative was described as an “incubator for social change to stabilize the conditions in high crime communities and to promote community restoration.” The key components of the program included enhanced local coordination, concentrated and enhanced law enforcement efforts (weeding), community policing, and increased human services (seeding).³

Community leaders like Arnette Holloway, president of the Central Area Neighborhood District Council, and Reverend Harriet Walden, leader of Mothers Against Police Harassment, immediately challenged the program. They held press conferences, led demonstrations, and pointed out that two-thirds of Seattle’s Weed and Seed money would be allotted to law enforcement, with only one-third going to social services. A group called the Seattle Coalition Against Weed and Seed was organized, and the Puget Sound Coalition for Police Accountability distributed a list of fifty-five community groups that were opposed to Weed and Seed. Among other things, leaked federal Weed and Seed documents included items such as “street sweeps” where anybody on a public street in an area designated as “high crime” could be taken into custody and forced to prove their innocence.⁴ Norm Rice, who served as Seattle’s first Black mayor from 1990 through 1998, and supported Weed and Seed, faced a tough task, attempting to sell a program many residents viewed as simply further license for police to harass and a tool of gentrification.⁵

An additional factor in hip hop’s rapid rise in the early 1990s in California and elsewhere was the massive success of MC Hammer. Hammer, an Oakland native, became the first hip-hop artist to achieve “diamond” status, ten million copies sold, following the release of his 1990 album Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ’ Em. The popularity of MC Hammer generated unprecedented mainstream access for a hip-hop artist, which led to endorsements with Pepsi and Kentucky Fried Chicken, an action figure carried in toy stores, and a Saturday morning cartoon television series. These and other examples were driving forces that shifted the traditional center of hip hop away from New York to the location and sensibilities of the West Coast.⁶

Along with hip hop’s higher national profile, new controversies about the content and context of hip-hop music and culture emerged. By the end of the 1980s, Miami-based 2 Live Crew had firmly established themselves in the national consciousness with their sexually explicit lyrics. Journalist and editor Alan Light wrote: “If, in 1990, people new to rap gave it any thought at all, they would have concentrated on the crudeness of 2 Live Crew—who may have a constitutional right to be nasty, but there is no way around the ugliness of their lyrics.” ⁷ Several counties in Florida attempted to ban the group’s 1989 album As Nasty as They Wanna Be, while a record store owner in the state was charged with a felony and an Alabama shopkeeper was fined for selling copies of the record. In the Pacific Northwest controversy about the album prompted State Representative Richard King, a Democrat from Everett, to sponsor HB 2554, or the Erotic Music Law. The bill prohibited minors from purchasing “sexually suggestive” records, tapes, and compact discs. It made record store owners liable for displaying or selling any music that “appeals to the prurient interest of minors in sex”; those who violated the law faced a $500 fine and six months in jail for a first offense, while repeat offenders could get as much as a $5,000 fine and a year in jail. By a vote of 96–2 the Washington State House passed HB 2554, which Governor Booth Gardner eventually signed into law. However, only four months after taking effect, the Erotic Music Law was struck down in the fall of 1992 by a Superior Court judge in Seattle.⁸

During the 1990s the hip-hop scene in Seattle resonated with these nationally profiled issues of racialized urban violence and policing and the critiques of the sexually explicit character of hip-hop lyrics. But the scene also responded to more local and regional influences. The decade was the heyday for grunge music and fashion in Seattle, which claimed a great deal of media attention on the national stage. At the same time, Seattle hip-hop music and culture also garnered national recognition in the form of several Grammy nods as well as the cultural exports of fashion, with the urban clothing brand Mecca, and breaking.

The Closure of NastyMix Records

With two platinum-selling Sir Mix-A-Lot albums, things appeared to be going well at NastyMix Records in the late 1980s and early 90s. However, as was common among hip-hop artists in the early days, Mix-A-Lot was largely unfamiliar with the record business. That changed in late 1989, when he was introduced to the concept of publishing by Public Enemy front man Chuck D during a conversation while touring together. Mix-A-Lot was looking for a new manager, which led him to Ricardo Frazer, a young NastyMix intern known for his knowledge of the music industry and business sense. Mix-A-Lot offered Frazer the job, which began a manager/client relationship that has thrived for some three decades without ever having any formal written contractual agreement.⁹

Mix-A-Lot was unhappy with the promotion of his second album, Seminar, which marked the end of his contract with NastyMix Records. One of Frazer’s first tasks was to try to sort out the issue of publishing monies owed by NastyMix to Sir Mix-A-Lot, which had grown in excess of $300,000. Mix-A-Lot and Frazer were on the verge of closing a new deal with RCA, which subsequently backed out when NastyMix CEO Ed Locke, claiming tampering, threatened to sue any record company that signed Mix-A-Lot. Unable to resolve their differences, the matter was eventually decided in court. “We spent a lot of money on this case ($1.2 million), more than we won,” Mix-A-Lot explained, “but it was worth it to get off that label. We didn’t win any money from Ed [Locke], all we got was our old masters. All I wanted was the masters. I realized that my masters would get my 1.2 back.” The Rocket attempted to get Locke’s version of the story, describing him as sounding “hurt and angry.” Locke said: “I don’t want anything to do with his [Mix-A-Lot’s] publicity.” A call to Ichiban Records confirmed that the Atlanta-based rap and blues label was now NastyMix’s primary stockholder. “In essence,” The Rocket concluded, “Locke has sold a controlling interest in Seattle’s first rap label to out-of-towners.” ¹⁰

The eventual closure of NastyMix Records in 1992 represented the end of an era. According to the Seattle Times, “NastyMix put Seattle on the rap map and contributed to the city’s image as a hotbed of new, young music talent.” ¹¹ Both of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s NastyMix albums, Swass and Seminar, were RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) certified platinum. Despite how it ended, NastyMix helped provide a blueprint of how to build a successful, minority-owned rap label outside New York that put out local music with global reach. Future examples of this dynamic would include Dr. Dre and Suge Knight’s Death Row Records in Los Angeles; Master P’s No Limit Records in New Orleans; and James Prince’s Rap-A-Lot Records in Houston.

Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Next Chapter

Attention continued to follow Sir Mix-A-Lot into the 1990s. Controversy erupted in 1991 when Vanilla Ice, rap music’s first white male sex symbol, best known for his number one, platinum-selling single “Ice Baby,” was accused of plagiarizing lyrics from Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1986 song “I’m a Trip.” The issue, discussed in a book written by Vanilla Ice, was addressed by his publicist, who said, “The book never said that he [Ice] actually wrote it—it just said he had it.” ¹²

As a musical free agent, Mix-A-Lot drew immediate interest from several major record companies. He found a partner in Rick Rubin, who cofounded iconic hip-hop label Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons out of his New York University dorm room in 1984. Over the next four years, Rubin helped launch the careers of rap superstars such as LL Cool J, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and Run DMC. In 1988 Rubin left Def Jam, moved to Los Angeles, and started Def American Records. Although he focused primarily on working with rock and heavy metal acts such as Slayer, Danzig, and System of a Down, Rubin also signed rap artists like the Geto Boys out of Houston, Texas.¹³

Rubin offered Mix-A-Lot the chance to operate his own label, Rhyme Cartel Records, under Def American distributed by Warner Brothers. Ricardo Frazer was named president and Mix-A-Lot chief executive officer. The first release on the Rhyme Cartel label was Sir Mix-A-Lot’s third album, 1992’s Mack Daddy. In addition to investing $1 million in his new signing, Rubin had some marketing ideas. The Mix-A-Lot bio distributed by Def American featured a list of his personal gun collection, which included a MAC 11, Glock 19, Mossberg Pump, an HK 91 and 93 with laser sights, and .44 auto mag Desert Eagle. Despite this, Rubin did not see Mix-A-Lot simply as a “[Los Angeles] Raiders baseball hat and jacket” rapper a la NWA. Rubin’s vision for Mix-A-Lot was this: “If you’re gonna be a gangster, you’d be the boss.” The look, complete with fur coats and cigars, was of a pimp who drives a Porsche, a rapper who was “too legit to give a shit.” ¹⁴

The initial single from Mack Daddy, “One Time’s Got No Case,” focused on police use of racial profiling in deciding which drivers to pull over. The single sold fifty thousand copies and set the stage for the album’s second single “Baby Got Back.” When “Baby Got Back” was released in the spring of 1992, the response was immediate and not all enthusiastic. Because of its suggestive nature, MTV banned the video for “Baby Got Back.” MTV had done this in the past—for example, refusing to broadcast the NWA video “Straight Outta Compton” in 1988 amid claims that the song promoted violence.¹⁵ MTV eventually agreed to air “Baby Got Back” but only at night.¹⁶ Just as it had in the case of NWA, the controversy simply made “Baby Got Back” more popular. The song spent five weeks at number one on the Billboard pop chart, making Mix-A-Lot the first Northwest artist to reach the top spot since Heart’s “Alone” in 1987. The song was certified double platinum (two million copies sold).¹⁷

Writer and editor Charles Mudede argued that Sir Mix-A-Lot’s success “caught everyone by surprise because (1) Seattle was completely off the hip-hop radar, and (2) there was nothing in the mainstream that sounded remotely like his music.” Sir Mix-A-Lot rapped only like Sir Mix-A-Lot, but, most important, “Sir Mix-A-Lot wasn’t so fucking serious.” “Baby Got Back,” which opened with a conversation between two white girls disgusted by a Black woman’s huge butt, “returned laughter to the hip-hop charts and the dance floor. The record felt like a window being opened in a stuffy room.” KEXP DJ Riz Rollins added: “This was Seattle’s big gift to black America. People remembered it was good to have fun now and then. And it could only happen in Seattle because we were so isolated. We were free to do whatever we wanted.” ¹⁸

“Baby Got Back” was based on Mix-A-Lot’s critique of traditional Eurocentric beauty standards and body shape. As he told Entertainment Weekly, “I’m sorry, but the popular image of a beautiful woman today is a bean pole. A lot of women, white and black, have thanked me for ‘Baby Got Back.’” Controversy hovered as the song was labeled racist and sexist, and several Mix-A-Lot shows were picketed by protesters that accused him of exploitation by disparaging one group of women to build up another.¹⁹ When the nominations for the Thirtyfifth Annual Grammy Awards were announced on January 7, 1993, Seattle hip hop had truly arrived on the world stage. In the category for Best Solo Rap Performance, “Baby Got Back” faced superstar competition—“Addam’s Groove” by MC Hammer, “Strictly Business” by LL Cool J, “You Gotta Believe” by Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg, and “Latifah’s Had It Up 2 Here” by Queen Latifah. The announcement of Mix-A-Lot as the winner and presentation of his trophy was not seen on television as the Grammys had not yet made the decision to include the rap awards as part of the regular broadcast.²⁰

Since its release, “Baby Got Back” has made numerous appearances in movies such as Charlie’s Angels (2000), TV shows like The Simpsons, and commercials for Burger King.²¹ In 2013 the song appeared on the Fox television show Glee, and rapper Nicki Minaj sampled the song in her 2014 single “Anaconda.” Other items from Mix-A-Lot’s catalogue have continued to earn what he called “long money,” such as the Pussycat Dolls’ sample of his 1988 song “Swass” for their 2005 multiplatinum smash hit “Don’t Cha.” ²² With the formation of his label Rhyme Cartel Records, Sir Mix-A-Lot had a platform to bring more attention to Seattle artists. The result was a local rap/R&B compilation album titled Seattle . . . The Darkside (1993), which featured nine songs, including “Drop Top” by E-Dawg featuring Filthy Rich, “Just da Pimpin’ in Me” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Menace Crook” by Jay-Skee, “Flava You Can Taste” by Kid Sensation, “12 Gauge” by Jay-Skee, and “Don’t Play Me” by 3rd Level. The general theme of this album was more hardcore, as reflected by some of the song titles and parental advisory sticker on its cover. The Definitive Guide to Rap & Hip-Hop argued the album “takes an enjoyable look at Seattle hip-hoppers and detours into urban contemporary and spoken word.” ²³ Meanwhile, The Rocket argued that “he [Mix-A-Lot] can’t be knocked for ignoring local talent. Kid Sensation and Jazz Lee Alston, just to name a couple, wouldn’t have gotten as far as they have without him. Criticism hasn’t stopped him from helping other artists.” ²⁴ The first single released from Seattle . . . The Dark Side was “Drop Top” by E-Dawg featuring Filthy Rich, a feel-good warm-weather anthem. The B side of “Drop Top” was “Little Locs,” which music critic Greg Barbrick described in The Rocket as “a rap about E-Dawg’s days on the streets. It is a story that could have come out of Compton or any other urban war zone, and stands as Seattle’s first major entry into the gangsta rap field.” ²⁵ Seattle . . . The Darkside was an early example of a phenomenon that helped define Seattle hip-hop music during the 1990s: the compilation album.

