the young people's professor

I’ve recently acquainted myself with the music of a dope, Seattle-based, underground hip hop duo named “Blue Scholars.” The duo consists of the vocals of Geologic (the son of Filipino immigrants, raised in Hawai and Seattle) and the turntables of Sabzi (an Iranian American jazz-trained pianist).

I like to think of Blue Scholars' rhymes as providing a sort of lyrical ethnography of youth of color and working class spaces in Seattle. And of course the group’s name is a careful play on words of the proletariat phrase “blue collar.”

The two band's men describe their sounds as a musical amalgamation of “Marxist theory mixed with Baha’i spirituality.”They refer to themselves as off-shoots of “Thelonius Monk and Aphex Twin to Marvin Gaye and J Dilla.”

Among my favorite tracks in the Blue Scholars discography include 50K Deep, Joe Metro, and the delicious Coffee and Snow (which is my fav).

Now of course, all of these tracks are best experienced post-Philly Blunt.

Posted by the young people's professor on 1/31/2010 at 6:44:00 AM | Permalink