Review from Seattlest of Beat Battle I Judged Last Month

You might remember that last month I was a judge at a Beat Battle over in Ballard (Seattle neighborhood, for those of you who aen't familiar). Here's a write up we got!

http://seattlest.com/2008/01/08/we_review_a_gra.php

Seattlest attended the late-night Graffiti Rock beat battle at The Sunset on Saturday night, casually organized by P.U.S.H., primarily so we could remind ourselves what Ballard looks like.

Ballard's doing fine, in case you haven't been there recently either, and djblesOne of Massive Monkees took home the battle's imaginary trophy somewhere around 2am; second place went to Sportn' Life DJ Nphared (interviewed by Seattlest here). Both of the finalists brought beautifully composed, rock-hard, trampoline-tight beats to the event, but in the end, djblesOne's complex compositions won out.

The surprise of the night was when hot producer Brainstorm (pictured above), second-place winner at the Big Tune Championships, lost his first (and therefore his only) round to Rudy (of Rudy & the Rhetoric) in a unanimous but hotly crowd-contested decision from the three judges. Boo! Hiss!

We actually loved Brainstorm's second beat, a jazzy, sexalicious stoner number, but the judges felt it wasn't the best choice for the first round of a battle.

In hiphop, love and war, strategy is right up there with sheer technical skill and musicianship; Rudy not only was on the winning left side of the stage (hooked up to a Mac built to play hard beats) but also brought some of his best drum-crunching, creative beats to a first round battle he didn't think he'd win. We are fond of Rudy, and surprisingly fond of his beats, but it was certainly a shocker to see Brain dismissed so early in the evening.

The other competitor we were particularly feeling that night was MTK, who played some of Seattlest's favorite beats of the night (including a guitar-plucking "Fuck You" refrain against Sabino and a crunchy, driving beat against blesOne). We liked PSmoov's work, but only got to hear two beats from him. GMK and Johnny Magnum pulled off a short but very sweet performance of some of their best tracks before the final round of the beat battle, which was fun. Judging the event: Larry Mizell (Cancer Rising!), Andrew Matson (Seattle Times hiphop journalist), and Cameron Collins (of Saku Collins Entertainment & Media Law Group). Big Rob hosted: "Let's flip a coin. Who's got a coin? ... And it's heads. And that," as he bent down to pick up the coin, "is my ass crack." By the end of the night, the battle had devolved into a series of drunken insider jokes from the judges and long, mildly funny stories from Big Rob; we still enjoyed the showcase of local producers' work. We also enjoyed leaving Capitol Hill on a Saturday night for once.