In the male-dominated world of hip-hop, it’s not easy to be a woman. It’s even harder if you’re a woman of color who identifies as queer.
But that’s exactly the position Christy Karefa-Johnson — aka Seattle-based hip-hop artist DoNormaal — finds herself in.
Read More“It was a long time coming,” says musician Chris Ballew, swirling on a stool in his West Seattle home studio.
Ballew is speaking, of course, about his second act in music: Caspar Babypants.
Co-founder and frontman of the rock band The Presidents of the United States of America, Ballew says the lifestyle of a stadium rock group wore him down. But a new voice — one he’d always been looking for — struck him one day in the car thanks to a tantrum by his 2-year-old son, Augie.
His wife at the time, Mary-lynn (the two are now divorced), soothed their young son, singing the refrain, “Run, baby, run. Run, run, run.” Augie was calmed.
“I saw it work and I was amazed by it,” Ballew says.
Read MoreThe Old Fashioned is, well, old-fashioned. But it’s also a drink experiencing a resurgence, in part thanks to its role in the dearly departed television series Mad Men. The drink, in a way, is a perfect metaphor for star character Don Draper: Its appearance is handsome, even bright. And it drinks with that edge that only rye whiskey offers, with a touch of well-worn sweetness.
Hollis Wong-Wear, the silky-voiced singer on the 2012 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis hit, “White Walls,” and front person for the band, The Flavr Blue, says when it comes to food: “I eat everything.”
Read MoreIt was a cold December afternoon when my grandmother, followed by her hobbling collie Tina, pushed the front door open. She put her bags down and looked at me standing there in the middle of the dining room. “Still fat are you?” she asked in her bitter, 80-year-old French accent. “Hmm.”
Read MoreNew York Times Bestselling author, Chuck Klosterman, who we wrote a Monarch Drinks With feature about in 2012, has written a new book called, But What If We’re Wrong? It’s a close examination of concepts that society holds to be obvious but maybe aren’t quite as clear as they seem. And in the spirit of the question, we caught up with Klosterman to ask him a few quick ones of our own.
Read MoreI’ve kissed a few men in my life. There was the time a few years ago, at about 3 a.m., when my close friend and neighbor, drunk as all hell, kissed me on the lips before running inside his apartment. And there was that other time, in high school, playing spin the bottle with three guys and three girls.
Read MoreOf the many heart-wrenching moments on Beyoncé’s new visual album, “Lemonade,” perhaps the one that resonates most comes on the 10th track, “Freedom.” In this song, the musical giant — who plays CenturyLink Field on Wednesday (May 18) — sings, “Freedom, freedom I can’t move. Freedom cut me loose!”
For the psychedelic soul singer and producer SassyBlack, who will release her first solo record, “No More Weak Dates,” on Tuesday (May 17) at Barboza, much of what shapes her aesthetic has roots in things odd and uneven.
Read MoreBands are often described as creating “driving” songs — as if their melodies and rhythms propelled the listener forward. But with Seattle hip-hop duo Sleep Steady — at the Central Saloon on Wednesday (May 11) for the next BAD DAD Collective showcase — that descriptor is especially apt. These guys make music they want to listen to in the car.
Read MoreWhen Andrew Bird, the warm-voiced singer and musician (famous for his whistling and violin playing), picked up the phone after I dialed the 14-digit number to reach him in Ireland where he was to play at the U.S. Embassy, he told me he’d been up for two days straight. “I left my house yesterday at noon,” Bird says, “and got to Dublin a couple of hours ago. I’m here in a very strange place. I’m technically on U.S. soil in the middle of a massive park surrounded by green fields.”
Read MoreIn the memoir Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell describes a time in his life, before he gained fame for books like 1984, when he worked as a cook, suffering abuse from his head chef and enduring long, nearly impossible days of hard labor. The memoir is fascinating for its depiction of a young person coming up in the service industry and how, in the early 20th century, the job was damn close to slave labor.
Read MoreIt still brings tears to Erik Blood’s eyes.
“It” being the final track on his new record, “Lost in Slow Motion,” which the Seattle producer will celebrate with a release show Saturday (April 30) at the High Dive.
Sinking into a small, orange-cushioned chair in his dark studio near the old Rainier Brewery, Blood seems lost in thought. He’s staring into space as “Out This Way” — that final track — plays on his monitors. He sips a cup of coffee, tears percolating in the corners of his eyes.
Read MoreBennifer. Charlize Theron and Sean Penn. Kermit and Miss Piggy. (I’m not quite over that last one.)
Couples break up all the time. And while each split is different, for me, the first three months were the hardest. My girlfriend of three years and I broke up around Christmas, and I’m starting to feel like a normal human being again.
Read MoreRapper Vince Staples — playing the Neptune Theatre on Wednesday (March 2) — understands that a great deal of life is contradiction.
That idea is succinctly summed up in his song “Lift Me Up,” the second track from his 2015 double-album release, “Summertime ’06,” in which he raps, “I need to fight the power, but I need that new Ferrari.”
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