I’m always surprised when I discover how widespread Northwest rap is. I have friends from Rhode Island who regularly listen to Common Market; I’ve met young adults from Germany who hope to see Macklemore in concert. But what surprises me even more is how rap fans from Seattle can ignore the lively hip-hop scene we have in the Northwest. So many of my friends love TDE but haven’t heard of the Physics or are familiar with Oddisee but not Jake One. It’s really a shame; Seattle hip-hop is not only amazing but is also a small enough scene that it actually provides a sense of community and accessibility to Seattle artists.
I was recently confronted with this sad reality when I went to a Snoop Dogg concert on June 22nd at the Showbox Sodo. When I initially looked up the tickets, the openers were not listed; I was surprised and happy when I found out that Dyme Def was going to open the show. Since I’ve become a belated fan of Space Music, I had been unable to see Dyme Def perform for one reason or another so I was glad that I happened to buy tickets to their performance. To be honest, I listen to Dyme Def way more frequently than I listen to Snoop, besides the inescapable songs he’s featured on.
I came to the concert pretty pleased with my luck. As I expected, the crowd was pretty varied; Snoop Dogg has been around a long time and is pretty ubiquitous so he attracts a lot of different types of people. But even though the crowd probably wasn’t representative of the average rap concert, I at least expected some people to be familiar with Seattle hip hop royalty. As one of the artists promoting his music outside the club asked me, “You’re at a Snoop Dogg concert, don’t you like rap?”
Like most of the audience, I was unfamiliar with the first act of the night, Jay Barz, but it became pretty apparent that he was familiar with performing in the area. Jay Barz hails from Tacoma and his hat, which read “Washingstonian” summarized his music pretty well. Like Snoop, Jay Barz provided a lot of light, upbeat smoker anthems and did a good job making fun of himself, especially his particularly light skin. An accompanist using heavy auto-tune added a uniquely entertaining aspect to the performance. All the performers on stage did a good job of riling up the energetic but fairly courteous audience early in the night.
Even though it seemed like only very few people knew Jay Barz despite his cult Northwest following, I was sure that more of the crowd would be familiar with Dyme Def. I was expecting a full choir of voices to rap along with “Let It Be” at the very least. By the time Dyme Def opened with “Rocca House Party,” I was pretty excited until I noticed that nobody around me was mouthing the lyrics. This really didn’t deter me from shouting the lyrics anyways, but it struck me as pretty bizarre. I’ve listened to “Rocca House Party” so many times that my college roommate from Lexington, Massachusetts (hey there, Corinne) knows the chorus; how can alleged rap fans from the Northwest not know the song? The crowd was still really receptive to the group; even to those unfamiliar with Seattle rap, it was obvious that the three members of Dyme Def were talented veteran performers. The group largely breezed through their set but I couldn’t help but imagine that a Dyme Def headlining show would feature much more of the interaction between the members which took place to a small extent during the songs. Although the crowd was dancing and enthusiastic, I didn’t hear the type of noise that an audience familiar with the group would emit; I didn’t see a single other person who knew the lyrics and I seemed like the only one frantically recording on my phone.
When “Let It Be” came on, I was thinking, “This is it. This is when everyone is going to know this song because if you are even familiar with Seattle rap, how could you not have heard this song?” To my surprise, there wasn’t really more of an uproar for “Let It Be” than for the group’s rendition of “Pinky and the Brain”; the audience’s cheers were more for the familiar sample rather than familiarity with the particular mix. Although the performance was still awesome and the performers were really charismatic, the audience was missing the type of recognizable energy which artists like Dyme Def deserve. To be honest, Dyme Def has qualitatively better music than Snoop Dogg was. And while Snoop is entertaining with his ridiculous personality, Dyme Def was way more energetic and talented than the alleged “King of the West.” It’s a shame that the audience couldn’t appreciate them in the same way that I did. I’m sure there were other Dyme Def fans out in the sold out venue who had the same experience that I did; I just hope that you feel motivated to spread the word about Dyme Def and other Northwest groups. Local rap in the Northwest, and particularly in Seattle, is amazingly high quality and ridiculously accessible; it’s a shame more Seattlites don’t take advantage of the stars sitting in their own city.