Meanwhile, Mix-A-Lot kept making regular appearances across popular culture. MTV’s controversial 1990s animated series Beavis and Butt-Head produced a compilation album, The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience in 1993. Artists such as Megadeth, Nirvana, and Cher appeared on the platinum-selling album along with Mix-A-Lot, who contributed his single “Monsta Mack.” ²⁶ Mix-A-Lot earned another Grammy nomination in 1994 in the Best Solo Rap Performance category for his song “Just da Pimpin’ in Me,” and the following year, he made the move to television. By this time, rappers such as Will Smith, Ice-T, and Queen Latifah had begun second careers in movies and TV. Mix-A-Lot joined this trend as the star of the short-lived 1995 drama series The Watcher on the fledgling UPN network. Reviews were mixed. According to Los Angeles Times writer Chris Willman, Mix-A-Lot “plays jive-talking host to this Las Vegas–set anthology series, tracking all sorts of goings-on from a high-tech, high-rise control room with monitors hooked up to every nook and cranny in the city.” ²⁷ This, said the Chicago Tribune, allowed Mix-A-Lot to “spy on the lives of high rollers, lowlifes and underwear-clad women. . . . Almost everybody who shows up on one of his screens is a con artist, a murderer, a model, a junkie or an Elvis impersonator.” ²⁸ The Watcher filmed only a handful of episodes and was canceled by UPN after one season.

Following the success of his album Mack Daddy, Sir Mix-A-Lot remained active musically. When his 1994 album Chief Boot Knocka was released, he again pushed the envelope with another risqué music video. In addition to this new album following up on the themes explored on Mack Daddy, “like that record it comes with plenty of pre-release controversy. The first single, ‘Put ’Em On da Glass,’ features an X-rated video that’s so explicit even his publicist says she hasn’t seen it and doesn’t want to,” wrote journalist Scott Griggs in The Rocket. “Even though the video was produced on Mix’s property, don’t expect to see it on MTV anytime soon. But exposure on the Playboy Channel will help continue Mix’s career, and he admits that he’s ‘king of the strip clubs.’ ” Mix-A-Lot’s 1996 album Return of the Bumpasaurus went essentially unnoticed by the mainstream. The Rocket reported Mix-A-Lot’s success had created tension with some elements in the Central District: “Without going incognito, the man can’t go back in the neighborhood he grew up in without a death threat. Please, he didn’t kill anyone so what’s the problem?” ²⁹ Two factors potentially contributed to this strained relationship—one was the natural tension that occurs as an artist makes the transition from local to national/global, and the other was the ultra-competitive nature of hip-hop culture, which does not always celebrate the success of others without expecting said success to be spread around the scene.

Hip-Hop Events in Seattle and the Region

Voices that blamed hip hop for violence at live events were fueled nationally in the late 1980s by a stabbing at a Run DMC concert in New Jersey and locally by a shooting at a hotel in Sea-Tac, where DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were staying after a show. This image was not improved when three people were shot, one was stabbed, and another hit by a vehicle outside the Paramount Theatre in Seattle after an Ice Cube concert in 1992. City officials blamed the Paramount and the event promoter for not giving police adequate notice that extra security would be needed.³⁰ Negative publicity around live shows was reaching an all-time high the same year one of the area’s longest running annual hip-hop events debuted, followed by a series of local and regional events that continued to breathe life into the scene.

As the biggest radio station playing a Rhythmic Contemporary/ Top 40 format in Seattle, KUBE 93 used its power to hold the first annual Summer Jam at Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium in 1992. Performers at the event included Kid Sensation and New York artists Nice and Smooth, Das EFX, and Pete Rock. The following year, Summer Jam moved to the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, thirty miles north of Seattle. Summer Jam 2 saw a significant increase in the number of nationally known hip-hop artists with a lineup that featured Tupac Shakur, Run DMC, Pharcyde, Onyx, Immature, Funk Doobiest, Tag Team, and Guru from the group Gangstarr.³¹

At the time, KUBE faced criticism over its failure to give local artists consistent airplay. Although Kid Sensation was a headliner for the first Summer Jam, the lineup for Summer Jam 2 in 1993 featured almost all national artists. Community-based events have traditionally played an important role in providing opportunities to showcase local hip-hop talent. For example, Autumn Jam, was put on by the Central Area Youth Association (CAYA) in fall 1993. Formally established in 1964, CAYA originally focused on organizing football for Central District youth. Over time the organization grew to provide education, social development, and recreation activities for neighborhood young people between the ages of nine and eighteen.³² Autumn Jam, an obvious play on Summer Jam, showcased more than a dozen teen hip hop, rock, R&B, and gospel artists from CAYA’s Multimedia and Performance Program. The event was held at Seattle Central Community College’s Broadway Performance Hall.³³

Community-building events within Seattle’s hip-hop scene continued through the 1990s. Several examples included veteran local presence Jace, who organized the inaugural Hip-Hop Forum in 1993. The second annual forum was held at the Seattle Center and included such panelists as Mike Clark, J-Styles, Jonathan “Wordsayer” Moore, B-Self, Mr. Supreme, Blaac, B-Mello, and Soul-One. In 1995 local DJ and promoter Robert Brewer organized the Northwest Hip-Hop Forum. The program at the Showbox downtown included panel discussions on networking strategies and getting media coverage for artists. The music showcase featured local artists E-Dawg, Beyond Reality, 22nd Precinct, DMS, Narcotic, Jace, Infinite, Prose and Concepts, and Portland artist Cool Nutz.³⁴ Payton Carter noted in The Rocket that attendance for the music showcase in the evening was negatively impacted at 10:00 p.m., when the Teen Dance Ordinance went into effect.³⁵

Seattle hip hop flexed its regional muscle in 1994 at the CITR 101.9 FM DJ and MC Soundwar Chapter Four held in Vancouver, Canada. The first edition of Soundwar, held in 1990, represented Vancouver’s first rap competition and drew talent from up and down the West Coast of the United States.³⁶ Subsequent Soundwars grew to include more categories, and, at Chapter Four, Seattle dominated as B-Mello won the DJ competition, Blind Council won the group award, and DVS won the dance contest.³⁷ Events located outside Seattle also helped expand the influence of hip hop in Washington. One instance was Phunky Phat 95, an all-day event held at Evergreen State College, a small, public liberal arts school located in the state capital of Olympia, sixty miles south of Seattle. With opening remarks beginning at noon, nearly twenty primarily local artists were set to perform well into the evening, with the last scheduled to go on at 10:00 p.m. Among them were DJs such as B-Mello, Vitamin D, and Kamikaze; dance acts like DVS Floor Rockers and Preach and Teach; and rappers, including Prose and Concepts, Beyond Reality, Source of Labor, Phat Mob, Sinsemilla, Ghetto Children, Shabazz Coalition, Jace, and Blind Council.

Ishmael Butler and Digable Planets

As the Seattle scene developed, local MCs interacted with scenes in other cities. Growing up in the Central District, Ishmael Butler spent summers in New York with his father and the school year in Seattle. During his junior and senior years at Garfield High School, Butler played on back-to-back state championship basketball teams in 1986 and 1987. He also dabbled in hip hop during high school, including an appearance as one half of a duo called The Cold Crushers at FunFest, the annual Garfield talent show. After graduating, Butler signed to play at the University of Massachusetts. However, balancing basketball and a full college load proved to be a challenge, and he left UMass after a year. Butler found himself in New York City with an internship at Sleeping Bag Records, an independent rap label with artists like Mantronix, Nice and Smooth, and EPMD. He paid dues working in the mail room, running errands, handing out flyers, and absorbing as many aspects of the recording industry as he could. One album from that time, 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) by De La Soul, caught Butler’s attention more than any other. “When that came out,” he said, “it sparked something in me. My dad was really into avantgarde jazz, so from a musical standpoint I always knew that you could be original and succeed. Then De La came along, and a lot of stuff I was thinking about started adding up very quickly.” ³⁸

After a few lineup changes, which included fellow Seattleite Michael Gabre-Kidan, Butler, who went by Butterfly, combined with Craig “Doodlebug” Irving and Mary Ann “Lady Bug Mecca” Vieira to form Digable Planets. The group signed with Pendulum Records in 1992 and began recording their debut album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), released the following year. Conceptually, Butler envisioned members of the group as insects who work together for “the good of the colony. It was a socialist, communist thing that I was talking about.” Not many rappers in the early 1990s were comparing themselves to insects, pulling their album names from the title of a book by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, or taking a genre-defining pro-choice stance while mentioning Roe v. Wade in their song “La Femme Fetal.” Although nobody in the group was originally from New York, having lived there for several years Digable Planets was described in the press as a “Brooklyn-based trio.” ³⁹

The lead track from Reachin’ was “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” released in the fall of 1992. Digable Planets was asked to perform the song on the Emmy Award–winning Fox Television comedy-sketch series In Living Color. Created by brothers Keenen Ivory and Damon Wayans, In Living Color generated massive ratings and stirred controversy in the early 1990s for the way it took on issues of race.⁴⁰ Soon after the episode aired in January 1993, both the single and the album were certified gold (500,000 copies sold).⁴¹ In January 1994, “Rebirth of Slick” earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, and Digable Planets was also nominated in the Best New Artist category. Other nominees for Best New Artist were Belly, Blind Melon, SWV (Sisters With Voices), and Toni Braxton, the eventual winner. The competition for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group included “Revolution” by Arrested Development, which appeared on the soundtrack for the 1992 Spike Lee biopic Malcolm X. Arrested Development won Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for their song “Tennessee” in 1993. Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain” was a number one hit for the first Latino hip-hop group to achieve large-scale mainstream success. “Hip-Hop Hooray,” with a Spike Lee– directed video, was a number one hit for Naughty By Nature. The legendary Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Nuthin But a ‘G’ Thang” also spent time at number one; Snoop had quickly become one of the brightest stars in all of music without having yet released a solo album of his own.

