by Beverly Aarons

East Coast, West Coast, Bronx and Compton, this is what most fans think of when pondering hip-hop history. But what many don’t realize is that Seattle has played an important role in the maturity of a genre that has grown from the urban streets to the global scene. And Seattle hip-hop has its own unique story and sound. To illuminate that fact and celebrate Black Music Month, arts organizations LANGSTON and Wa Na Wari have partnered for 2(06) The Break. The seven episode series will put a local ‘spin’ on the live-streaming DJ sessions popularized by cultural icons like Questlove and DJ D-Nice via social media for the past two months. Each week, Jazmyn Scott, a Seattle hip-hop supporter and co-curator of the 2015 Legacy of Seattle Hip-Hop exhibit at MOHAI, will pair two Pacific Northwest hip-hop DJs to collaboratively program and record a set composed exclusively of songs by local hip-hop artists of a specific era, from the 1980s to the present.