Why it doesn’t matter if Seattle’s hip-hop scene ‘makes it’

The most common knock against Seattle hip-hop is that it doesn’t “travel well.” The Blue Scholars and Macklemore are huge here and widely acknowledged throughout the surrounding region but mostly unknown everywhere else. While they might headline a local show with Heiroglyphics also on the bill (see the two-night Showbox stint they did last year), they would open for them everywhere else. I hear this kind of criticism thrown around all the time. “Yeah, they’re cool and all but they’ll never ‘make it.'”

After Wednesday night’s City Arts Fest kickoff show at the Paramount Theatre which featured the scene’s biggest players we should all be able to confidently respond “who cares?”

Hip-hop today isn’t hip-hop circa 1995. People don’t get signed to major-label imprints and have videos playing on MTV Jams. Shit, rappers barely put out CDs anymore. In this downloadable mixtape and viral video rap climate, a lot of traditional thinking about the genre needs to be abandoned. Instead of worrying about these rappers and groups we all like so much “making it” and having their name thrown around by some cats in New York or LA, we need to fully support and nurture our own scene and our own hip-hop culture up here. Who knows what it will grow into?

Do you honestly think that not a single one of those high-schoolers hounding Mash Hall for pictures and Macklemore for autographs in the foyer will be inspired to make their own hip-hop music? (Seriously, I saw teenage girls that were squealing with giddy excitement over meeting Macklemore.) Events like the spectacular celebration of the local scene that was the Paramount show are building the foundation for the future, the next generation, the fourth, fifth and sixth “waves” of Seattle rap.

Even if no Seatown rap act ever “makes it” in the eyes of an outsider to the scene, dammit they made it here. No matter what becomes of the Seattle hip-hop scene, last night will forever live in the annals of this city’s music history. Mash Hall, Fresh Espresso, Macklemore and Blue Scholars played the fucking Paramount Theater. Even if all of these groups and rappers fall off in a few years, they will be able to tell their kids and grandkids about the night they kicked off a citywide music fest by performing on the stage of Seattle’s premiere theater. Not a club, not just a music venue, but a theater. If that’s not a signifier of “making it,” I don’t know what is.