When Digable Planets won the Grammy over a field that was essentially a who’s who of early 1990s hip hop, not everyone was impressed. Pioneering MC KRS-One of the group Boogie Down Productions voiced his opinion that a hardcore group should have won instead. Looking back on their unlikely victory, Butler reflected, “I don’t know how those decisions are made and maybe we got it because we were more friendly to the public. I think we had a good record, but for impact it wasn’t bigger than Snoop and Dre, and it wasn’t better than Cypress Hill either.” ⁴² Blowout Comb, the second album of the Digable Planets, was critically well received but did not match the commercial success of Reachin’. In a 2013 interview with Butler, Rolling Stone magazine noted that fans and critics hailed Blowout Comb when it was released in October 1994, but radio seemingly did not quite know what to do with it. “The album just really wasn’t selling,” Butler said. “But it wasn’t really that discouraging to me, because we were still touring—and we didn’t really give a shit about the pop world like that, anyway. The album itself we were always happy with.” ⁴³

Blowout Comb was the final album of original music from Digable Planets, who broke up in 1995. The group briefly reunited and toured for a period in 2005; however, subsequent attempts to perform were marked by creative differences between members. Butler returned to Seattle in the aftermath of Digable Planets and remained active, appearing on Bronx hip-hop duo Camp Lo’s 1997 song “Swing” as well as in their video “Luchini AKA This Is It.” Butler resurfaced in 2003 with Cherrywine, a live hip-hop group, and released the album Bright Black. He also appeared in a short film called I Am Ali (2002), written, produced, and directed by dream hampton, a longtime music and culture writer for The Source and Vibe magazines. I Am Ali featured Butler as a man with schizophrenia who thinks he is legendary boxer and former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. The story follows the daily lives of Butler’s character and his girlfriend as they attempt to come to terms with this mental illness. In 2004 Butler made his feature film debut starring in the comedy/drama Men Without Jobs, portraying an eccentric slacker/graffiti artist facing the increasing responsibilities of adulthood.⁴⁴

Seattle Hip Hop and Sports

Ishmael Butler’s status as a state high school basketball champion who went on to win a Grammy Award was an example of the connection between rap and sports, a dynamic present virtually from the beginning of hip hop. In 1979 “Rapper’s Delight” referenced watching the New York Knicks on television, and legendary New York MC Kurtis Blow released the song “Basketball” in 1984. In Seattle the link between hip hop and sports came in 1992 with a collaboration between Kid Sensation and Seattle Mariners superstar outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. That year Griffey and Kid Sensation released the single “The Way I Swing,” which Griffey cowrote:

Ken Griffey is a swinger, not a singer;

A def rhyme bringer;

A home-run hitter but I’m not a dope slinger.

The song appeared on Kid Sensation’s 1992 album, The Power of Rhyme, with a baseball card included in the cassette single for “The Way I Swing.” ⁴⁵

The relationship between sports and hip hop in Seattle continued during the NBA playoffs in the spring of 1993. With the single “Not in Our House,” Sir Mix-A-Lot provided a hip-hop narrative for a young and exciting SuperSonics team making a deep playoff run. The video featured cameos from numerous players and team personnel, including point guard Gary Payton, forward Shawn Kemp, play-by-play broadcaster Kevin Calabro, and the Sonics cheerleaders. The song, produced in association with radio station KUBE 93, enjoyed large amounts of local popularity and airplay.⁴⁶ The Sonics lost a tough seven-game series that season to league MVP Charles Barkley and the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference Finals.

B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret, a compilation album of rap songs featuring several NBA players, was released in 1995. Participants included Jason Kidd, Dana Barros, Dennis Scott, Malik Sealy, Brian Shaw, Chris Mills, and Cedric Ceballos. Because Shaquille O’Neal had released a debut solo album, Shaq Diesel, in 1993 that was a platinum record, his participation brought some credibility to the project. Sonics All-Star point guard Gary Payton’s contribution to B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret was the song “Livin’ Legal and Large.” Although the album was widely panned by critics, XXL magazine wrote about Payton: “Best Line: ‘And that’s real we all know the deal / And for all those that criticize / I’m not trying to be Shaquille.’ GP gave us a pretty decent look into his ability to flow, almost-maybe-kinda-sorta sounding like a lesser version of Warren G.” The review credited Payton for keeping the song “pretty clean and positive, which is surprising since we’re pretty sure the things he said to opponents on the court were not in fact, pretty clean and positive.” ⁴⁷

Connections to Seattle Music beyond Hip Hop

As the 1990s got under way, new connections between Seattle hip hop and the broader Seattle musical scene took off, including an innovative mixture of jazz and hip hop as well as positive and negative effects from the rise of grunge rock on local rap music. In 1993, five years after he formed Incredi-Crew and self-released the single “High Powered Hip-Hop,” Danny “Supreme” Clavesilla met Shane “Sure Shot” Hunt at the record store where Hunt worked. After discovering a shared obsession for vinyl, Supreme and Sure Shot began working together and eventually became the Sharpshooters, which merged traditional, rugged hip-hop beats with a variety of musicians to create a natural fusion between hip hop and jazz. Things moved quickly—less than a month after meeting, they recorded an instrumental titled “Pork Pie Stride.”

After playing the song over the phone for San Francisco–based Luv’n’Haight Records, Sharpshooters received a check and a contract in the mail the next day. As journalist Cynthia Rose wrote in the Seattle Times: “ ‘Pork Pie Stride’ fit right into a booming trend. This was the ascent of acid jazz music, a sound born in England around 1990. A fusion of hip-hop techniques with dance-floor warmth, it crossed computerized sampling with live players.” Sharpshooters followed up this success with the EP Buck the Saw, and suddenly “in both Europe and Japan, acid jazz was hot. Sharpshooters found they couldn’t export fast enough. Their name started cropping up in charts around the world.” ⁴⁸ Supreme, Sure Shot, and Strath Shepard, whom Supreme had met while writing for Seattle hip-hop magazine The Flavor, formed Conception Records in 1995. As their success continued, Sharpshooters was offered a deal with New York–based label Instinct Records, which produced the album Choked Up in 1997. Unlike “Pork Pie Stride,” Choked Up featured vocals from rappers. An article by Payton Carter in The Rocket stated, “Although they are commonly labeled as acid jazz, the Sharpshooters more accurately represent an appreciation of the history of jazz, funk, rhythm and blues and hip-hop. In other words, hearing their music is like hearing a little bit of all types of black music over the past 50 years.” ⁴⁹

Conception Records trailblazed by forming a pressing and distribution agreement with Seattle-based alternative rock label Sub Pop Records. Conception’s deal with Sub Pop included a sizable advance, a studio, and an office on Capitol Hill. In 1998 Conception released Walkman Rotation, a compilation album featuring all of the label’s artists. Later, after Sub Pop terminated its deal with Conception, Supreme used his considerable industry contacts to simply find another deal. Conception’s new agreement with New Groove Records in California distributed the 1999 album Passage Through Time by a three-man hip-hop production crew from Toronto called Da Grassroots.⁵⁰ Sharpshooters and Conception Records represented the expansion of Seattle’s influence as an exporter and developer of diverse styles of urban music.

Although Sub Pop dabbled in local hip hop through its relationship with Conception, its rise to prominence was rooted in grunge—the existence of which, along with the Teen Dance Ordinance, contributed to Seattle hip hop living in a semiunderground space during much of the 1990s. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Seattle became the epicenter of this fresh strain of alternative rock. Characterized by distorted electric guitar riffs, lyrics based in angst and apathy, and a scruffy-looking “thrifting” appearance, grunge was initially often referred to as “the Seattle sound.” ⁵¹ Several Seattle area grunge acts experienced massive amounts of international success in the 1990s. These local bands included Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Nirvana. Pearl Jam headlined the 1992 Lollapalooza Tour and has had five albums reach number one on the Billboard chart.⁵² Alice in Chains’ album Dirt (1992) sold more than three million copies, their release Jar of Flies (1994) became the first EP to top the album charts, and the group’s 1995 self-titled album debuted at number one on the Billboard chart.⁵³ Soundgarden’s 1994 album, Superunknown, debuted at number one, sold five million copies, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album, and featured the Grammy-winning hit singles “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman.” ⁵⁴ However, of all the grunge groups to emerge from Seattle in the 1990s, perhaps the most influential was Nirvana.

Originally from Aberdeen, a city of sixteen thousand along Washington’s central coast, Nirvana consisted of drummer Aaron Burckhard, bassist Krist Novoselic, and lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain when it formed in December 1987. After going through several drummers, Dave Grohl, formerly of the Washington, DC, band Scream, joined Nirvana in 1988. That same year, the group signed with Sub Pop Records to put out a Nirvana single. It wasn’t until their album, Nevermind, was released in September 1991 that Nirvana truly entered the national consciousness. With the single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” receiving massive airplay on MTV and radio outlets, Nevermind sold more than half a million copies in three weeks, and in January 1992 it reached number one on the Billboard album chart, displacing Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. The group’s meteoric rise continued with an appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1992, the release of a second album, In Utero, on September 21, 1993, the taping of an all-acoustic show on the popular series MTV Unplugged, and performances all over the world.⁵⁵

On April 8, 1994, Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in his home in Seattle’s Denny-Blaine neighborhood. Cobain’s death by suicide sent shockwaves through the music industry, and although it focused even more attention on the genre, the event also signaled an end of sorts. In the 2014 book Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact of Kurt Cobain, writer Charles R. Cross said, “It would, oddly, be in fashion that the word ‘grunge’ would continue to survive in current culture, a life that the word has not had within music.” It was the constant need for trend stories that created grunge in the first place, and following Cobain’s death this trend was declared dead by “the same kingmakers who had flown out to Seattle and looked for patterns in every coffeehouse or concert stage. The Grunge movement, just as Kurt had predicted, had ‘phase[d] into nothing.’” Cross concluded that “the headlines, at least in music, moved on to further stops, with hip-hop culture and electronica.” ⁵⁶

As Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and other groups such as Mudhoney, the Presidents of the United States of America, and Screaming Trees continued to receive international attention in the post-Nirvana era, talent scouts in Seattle for the next few years would have a nearly singular focus on finding the next grunge sensation. The sheer volume of success in a relatively short span of time created within many industry writers something akin to “Seattle music fatigue.” As a result, many local hip-hop performers, while creating an active and vibrant scene, found it difficult to generate sustained attention outside the region through traditional industry avenues.

Jonathan Moore and Consciousness in Seattle Hip Hop

In the shadow of grunge and under the confines of the Teen Dance Ordinance, a vast and healthy array of different styles and trends in local rap music continued to develop throughout the 1990s. One of these new voices was the husband-and-wife team of Kevin and Monica McAfee, aka Kev the Rap’N Rev and Sister Harmony. With the exception of MC Hammer’s 1990 top-five hit single and video “Pray,” overtly Christian rap music, or “holy-hop,” was generally a tough sell in mainstream culture. However, it has managed to carve out a place for itself within the Black church community. Kev the Rap’N Rev and Sister Harmony’s 1995 album Bible Stories was self-released on New City Records. With song titles like “Miracle Man,” “Holy Trinity,” “Highest Praise,” and “Rap’N Bout a Bless’N,” Bible Stories was an example of the gospel tradition, which itself influenced the birth of hip hop, intersecting with local rap music.

