How Seattle rap crashed the mainstream by swimming against the current
As it celebrates its 50th birthday, we are mapping hip-hop's story on a local level, with more than a dozen city-specific histories of the music and culture. Click here to see the entire list.
It's telling that of the two Seattle music scenes that bubbled up in the late '80s and early '90s to produce massive mainstream hits, only one of them earned the nickname "the Seattle sound." But as much as grunge gets the credit for cementing the Pacific Northwest as that era's locus of counterculture, Seattle's rap scene had a similar fringe sensibility, one that couldn't be pinned to a single sound, vibe or lyrical style. If most artistic movements have cohered around a common approach, the hip-hop from the 206 is, instead, defined by its sprawl.
When local radio veteran Robert L. Scott first played "Rapper's Delight" on KYAC 1250 AM in, (and ) and . In 1981, after KYAC became KKFX (KFOX), the station welcomed the -hosted to Sunday nights, the first rap radio show west of the Mississippi River. In addition to new songs, Nes introduced his "Mastermix," an eclectic 30-minute block that brought live scratching and mixing to Seattle radio for the first time.