The diversity of local hip-hop perspectives was further exemplified by El Mafioso, part of the wave of West Coast Latino hip hop that included California artists Kid Frost, A Lighter Shade of Brown, and Cypress Hill. Song titles like “Aztec Assassin” and “Mafioso Style” were made “to entertain as well as grab the attention of the Chicano youth,” El Mafioso explained: “KRS [One] once said that in order to change minds you first have to get the hardcore audience’s attention and later on, when they have faith that you’re down, they’ll listen to you when you’re spittin’ knowledge.” ⁵⁷

With the soaring popularity of “gangsta” rap, positive energy and educated perspectives in hip hop seemed increasingly marginalized. As a student at Roosevelt High School in the 1980s, Jonathan “Wordsayer” Moore rented out spaces at the Seattle Center and threw “Prep” parties. After graduation, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta but spent large amounts of time during summers in Seattle at Madrona Presbyterian Church, which had an old keyboard and drum machine in the basement. By the time Moore moved back to Seattle in 1992, he, his brother Upendo “Negus 1” Tookas, and Atlanta native DJ Kamikaze had become Source of Labor. If the Rotary Boys & Girls Club was a symbolic Central District home for the first generation of hip-hop kids in Seattle, the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute served that purpose for the second. Originally constructed in 1915 as a synagogue, the facility had deep history within the African American community. Funded for years by the Seattle Parks Department, in 2013 the institute came under control of the city’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.⁵⁸ Not long after Moore’s return from Atlanta, he approached Langston Hughes’s director Steve Sneed. Soon Moore was coordinating regular open mic and turntable nights in the building’s basement as well as formal shows like African Echoes—A Hip-Hop Continuum.

By 1993 opportunities at downtown locations for local performers, limited because of fear and ambivalence toward hip hop by some promoters and venue owners, increased as Source of Labor played on an all-Seattle bill at the Crocodile Café that included multiracial crew Six in the Clip and the metal band Metaphysical. Moore leveraged this foot in the door to establish a local hip-hop beachhead downtown. He booked a concert in 1994 with Source of Labor, the Ghetto Children, Blind Council, and Jace and the Fourth Party, and then he set up a regular open mic night at the popular downtown venue RKCNDY.⁵⁹ Throughout the mid-1990s, Moore brought national artists such as Ice Cube and The Roots to Seattle. The Sacramento, California–based duo Blackalicious was impressed enough with Moore as a promoter to hire him as their tour manager. Moore’s increasing experience with the business end of the music industry led him, his then-wife Erika White of Beyond Reality, and Negus 1, to form Jasiri (Swahili for “courage”) Media Group in 1994. The independent recording and publishing company initially handled artists Source of Labor, Beyond Reality, Lisa Loud, and Cecil Young.

It was not just a label, scholar Mickey Hess argued in Hip-Hop in America: A Regional Guide that Jasiri also represented a frame of mind. “Moore and the other artists in the Jasiri group wanted to break away from the vision of gangsta rap, which was the main focus of the rap industry at the time, and promote a positive energy and medium for education in the community,” Hess wrote. “The artists in Jasiri forced the Seattle hip-hop scene to move from the grandiose, self-aggrandizing rap of Sir Mix-A-Lot to a more educated, meaningful form of musical expression.” ⁶⁰ During the 1990s, Jasiri released several projects, including its debut EP Sureshot Singles in 1995 and the compilation album Word * Sound * Power, featuring Beyond Reality, Felicia Loud, Theaster Gates, Source of Labor, and Cecil Young. Several of Jasiri’s artists made guest appearances on numerous other compilation albums, including 14 Fathoms Deep.

Erika “Kylea” White, who has been called the “godmother of Seattle hip-hop,” combined with vocalists Shelin and Nikki to form the group Beyond Reality.⁶¹ In yet another example of the intersection of local hip hop and sports, she played guard on the state champion Garfield girls’ basketball team of 1987. Like others before her, Kylea experienced the pressures of being a woman in the predominantly male field of hip hop. However, from the beginning she held her own. Referring to Jasiri’s debut release Sureshot Singles, Novocaine wrote in The Rocket, “Kylea came just as solid as the fellas, adding vocals to ‘Quietly Resurrect’ and dropping a fresh flow on ‘Come with Me,’ proving even back then that she’s an MC to reckon with.” Describing herself, Kylea said, “I’m just a seed. I’m a seed because I’m just trying to grow.” ⁶² Beyond Reality expanded the relatively small amount of local hip hop created by female artists by releasing the singles “Whatever” and “I Reality” on the Jasiri Media Group label in 1997. Beyond Reality shared the stage with another pioneering female group when they opened for New York–based trio Salt-N-Pepa at the Showbox in 1998. As hip hop in general and the portrayal of female artists in particular became more sexualized in the late 1990s, journalist Steve Stav declared in The Rocket: “Kylea’s up-front, socially conscious lyrics and keen rhymes are a far cry from the misogynistic, egocentric chatter that a great deal of her male counterparts produce.” ⁶³

In 1998 Source of Labor experienced a lineup change when Vitamin D took over for Kamikaze as DJ and musicians Darrius Willrich, Kevin Hudson, and D’Vonne Lewis also joined. The following year, Source of Labor released its debut album, the nineteen-track Stolen Lives, on the Jasiri label in partnership with New York’s Subverse Records. Although it was Source of Labor’s only full album, the group toured and performed until 2005. The value of artists who did more than just rap had been demonstrated in the 1980s by the likes of the Emerald Street Boys and Sir Mix-A-Lot and in the 1990s by folks such as Jonathan Moore. Greg “Funk Daddy” Buren started out in the 1980s as part of Masters In Control (M.I.C.) and Ready and Willin. As a DJ, Buren worked with Kid Sensation and won the 1989 Battle for Seattle Supremacy as well as the first Soundwar in Vancouver, BC, in 1990.

In a remarkable show of versatility, Funk Daddy returned to the 1991 Soundwar and took first place in the MC competition. He released his 1994 debut album Funk You Right on Up on Shot Records out of the Bay Area and would become one of only two Seattle artists to appear on the cover of The Flavor. Two other solo albums followed, Funk Daddy Is Tha Source and I Want All That, as did a host of production credits with such artists as Sir Mix-A-Lot, Daz, D12, Dru Down, Cool Nutz, B-Legit, Rass Kass, Money B, N2Deep, and Mac Dre. In addition, his music was included in the ABC drama series Dangerous Minds, based on the 1995 movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as in the films Rhyme and Reason (1997), 3 Strikes (2000), and Street Racing (2002).⁶⁴

The Bay Area’s association with local hip hop expanded in the 1990s as Seattle’s production talent attracted the attention of hip hop’s best and brightest. One example was E-40’s 1995 album In A Major Way. Hailing from Vallejo, California, E-40 began in the late 1980s as a member of The Click. One of the early West Coast hip-hop entrepreneurs, he built a national following self-releasing music on Sick Wid It Records. E-40’s independently released debut album Federal (1993) created enough buzz to attract the attention of Jive Records, leading E-40 to become among a wave of West Coast hip-hop artists to sign with a major label in 1994. In a Major Way became E-40’s second solo album as well as his debut for Jive.⁶⁵

Two Seattle producers were tapped to contribute to the project. Funk Daddy, whose body of work, including the 1994 album Funk You Right on Up, had solidified his reputation as one of the West Coast’s hottest producers. He got the call soon after his manager and former University of Washington football player J. D. Hill connected with E-40 at the Gavin Convention, a music industry conference in San Francisco.⁶⁶ The other producer, Kevin Gardner, had grown up absorbing the production styles and techniques of early local legends like the Emerald Street Boys and West Coast Funk Brigade. After working locally with legendary producer Robert Redwine and Kid Sensation, Gardner did extensive production during the 1990s, including numerous projects from members of The Click. On In a Major Way, Gardner produced the song “Smoke ’n’ Drank” while Funk Daddy was responsible for “Sideways,” “It’s All Bad,” and “Fed.” In a Major Way proved to be E-40’s breakout record, peaking at number thirteen on the Billboard 200 and number two on the R&B Albums chart. The record was certified gold (five hundred thousand units sold) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).⁶⁷

The Seattle–Bay Area hip-hop relationship continued to strengthen when local group DMS (Dee.ale, Moe-B, and Sheriff) released their debut EP on Shot Records, owned and operated by D-Shot. He was a member of The Click, along with his brother, E-40. DMS’s 1994 six-track release Takin Ends featured the song “Sunshine,” an ode to the group’s love for marijuana. As connections to hip hop in other regions brought more outside attention to the local scene, Seattle artists opened doors for themselves. Since his days as a beatboxer and member of DURACELL Crew in the 1980s, Silver Shadow D pushed grassroots hip hop, making his name as a multitalented artist who rhymed, produced, and scratched all his own material. In the early 1990s he opened for such national acts as E-40 and The Click, Da Lench Mob, and Sinead O’Connor. Silver Shadow became the first rapper to perform at the Bite of Seattle and opened for Naughty By Nature at Bumbershoot (both summertime events held at the Seattle Center). He was written up in Vibe magazine and toured with Sir Mix-A-Lot. While appreciative of the opportunity, Silver Shadow D said of Mix-A-Lot: “He’s never seen me perform and I talked to him a total of 10 or 15 minutes the whole time we were on tour.” Silver Shadow launched his company Lost and Found Productions and self-released his debut album Sleepless—Tha BricKKKs in 1994.⁶⁸

Political content in hip hop was swiftly evaporating in the face of gangsta rap of the era, but “Phunky Phat 95” performers Black Anger reclaimed it. Made up of DJ E-Real, Wicked D, Kendo, and Kendo’s younger brother Sayeed, Black Anger out of Tacoma exemplified hip hop’s connection to the military. E-Real met the other three group members in the early 1990s while living at Fort Lewis Army Base. Not satisfied with the movement of Tacoma hip hop, the group gravitated toward Seattle’s independent rap scene. Kendo described Black Anger’s music as “a 50/50 fusion of Hip Hop culture and Black Liberation movement.” ⁶⁹ In 1996 Olympia–based K Records released the group’s single “Feel What I Feel” (B side “No Commercial”). Critic Dan Johnson wrote in The Rocket that the lyrical focus of both tracks was revolution, a subject important to Black Anger. “The lyrics painted a picture of corrupt capitalism and economic slavery while also hinting that maybe a shift in the balance of power is imminent,” Johnson explained. “All this without ever actually defining revolution.” Kendo said that was the point: “I don’t want to tell you what it is. I want to give you something that will make you decide what it is.” ⁷⁰

The political attitudes of local hip hop were not only expressed in words but in action as well. Even before he was eligible to run for public office, Kwame Wyking Garrett represented the intersection of community activism, politics, and hip hop. Growing up in the Central District, he listened to the latest rap music at the home of his childhood friend Jacob “Jake One” Dutton. Garrett was immersed in activism at a young age when his father, Omari Tahir-Garrett, helped lead the occupation of the Colman School building in 1985. The younger Garrett spent substantial amounts of time in the building, absorbing the Afrocentric ideology and atmosphere of civil disobedience. As soon as he turned twenty-one—the minimum age to run for elected office in Washington State—Garrett officially became a political candidate. In 1998 he ran for state representative Position 1 from Seattle’s Thirty-seventh District as a Lincoln Republican, an African American party that patterned itself after abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Garrett said he would work to “pass legislation establishing a Truth and Justice Commission to study racism.” He was “neutral on Initiative 200, the statewide ballot measure to end racial and gender preferences in government hiring, contracting, and education, saying it would not bring about economic or institutional change.” ⁷¹

Garrett ran again in 2004, and his statements in the Seattle Times reflected his community-centric approach: “We have more young people going to prison than we have going to college,” he said. Teachers should be better paid, and school curricula need to be culturally relevant to encourage positive self-identity and prepare students to participate “in an increasingly competitive global economy.” Gentrification of the Central District and other neighborhoods in the Thirty-seventh District amounted to “ ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Seattle’s black community,” Garrett said. “We see our community plagued by problems,” but political leaders have failed to provide opportunities to solve them. “I know my community feels left behind.” ⁷² Garrett also advocated for increased funding to support small businesses to encourage job creation. Losing both races in the general election to Democratic Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos, Garrett received 10 percent of the vote in 1998 and 12 percent in 2004.⁷³

Seattle’s Underground Rap Producers and Perceptions of Growth

Political candidacies and diverse content were indicators of a healthy and growing hip-hop scene. However, the growth of all local rap music generally relies heavily on a handful of talented producers who are consistently willing to put art first. One such producer was Derrick “Vitamin D” Brown. Vitamin grew up with deep musical roots as the son of Herman Brown, who played guitar with the Motown Records group Ozone. Although Vitamin lived in Los Angeles, he visited Seattle often before he and his family moved to the Central District in the mid-1980s. His cousin was Eddie “Sugar Bear” Wells of the Emerald Street Boys, a connection that led Vitamin to his first set of turntables at age thirteen. Vitamin performed at Garfield High School assemblies under the name D=MC², where he would emerge from behind his DJ equipment and deliver clever freestyle rhymes that brought the house down. His comfort in front of an audience came at least in part from a junior high experience acting in the Steve Sneed and Reco Bembry–produced play Peer Pressure. Over the years Vitamin has maintained this connection by occasionally directing musical theater.⁷⁴

By 1989, with his growing collection of equipment and his developing production skills, Vitamin converted the basement of his Central District home into a full-fledged studio. This recording space came to be known as The Pharmacy, “where Vitamin D became one of the most important hip-hop producers on the Seattle scene.” ⁷⁵ While still in high school, he became known as Vitamin D, a name that was given to him “by Garfield.” In 1991 he teamed with another Garfield student, Bill “B-Self” Rider, to form the Ghetto Children. Music critic Vanessa Ho described their style in the Seattle Times as jazzy and smooth, paired with strong beats and intelligent lyrics. “‘Ghettoriffick vibrations’ is how they describe it,” Ho wrote. “Both Derrick Brown, 18, and Bill Rider, 20, rap and produce, and they share the same taste in the old school: Ramsey Lewis, John Coltrane, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Cold Crush Brothers.” Ho noted the duo rapped about poverty, growing up, wanting to be successful. “In ‘Odd Ball Sindrome,’ they rap about being strong to yourself. And in ‘Questions,’ they sample De La Soul and a lecture on slavery.” ⁷⁶

The collective of artists who hung out and recorded at The Pharmacy—Ghetto Children, Sinsemilla (DJ Topspin and H-Bomb), Union of Opposites (Truth, Black Star, and Native Son), Phat Mob, and Narcotik (C-Note and T-Dog) as well as solo artists Infinite and Sho-Nuph—eventually became known as Tribal Productions. Tribal released the compilation album Untranslated Prescriptions in 1995, recorded, produced, and mixed entirely by Vitamin D at The Pharmacy. With sixteen tracks, the record was described by Novocaine in The Rocket as “more dope than pharmaceutical, this tape nevertheless represents a medicine for the ailing hip-hop enthusiast, in the form of an intricate, yet inviting puzzle, non-conventional and untranslated.” The numerous members of the Tribal collective had maintained an active presence in the local scene. The Ghetto Children won the Black Student Union Talent Show at the University of Washington in 1995, and Sinsemilla’s DJ Topspin released 101.1 KTOP FM [Fat Mixtapes]— Broadcast #1, the first mixtape from his self-created fictional radio station “KTOP.” Tribal followed Untranslated Prescriptions with Do the Math in 1996. The music being produced by Vitamin D prompted The Rocket to refer to The Pharmacy as “one of the least prominent but most pre-eminent hip-hop recording studios in the Northwest, where aspiring jewelers can elevate and build through the art of rhyme.” As popular as gangsta and hardcore rap music had become during the 1990s, Do the Math presented an alternative approach. “The lyrics are not only from the heart but are also vocabulary-oriented toward the more cerebral listener.” ⁷⁷

Tribal kept pushing with another compilation. 14 Fathoms Deep was released in 1997 on Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard’s label Loosegroove Records. “The project is absolutely monumental in scope and could almost double as a ‘who’s who’ of Seattle’s underground hip-hop scene. Among the groups involved are Blind Council, Jace, DMS, Source of Labor, Union of Opposites, Beyond Reality, Mad Fanatic, Narcotik, and many more,” wrote Novocaine in The Rocket. “There are enough dope tracks here to keep you away from Yo! MTV Raps for a month.”⁷⁸ Loosegroove had multiple local hip-hop connections as it also released the album Procreations by the group Prose and Concepts in 1994. Formerly known as Six in the Clip, all six members of Prose and Concepts—DJ Ace, MC Dope, Rawi, Shark E., Beatnik, and Mic Dub—graduated from Garfield High School. However, this multiracial crew experienced some pushback. “Regulars of the Seattle club scene, the band built name recognition and a fan base as Six in the Clip. They got press, and because of it, some resentment from other hip-hop acts. People thought that because some of the band members were white, the press were supportive of the group,” wrote Jason Sutherland in The Rocket. “That’s the vibe I got from people,” explained DJ Ace. “It was just that we were playing a lot of shows so our name would get out there.” ⁷⁹

Prose and Concepts worked on a record deal with Loosegroove, which was distributed nationally by Epic/Sony. Before what turned out to be the group’s final album Everything Is Nice was released in 1997, however, the label and Prose and Concepts went their separate ways; sadly, Mic Dub died by suicide in December 1996.⁸⁰ Despite how it ended, Loosegroove’s association with Prose and Concepts furthered the relationship between Seattle hip hop and local grunge-related record labels. Sub Pop Records’ initial foray into hip hop through its 1995 production and distribution deal with local label Conception Records helped expand the profile of underground Seattle hip hop, both regionally and nationally. The first hip-hop act to formally sign with the label was The Evil Tambourines in 1998. Formed in the mid-1990s by Andy Poehlman and Tobias Flowers, the group released their debut album Library Nation on Sub Pop in 1999.

In a profile in the Seattle Times, journalist Tom Scanlon noted that the Tambourines’ upcoming show at the Breakroom in support of the album would be “the band’s first Seattle concert—and only fourth public performance, anywhere.” In terms of the group’s sound, he wrote: “They knew they wanted to do something like De La Soul and a Tribe Called Quest, and they knew they had to find skilled musicians to help them.” Poehlman, a native of Kent, Washington, admitted: “We’re not good musicians. I’m not, and Tobe’s not. We’re just two guys with ideas on how to make records.” ⁸¹ With production help from the Sharpshooters, their single “Saturn” was praised by critics. However, Library Nation experienced only marginal commercial success, and Sub Pop refocused exclusively on rock for the better part of the next decade.

The connections between Seattle’s hip hop and rock communities continued with a brief collaboration between two of the biggest names. In 1998 Sir Mix-A-Lot and the Seattle-based, multi-platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated band the Presidents of the United States of America formed the group Subset. Incorporating local rock into his music was nothing new for Mix-A-Lot. His 1988 debut album Swass contained a cover of iconic metal band Black Sabbath’s song “Iron Man,” featuring local rockers Metal Church, and he also teamed with Seattle group Mudhoney to record “Freak Momma,” which appeared on the soundtrack for the 1993 movie Judgment Night. Subset recorded several songs and toured briefly in 2000 but parted ways over creative differences and never officially released any material.⁸²

Although there was plenty of activity, some opinions painted a dismal picture of the late 1990s local hip-hop scene. In 1997 The Rocket published “The Beat Writers: A Seattle Hip-Hop Roundtable,” moderated by Rocket features editor S. Duda and featuring promoter Robert Brewer, Tribal Music co-owner Damisi Velasquez, Jonathan “Wordsayer” Moore, Erika “Kylea” White, Major Weight Media founder Kriz Beeber, DJ Topspin, Silver Shadow D, and “Nasty” Nes Rodriguez. Asked to rate the current Seattle hip-hop scene on a scale of one (worst) to ten (best), the panelists were brutally honest, giving an average answer of five among them. Silver Shadow D gave it a seven: “As far as the actual scene, it’s kind of shaky.” Velasquez rated it a three: “Venue owners are scared of hip-hop, period.” Brewer estimated the scene at six: “The Teen Dance Ordinance really ruined chances for hip-hop to grow.” Kylea said five: “It’s tough to do a show here. If you’re not opening up for someone, you’re not gonna get that large a crowd.” DJ Topspin said: “As long as the powers that be are the only powers that be, we’ll be in the four-five range.” Nasty Nes rated the scene at five: “I’ve been doing this since 1980 and I’ve seen a lot of groups come and go and the main problem is the lack of good promotion behind the stuff.” ⁸³

In response to that piece, one Rocket reader wrote in a letter-to-the-editor: “The Seattle hip-hop scene is so fucking sad. Tiny places like Davis, California, are doing worlds of work to expand the culture, and what do we have?” Strath Shepard, partner in Conception Records, responded with a column in The Rocket. He defined “progress” within local hip hop as “having a fair number of artists achieving that coveted balance between creativity and capital—doing enough of what they want and still being able to feed themselves.” After defining what it meant, the question still remained: “Is Seattle hip-hop moving forward? It’s not. Really. Overall it’s not moving forward. Critical acclaim and no sales. Incredible music and no distribution. Ambitious management and wack product.” However, Shepard offered a set of solutions and accompanying commentary in what he called “Moving Seattle Hip-Hop Forward: Ten Points of Light.” He suggested the following:

1.Quit pretending you’re from somewhere else. Why is it no one will admit they’re from Seattle?

2.Get off the Balzac. Quit imitating what other cities were doing six months ago.

3.Have a savings account. There are too many wack MCs out there and not enough back-up plans.

4.Pay attention. Try to understand the industry.

5.Make records. Tapes don’t count.

6.Ask for help. If you don’t know anything about business or other aspects of the game, ask someone who does.

7.No more compilations. People don’t buy compilations because they tend to be overwhelming for press and radio and often don’t get the attention they deserve.

8.Support local music. Of course you’re a DJ; who isn’t now? That doesn’t mean you should get every new record for free.

9.Quit hating. Stop falsely shifting responsibility for stagnation outside yourself.

10.Stay in the game. To earn a reputation, we have to stay focused and keep putting out good records, just like Toronto, Davis, and other respected outsider cities. Keep the faith and don’t stop.⁸⁴

Local Hip-Hop Radio Controversies

Although criticisms about the state of the scene were present, there was also a shared dissatisfaction regarding the inadequacy of Seattle radio as it related to exposure for local hip-hop artists. During the 1990s major changes took place in the landscape of Seattle hip-hop radio. “Shockmaster” Glen Boyd left Rap Attack on KCMU for a job with Def American Recordings in Los Angeles in 1992. After a decade “Nasty” Nes Rodriguez also left as host of “Seattle’s-Only-All-Rap-Show-in-FM-Stereo,” moving to LA in 1997 to take a position with the music industry magazine Hits. In a controversial decision, KCMU program director Don Yates hired a Vancouver, BC, DJ named Maximus Clean to take over the show. The response from Seattle’s hip-hop community was skepticism. Mr. Supreme stated in The Rocket: “It’s nothing personal, but I think there is absolutely no way for an outsider—someone from another city—to stay in touch with the local scene.” DJ B-Mello added: “I don’t think it’s impossible for someone from another city to host a good rap show here, but I was surprised they didn’t choose a local DJ.” The KCMU program director responded: “We want the most qualified person to host Rap Attack and Maximus Clean has the most experience.” Less than a year later, Maximus Clean resigned as host of Rap Attack due to an unresolved immigration issue that forced him to return to Canada. Mr. Supreme and Kutfather took over the show, which was subsequently renamed Street Sounds in 1998.⁸⁵

Aside from Street Sounds, other options to hear hip hop on the radio in Seattle were few and far between. During most of the 1980s, KFOX was the dominant force for hip hop on local radio. By 1999 hip hop on radio in Seattle was “either diluted on KUBE or concentrated into one Sunday night slot on KCMU.” As culture critic Charles Mudede wrote in The Stranger, “KCMU’s hip-hop show, Street Sounds (formerly known as Rap Attack), is currently hosted by local superstars Kutfather and Mr. Supreme, with frequent assistance from turntablists like DJ Topspin.” Mudede credited both Supreme and Kutfather as talented with great voices and sharp comments about the music they played. “My gripe has nothing to do with the content of the show,” Mudede wrote. “My gripe is that there is only one such show to gripe about.”

Jonathan “Wordsayer” Moore, quoted in Mudede’s piece, added that hip hop has often been marginalized and had its legitimacy questioned while becoming the most dominant music art in this generation. “So, when you have two hours out of the week, not out of a day, you take it as an insult. Sunday from 6:00 to 8:00? Why not have it on Friday from 5:00 to 10:00, at a time when I can remember to listen to it? This is like the stone ages,” Moore said. “In fact I think they should have a show just for local hip-hop alone, hip-hop from Tacoma, Bellingham, Vancouver.” Ethnomusicologist Joe Schloss, quoted in the article by Mudede, compared the Seattle market to other regions. “There is something like 16 different radio shows for different types of hip-hop in the Bay Area. It doesn’t make sense, economically or socially, that we have only one hip-hop show. It doesn’t seem to benefit anyone. As popular as hip-hop is, it seems the normal thing is to have a lot of hip-hop on the radio,” said Schloss. “Seattle will continue to suck as long as it fails to offer us two competing hip-hop shows on FM stereo, Friday and Saturday nights, from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.” ⁸⁶

Although stations like KCMU and to a much lesser extent KNHC were known for playing local hip hop, they existed on public radio. The king of commercial urban music ratings during the 1990s in Seattle was KUBE 93 FM, part of Ackerley Communications, whose chairman Barry Ackerley also owned the Seattle SuperSonics. For most of the decade the station operated primarily under a rhythmic contemporary hits (RCH) format, playing top-40 rap and R&B hits by national artists. However, the tension that had been growing between KUBE and the local hip-hop community eventually came to a head in the spring of 1997. Picketers holding signs saying Boycott KUBE 93 and DON’T SUPPORT A STATION THAT DOESN’T SUPPORT LOCAL ARTISTS appeared in front of the radio station. Gordon Curvey, creator and host of Seattle’s public access television show Music Inner City, said: “For 16 years they haven’t supported local artists, and KUBE only has one black DJ, and they put him on in the middle of the night. Ninety-nine percent of KUBE’s playlist consists of black-music artists, but they aren’t playing what kids in the inner-city want to hear. KUBE is targeting young, white, suburban teenagers.” He continued: “They don’t care about inner-city youth, although they are making all their money off black people.” Other community members participating in the protest included organizer Silver Shadow D, Curtis Elerson of Just Cash Records, and former Emerald Street Boy and CEO of CD Raised Records James Croone, who added: “We’re just asking them to play our artists, to care about the local independent scene.” ⁸⁷

Mike Tierney, KUBE music program director, responded to the criticism in The Rocket: “I don’t make music calls—that’s not what I do here. There are specific hours and specific personnel [at KUBE] who handle submitted tapes and requests, but that’s not my job.” Journalist Tina Potterf pressed him on the point: “So just what does a music program director do? According to Tierney, his job is to find and play hits, which is what listeners want.” Tierney explained that “KUBE’s playlists are compiled from record sales, local Soundscan figures and requests.” Potterf noted that Tierney admitted to not listening to much of the music that crosses his desk, including artists represented by labels present at the demonstration. “By looking at a tape or the name of the artist, I can usually tell if it’s going to be a hit,” Tierney said. Potterf asked Tierney why there were no African Americans in various departments at the station and no African American DJ during primetime hours. “I think it’d be great to have more blacks [at KUBE],” he said. KUBE agreed to meet with the protesters and discuss ways that the station and local artists and labels could work together. “It was either KUBE meet with us or they knew we were going straight to their advertisers and promoters,” Curtis Elerson remarked. “We’re frustrated that local artists cannot get any love in their hometown. We just want some airplay. It’s not like we’re asking for a Grammy—I mean we’d take it—but for now, we just want to be heard.” ⁸⁸

These protests represented the continuation of a long tradition of direct social action within Seattle’s African American community. The overlap between hip hop and demonstrations of this type was new, unique, and impressive. It showed the strength of social fabric that supported artists and the local scene, as there were few cities challenging media over exposure for homegrown talent in this way. While it struggled to play local artists consistently, KUBE actually did contribute to more nontraditional hip-hop programming. One example of this expansion on radio was Tony B’s show Street Beat, broadcast on KUBE, which engaged the community on a broad level. After taking over a doomed AM music station in KFOX and changing the station’s call letters to KJAM in the late 1980s, KUBE hired Tony B. Street Beat, which premiered in 1990, was a weekend hourlong urban affairs program that discussed such issues as gang violence, HIV/AIDS, and drug abuse prevention. As a veteran of the local scene, Tony B made sure that Street Beat served as a forum for music from Seattle.⁸⁹

Television and Seattle Hip Hop

While radio remained a key ingredient, the emergence of cable and alternative/public access television stations created an increased demand for content just as hip hop was poised to invade popular culture. The archetype for the local urban music television series premiered in 1983 with New York City’s Video Music Box. Hosted by Ralph McDaniels on public station WNYC-TV, Video Music Box was the first program to prominently feature hip-hop videos and became an extremely influential outlet in exposing up-and-coming New York area artists to the mainstream. Instead of a studio, the show was shot at various locations around New York City such as parks, schools, and nightclubs.⁹⁰

In Seattle the first locally produced television program to showcase rap videos was Music Inner City on Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN). The show, executive produced and hosted by Central District native Gordon Curvey, premiered in December 1990.⁹¹ Curvey’s goal for Music Inner City was twofold: one was to play videos from local artists that were not being shown on MTV or BET; the other was to include interview segments with various guests—both inside and outside the world of hip hop—that discussed youth-oriented issues such as education, drugs and gangs, and violence prevention. Some of the guests to appear on Music Inner City included Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Dionne Warwick, Rick James, Al Green, Chaka Khan, George Duke, George Clinton, Ice Cube, and Seattle native Quincy Jones. Local artists featured on Music Inner City included Sir Mix-A-Lot, E-Dawg, DJ B-Mello, Kevin Gardner, KUBE radio personalities Eddie Francis and Tiffany Warner, and Redwine. The show received a nomination for a Billboard magazine award for Best Regional Video Show and was named Urban Music Video Show of the Year by Urban Network magazine in 1999. In 2005 Music Inner City became available on Comcast’s On-Demand service, and Curvey himself was honored with the fifth annual Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Hip-Hop for media in 2006.⁹² First presented in 2000 by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, the award recognized important contributions of community members to local hip hop.

Within a year, there was another hip-hop video show available on SCAN. Coolout Network, started in 1991, was the creation of New York City native Georgio Brown, who moved to Seattle in 1990. Brown had witnessed the birth of hip hop firsthand and had seen the transformative effect of Video Music Box on local hip hop. After seeing an episode of Music Inner City, he learned that anyone could produce a show on public access television after completing some basic free broadcasting classes at the SCAN offices. Upon completion of a video production class, Brown started his own show—a weekly thirty-minute time slot for thirty-six weeks, called Coolout Network—a name based on his past as promoter of a series of parties, “The Coolout Club,” while in college in the mid-1980s.

The first episode was broadcast on April 4, 1991. Initially Brown did not intend to be the star of the show, preferring instead to focus on artist interviews and performances. He was largely unaware of the show’s impact until the second year of production, when he posted his home phone number at the end of each episode. Almost immediately he received a flood of phone calls from artists, managers, promoters, record companies, and others interested in connecting with Coolout Network.⁹³ The show sought to cover local rap music as well as other elements of hip-hop culture. In addition to nearly every relevant local name, Brown interviewed national artists like Afrika Bambaataa, KRS-One, Naughty by Nature, Mary J. Blige, Public Enemy, Rob Base, MC Serch, and Digable Planets. In 2004 he and Coolout Network received the third annual Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Hip-Hop. “Our region is home to a flourishing artistic community,” said Mayor Nickels, “in fact, a recent study showed that we have more arts businesses per capita than any other metropolitan area.” He continued: “Seattle has one of the strongest and most creative music scenes in the country. This genre (hip hop) deserves credit for innovation, creativity, musical excellence and diverse appeal.” ⁹⁴

The Flavor : Seattle’s International Rap Magazine

Television was not the only local emerging media platform for highlighting hip hop–related content. An example of local print media in the early 1990s was The Flavor magazine. Founders Alison Pember and Rachel Crick met in junior high while taking an elective radio class, which involved working at KASB, a low-wattage radio station at Bellevue High School. In 1991 the sudden death of Pember’s close friend Jennifer Peet inspired Pember to act on her dream of starting a hip-hop magazine. She and Crick used the industry contacts they’d accumulated while working at Tower Records and Sony Music, respectively. With Pember set as publisher and Crick aboard as co-editor-in-chief, the search for a name began.

The decision to name the magazine, initially published as a quarterly, The Flavor came at least in part from the hit 1991 song “Flavor of the Month” by New York duo Black Sheep. Coincidentally, beginning in 1993 on the Fox television network sitcom Living Single, Queen Latifah played a character who was the editor of a fictional hip-hop magazine called Flavor. Planning for The Flavor began in fall 1991, and several guiding principles emerged. As a grassroots publication in Seattle, they initially vowed not to cover Sir Mix-A-Lot due to his national popularity. The writers at The Flavor would cover the music that they liked. Advertising would not influence editorial content, and the magazine would not require its staff writers to have any formal training. Instead community members from the local scene—such as DJ DV One, DJ B-Mello, and Supreme—would conduct interviews and write stories. The Flavor, which was free, specifically targeted rap music’s early 1990s demographic: fifteen to thirty-four-year-olds, one-third female and two-thirds male.⁹⁵

Using their own savings, Pember and Crick published the first issue of The Flavor from the home of Pember’s parents in Shoreline, just north of Seattle, in January 1992. A mission statement on page three announced that The Flavor was a “Seattle-based hip-hop music publication focusing on, but not limited to, the Northwest. We are the only print medium devoted exclusively to hip-hop in this region. This area has a sizable underground scene that needs an outlet such as this.” ⁹⁶ Pember’s father, a media law professor at the University of Washington, served as a consultant for the fledgling magazine. Pember and Crick threw a launch party, starring their first cover feature, an up-and-coming West Coast group named Cypress Hill. From the very first issue, the magazine’s mailing list included numerous record companies. MCA Records called to inquire how they could get legendary DJ/MC duo Eric B. and Rakim on the cover. After the second issue, advertising revenue—the lifeblood of any commercial publication—started flowing.⁹⁷ However, it was not all smooth sailing, particularly at the beginning. “There was lots of local resistance,” Pember noted. “Lots of ‘what are white girls doing with a hip-hop mag?’ ” ⁹⁸

Following its launch in 1992, The Flavor had experienced steady growth both as a business and as a credible hip-hop publication. With this growth came various functions and celebrations marking anniversaries and accomplishments, a practice common within hip hop since the beginning. In 1994 the magazine celebrated its second anniversary by bringing to Seattle Ed O.G. and Da Bulldogs from Boston; New York artists Nas, whose debut album Illmatic had just received the coveted “5 mic” rating by the iconic hip-hop magazine The Source; the Fugees, featuring Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill; and Coolio, out of Compton, who would soon release his number-one Grammy-winning single “Gangster’s Paradise.” ⁹⁹

Rather than being a local hip-hop publication, The Flavor functioned as an international magazine based in Seattle. Every issue had a local section, but only two Seattle artists, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Funk Daddy, ever appeared on the cover. The world of magazines dictates that covers move copies, and artists who were most widely recognizable served to promote growth. By 1995 the magazine had become a monthly, increased in size, included a hip-hop crossword puzzle, and undergone a change in format to all newsprint paper, which put it in direct competition locally with The Rocket and The Stranger, another Seattle alternative newspaper established in 1991 by Tim Keck and James Sturm. Launched during the era of flashier, male-founded hip hop and R&B publications such as The Source and Vibe, The Flavor was different: it was free and it primarily courted the record store market in a time when such outlets, in addition to selling music, served as social gathering and listening spots. Housed in an office in the University District, The Flavor had a staff of sixty, which included several correspondents in different cities. “Few magazines cover the swaggering world of rap music,” the Seattle Times explained. “And there is certainly no other run by a team of women—especially women who are white, black and Hawaiian. Yet as a team they are leaders in a global field: making a product appreciated far away.” The co-owner of a London record store remarked: “Those guys are on the case. Our shoppers pick up that magazine like they pick up records.” ¹⁰⁰

Circulation grew, and at its peak The Flavor reached tens of thousands of readers across the United States as well as in countries such as Great Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands.¹⁰¹ While raising its international profile, the magazine remained active on a local level. In 1994 The Flavor collaborated with Folklife Festival program director Paul de Barros to produce “The Flavor Magazine Showcase” at the annual festival. Performers included Source of Labor, Jace and the Fourth Party, and DJ B-Mello. The following year, The Flavor sponsored “Homegrown Hip-Hop II,” featuring Tribal Productions, J. Moore, Beyond Reality, and Shabazz Coalition.

The Flavor ceased publication suddenly in the summer of 1996, after De La Soul appeared on the cover of issue number thirty-four. A December column in The Rocket by Payton Carter noted: “Six months ago, Seattle’s premier hip-hop magazine, The Flavor, disappeared off the racks and has been out of circulation ever since. . . . What happened to it?” Strath Shepard of Conception Records and general manager at The Flavor explained: “The magazine is on an extended hiatus because everybody is doing their own thing. It’s kinda doubtful there will be any more issues of The Flavor.” The story reported that Pember and Crick had accepted jobs in New York City and Los Angeles, respectively. Carter reminisced: “For as much flak as The Flavor sometimes took in this town, it was extremely well received outside the Northwest as an honest, self-respecting, slick-looking, good-old-fashioned hip-hop rag, and dang, I miss it.” ¹⁰²

Digital Hip-Hop Media Outlets Emerge

With The Flavor shut down and the Internet just beginning to take off, new people using fresh technologies began to pick up the slack as the transition was being made from print to digital media. One of the more visible examples of this shift was Chukundi “DJ Kun Luv” Salisbury and his Seaspot Media Group. A native of Seattle’s Central District, Salisbury graduated from Garfield High School in 1987 and attended Elizabeth City State University, a public, historically Black college in North Carolina. During his time on the East Coast, Kun Luv became a well-known DJ in the Elizabeth City community. Upon moving back to Seattle in 1992, however, he was forced to start from scratch in a highly competitive DJ environment. Kun Luv turned to the fertile market of “hood spots” in the Central District, including places like Fabros, The Turning Point, 24 Hour Social Club, and Uncle John’s Tavern. He introduced his “Big Fella Blends” line of mixtapes, which he marketed at every opportunity. He was active in the community, receiving the Seattle-King County Generations United Hand in Hand Award for promoting positive intergenerational relationships in 1994. DJ Kun Luv played top clubs around the city by 1997 such as Pier 70 and the biggest parties, including Seattle SuperSonics point guard Gary Payton’s annual cruise.¹⁰³

By the late 1990s the Virgo Party, which started in 1992 as a birthday barbeque for Kun Luv at a house in the Central District, had become urban Seattle’s biggest gathering of the year. Held each September, the party had grown quickly in popularity and soon was held at major downtown venues. Controversy arose when the 1997 Virgo Party, held that year at the Showbox, was blamed as the source of a riot. The Seattle Times reported that police were hoping videotape from a surveillance camera in Sneaker City on Pike Street would lead to arrests after looting that involved nearly seven hundred people took place downtown. “The shoe store was one of several downtown businesses looted or vandalized during the riot,” the newspaper reported, “which police said began when a group of young people was turned away from an event at the Showbox on First Avenue near Pike Street.” The article noted that some two hundred people were ejected from the event, “billed in entertainment listings as ‘DJ Kun Luv’s Virgo Birthday Party,’ [Seattle Police Lt. J. J. ] Jankauskas said yesterday. Those ejected joined more people waiting outside, who had tried to rush the door. The crowd had grown to between 600 and 700 people, Jankauskas said.” The story described more looting and arrests at The Bon Marche (Macy’s), public urination, and the exchanging of high-fives among the looters. When fifty additional police officers arrived to help deal with the situation, the crowd threw bottles and bricks at them. One downtown resident described the scene: “It was complete and total anarchy.” Also mentioned was a 1992 nuisance-control ordinance approved by the Seattle City Council that gave the police sweeping powers over businesses with repeated cases of loud noise, fights, and illegal drinking. In response to the ordinance, at least one club owner sued the city, charging bias against businesses that played hip-hop music and catered to an African American customer base.¹⁰⁴

Although a follow-up interview in The Stranger allowed Kun Luv to put his side of the story out there, the question of direct media access remained. As a computer science major, Kun Luv saw tremendous possibility in the still relatively young Internet. The answer, launched in 1998, was Seaspot Media Group, which Kun Luv branded as “the gateway to Northwest urban culture.” Seaspot.com grew to include comprehensive information on Northwest urban nightlife, photo galleries of recent events and happenings, music headlines, news, and a regular op-ed column called “Knowledge Street.” In addition to the website, there was a monthly print version of Seaspot magazine. At the height of its popularity during the early and mid-2000s, Seaspot was in fact the “gateway” for urban culture in the Pacific Northwest.

Kun Luv was not working alone. Local entrepreneur Keith “Ghetto Prez” Asphy brought a special skill set to Seaspot. As Charles Mudede explained in The Stranger: “Be it local artists who are on his record label, or national acts, or designs for CDs or fliers that advertise dance and rap competitions . . . if you need black entertainment services, and are in the Pacific Northwest, ‘the Ghetto Prez’ will provide it.” People like Kun Luv, the Ghetto Prez, Keith “Bear” Anker, and numerous others built Seaspot into the first predominant multimedia urbanculture platform for the Northwest, including Canada. “Of all of Asphy’s operations, the one that impresses me the most is Seaspot—not so much the magazine, which is glossy and colorful, but the website. Hands down, it’s the most comprehensive resource for black entertainment in the Pacific Northwest,” Mudede continued. “If you want to find where black people or black music be at, then that’s where you go.” Asphy said: “That’s my business. Those who want to know where it’s happening, I let them know. We get 100,000 hits a month on the website. And it’s not just to see what’s going on, but also the pictures. We send photographers to the shows, and they take pictures and we post them, and a lot of people visit the website to see themselves.” Seaspot’s headquarters featured a map of America hanging over a number of high-powered computers. The Northwest section of the map contained a cluster of pins marking cities and towns in Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia—all important markets. The extent of Seaspot’s reach and influence made it “the center from which black entertainment radiates across the Great Northwest.” ¹⁰⁵

Seaspot Media was not the only local company using the newfound power of the Internet. Launched in 1999, Skratchcast.com was an early version of an online hip-hop radio station headquartered in the northeastern Seattle neighborhood of Lake City. The site’s founders, Joshua Kusske and Jason Schluter, had been involved in online day trading when they came up with an idea to put hip hop on the Internet. Skratchcast.com had audio and video feeds and ten hours of daily original programming, featuring both local DJs and others from various parts of the country. Within six months Skratchcast.com was drawing more than five thousand visitors every day. The ultimate goal was to create an online portal for hip-hop culture. “A lot of people out there are just getting into hip-hop, and don’t really know where it came from. We have some people who can provide education; the older DJs like to talk about what it was like before you could make money in hip-hop. We’re a place to bring people together,” said Schluter. “Right now our main stream of revenue comes through our record shop. But we’re basically a TV station or a radio station, and how do they generate revenues? Through advertising. It’s basically the same thing we’ll have to do.”

Schluter and Kusske’s plan was to turn Skratchcast into an independent hip-hop media empire. “We need to increase content: editorial, broadcast, and the graf[fiti] gallery. We need to improve the store. Right now we sell 12”, singles, LPs, mix tapes, and we’re moving into videotapes, magazines, clothes, and DJ equipment,” Kusske explained. “With the Internet you can provide more content, more knowledge, more products, and more service, so we wanna do that.” These longer-term plans included developing a variety of online channels for different aspects of hip hop such as interview, mix show, turntablist, and b-girl and b-boy channels. Advertising would become a primary revenue stream, making Kusske and Schluter early adopters of what would become the basic business model for the most popular hip hop–based websites in the twenty-first century.¹⁰⁶

As the Internet’s popularity soared, traditional media platforms still told the story of local hip hop in the late 1990s. One example of this was the MAD Krew’s 1998 documentary film Enter the Madness. Produced by DJ Scene and directed by King Khazm, the film presented different aspects of the Seattle scene by featuring the breaking crew Massive Monkees, DJs like Kutfather, and rappers like Khingz and Alpha-P. The film presented a regional look by including Swollen Members of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Portland, Oregon–based Lifesavas. Enter the Madness experienced moderate success with screenings around the country and provided an insider’s view of the happenings in and around Northwest hip hop during the late 1990s.¹⁰⁷

The do-it-yourself attitude that created hip hop translated well to the world of public access television in both New York during the 1980s and Seattle in the early 1990s. Following in the footsteps of Gordon Curvey’s Music Inner City and Giorgio Brown’s Coolout Network, King Khazm, Dirty Dev, and the MAD Krew created Hip-Hop 101 in 1999 on Seattle public access television. The show served as a destination for local and national hip-hop artists and provided a platform for the greater community to learn about the latest news and trends within hip hop. “Viewers would tune in religiously and even call in and ask questions, often to really learn that hip-hop is not just this image that is perpetuated by mainstream media, that there’s a whole range to it,” recalled King Khazm. “It’s not necessarily all the glitz and glamour, and the misogynistic and materialistic stuff—there is a local community for one. And, two, it’s very diverse.” Georgio Brown became a part of Hip-Hop 101 in the early 2000s, contributing content, staff, and overall production, and soon after, 206 Zulu took over the reins. When resources became scarce in the late 2000s as a result of the Great Recession, funding for public access television was cut, and Hip-Hop 101 came to an end in 2009.¹⁰⁸

Hip-Hop Fashion

While hip-hop music from Seattle may have struggled at times for recognition in the mid-to-late 1990s, one locally-rooted company’s interpretation of hip-hop fashion did not. For many, clothes have been an important source of cultural symbolism within hip hop from the beginning. Tony Shellman and Lando Felix grew up in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood. As a teen in the 1980s, Shellman worked at Nordstrom before moving to the trendy boutique Zebra Club, where Felix joined him. By the early 1990s both had moved to New York City to attend the prestigious Parsons School of Design. Shellman got a job with clothing manufacturer International News, where he met his supervisor and eventual partner, Evan Davis. In 1994 Shellman, Felix, and Davis—with financial backing from International News—launched the urban clothing company Mecca USA. “Mecca started with a revelation,” Felix recalled. “Kids were getting their looks from different stores. Shoes from Foot Locker, baggy jeans at Nordstrom, funky tops from some streetwise boutique. We knew we could do an integrated line—and make it logo-driven, with a sporty flair.” Felix was proven correct as Mecca USA sold more than $20 million worth of merchandise in three seasons. After the flood of initial success, however, International News pushed for Mecca branding on everything from socks to jewelry to cologne. Shellman, Felix, and Davis disagreed with this approach, and in 1996 the founders of Mecca USA sold it to International News and left the company together.¹⁰⁹

Shellman, Felix, and Davis were ready to unveil their next concept by 1997—a clothing line that paid homage to New York City, the birthplace of hip hop. The name of the new company—ENYCE— phonetically spelled NYC but was pronounced eh-NEE-chay. The company partnered with Italian athletic sportswear company Fila. “When I first hooked up with Fila,” Shellman recalled, “executives from the headquarters in Italy flew in to meet us. I sat in the boardroom wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt.” His new partners didn’t recognize Shellman as they walked in to the meeting and asked him to leave. “So I waited outside, and after everyone arrived, I went back in and introduced myself. They all felt terrible and apologized, but it just spoke to my philosophy to be yourself. Wear your own suit.” ¹¹⁰

The official ENYCE spring launch was held in Seattle. “We just had to show ENYCE here. We learned so much growing up in Seattle. We learned all this stuff from local lines. It’s been just a major, major influence,” Felix explained. “I’m Filipino, Evan’s white, Tony’s African-American. We have employees who are Ukrainian, who are Chinese/Indian, Japanese/Hawaiian. Everyone is very different.” The ENYCE spring line was shown in Nordstrom locations at malls in Tacoma, Bellevue Square, and Southcenter. The launch included a party presented by The Source magazine at the Showbox, featuring Los Angeles rap group Tha Alkaholiks, local hip-hop crew Oraclez Creed, and DJ B-Mello.¹¹¹ ENYCE became a top urban fashion label specializing in outerwear, graphic tees, denim, and knits for men and boys; a line for women and girls; and a “big and tall” line for men. The company’s wide appeal was affirmed when Liz Claiborne Inc. purchased ENYCE for $114 million in February 2004. The recession of 2007, combined with Liz Claiborne’s relative inexperience with urban fashion, devalued the company significantly, and in 2008 current owner Sean “Diddy” Combs acquired ENYCE for $20 million.¹¹²

In 2006 Shellman, Davis, and several former ENYCE executives launched yet another clothing line, this one called Parish Nation. Unlike his other previous two ventures—Mecca USA and ENYCE—Shellman started Parish Nation without any outside financial backing. The creative inspiration for Parish Nation came from “comics/TV/hip-hop iconography, politics, religion, basically anything we talk about on a daily basis. Things we’ve grown up on are what inspires the brand.” Shellman explained that he and his partners left ENYCE, wanting to start “a brand that would inspire creativity and would be about the talent, the designers. Everything in life is a risk, some are willing to take it, others just stay reserved and wish they had. We’re about action.” ¹¹³

Hip-Hop Community Action and the Birth of Massive Monkees

The community-centric focus of some hip-hop media at the end of the 1990s was mirrored by events and organizations that placed equal amounts of focus on serving young people. Ten years after Seattle’s Teen Dance Ordinance, all-age resources in the city had become increasingly vital and scarce. One effort to give all-age access to hip hop was Sure Shot Sundays at the Sit & Spin, on Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle across from the historic Cinerama movie theater. Beginning in 1999, Sure Shot Sundays was a family-friendly, alcohol-free, smoke-free event that ran from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. every Sunday and featured local dancers, DJs, and MCs. Organized by Jonathan “Wordsayer” Moore and Jasiri Media Group, the venue itself was actually a Laundromat with a café and a performance space that included a stage, sound system, and lighting with a capacity of nearly 150. Sure Shot Sundays enjoyed a successful five-year run until the building, which housed Sit & Spin, was sold to a developer in 2004.¹¹⁴

In the 1980s hip-hop programs on college radio stations around the country helped grow underground aspects of the culture. In the 1990s campus-based student clubs organized and provided outlets and opportunities for the hip-hop community. One local example was the Student Hip-Hop Organization of Washington (SHOW) at the University of Washington. Meli Darby, a UW student who would create Obese Productions, recalled: “I was at a meeting at the mayor’s office regarding the TDO [Teen Dance Ordinance], and met [then-UW student and future Stranger hip-hop columnist] Sam Chesneau. Sam was saying he felt the hip-hop scene was being unfairly targeted— and that hit me very hard.” Along with Chesneau and Darby, several other students formed the original nucleus of SHOW. They included George “Geologic” Quibuyen and Saba “Sabzi” Mohajerjabzi of Blue Scholars, Jason “J-Promo” Norcross, and Marc Matsui. Among other things, Darby was in charge of designing the majority of the group’s promotional materials. During SHOW’s existence the organization was a key agent for underground hip hop and an advocate for the under-drinking-age hip-hop crowd. In its five-year tenure, SHOW never put on a twenty-one-and-over event, including a performance by New York rapper and actor Mos Def at the Husky Union Building (HUB) in 2000.¹¹⁵

While specific events and groups like Sure Shot Sundays and SHOW served a vital purpose, the decision by individuals to reach out and make themselves available to youth has always been at the heart of service. One case of this during the 1990s was DVS. Fever One and Jeff “Soul One” Higashi began b-boying together as junior high classmates in 1982. Initially a graffiti crew, their name DVS originally stood for “Da Vandals Succeed.” Over time it also came to mean “Droppin Vicious Styles” and “Dissin Various Suckas” among other things and in 1992 members Sneke and Rey joined. The crew’s reputation grew as they entered and won local and regional competitions such as the Soundwar in Vancouver, British Columbia.¹¹⁶ DVS actively promoted the local scene, as in 1993 when they teamed up with Mr. Supreme, Kutfather, DJ B-Bello, and Source of Labor to launch The Foundation, a weekly hip-hop night at the Art Bar.

As much as DVS became known for their dancing, by the late 1990s, with Fever also now a member of Rock Steady Crew, their reputations as premier graffiti artists were equally widespread. The group eventually expanded to include honorary members in Miami, Paris, Switzerland, Germany, and Vancouver, British Columbia. DVS’s business interests were represented by their company Kuthroat Designs, specializing in custom clothing, logos, business cards, live shows, and video production.¹¹⁷ As global as DVS’s reach was, the continued work of its members in schools and community centers around Seattle and the Northwest during the 1990s helped lay groundwork for future generations of local b-girls and b-boys.

In the later part of the decade, DVS used hip hop as a means of grassroots youth outreach at Mercer Middle School and Jefferson Community Center on Beacon Hill. Fever, Soul, and other local artists built various programs using different aspects of the culture, including breaking. Their work turned Jefferson into a destination for aspiring local b-girls and b-boys, and the sessions there served as an incubator for up-and-coming dancers who wanted to show and prove themselves against the best. During his time at Jefferson Community Center, Fever noticed a young Filipino dancer named Jerome Aparis. “Jeromeskee,” as he would become known, had gotten hooked watching Beat Street and VHS tapes of local crews like DVS and Boss Crew. In his early teens Aparis wasn’t always the best dancer, but his willingness to learn and ability to focus made him stand out.¹¹⁸

Jefferson Community Center’s popularity among the breakdance community meant two things: First, it was common to have enough dancers or crews present for pickup or practice battles to take place on a regular basis. Second, individuals from these different crews got to know each other in ways that segregated separate practice sites would not have permitted. This type of interaction brought members of two Beacon Hill groups, Massive Crew and Untouchable Style Monkees, together in 1999. The cofounding members of Massive Monkees were Terry “Dancing Domes” Guillermo, Brysen “Just Be” Angeles, Marcus “Juse Boogie” Garrison, and Jeromeskee. After working their way through the community center competition circuit, Massive’s first major title came in 2000 at the B-Boy Summit in Los Angeles, when group members Juse and Twixx won the two-man category.¹¹⁹ This initial triumph laid the foundation as a new generation of Seattle b-girls and b-boys competed and won national events as well as those on the world stage.

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The conclusion of the 1990s marked the end of a historic, Grammywinning yet seemingly mixed decade in local hip hop. Fever One became the first Seattle dancer to join the world-famous Rock Steady Crew. Not content to simply leave town and relocate to New York, he returned frequently and set about creating spaces for younger, up-and-coming breakers to test their skills under his watchful eye. His affiliation with the Jefferson Community Center on Beacon Hill helped turn Jefferson into an oasis for b-girls and b-boys, which would eventually spawn individuals like Jeromeskee and groups like Massive Monkees. Although there were increased levels of activity and success, The Rocket published an article in the late 1990s that indicated local attitudes about the current state and future of Seattle hip hop seemed uncertain at best. On a scale of one to ten, the average score given to the local scene by several of Seattle hip hop’s movers and shakers was a five. Despite this, the turn of the century held promise for the possibilities of local hip hop, as there was less focus on New York and Los Angeles as the “capitals” of rap music. The twenty-first century would see a blossoming of hip hop from Seattle as different elements of the culture prepared to take the world by storm.

This continued growth in various areas benefited from a maturing hip-hop infrastructure. Experience was teaching best practices for local people and organizations involved in the culture on nearly every level. The results would speak for themselves in terms of mainstream recognition and success, from future award nominations to breaking victory on the world stage. Aside from the glamour of such achievements, the spirit of community drove the heart of local hip hop. Whether it was standing up to politicians in the name of hip hop or collaborating with a mayor in recognition, the soil from which grassroots hip hop in Seattle grew remained rich and fertile.