Common Market - Common Market
From the rumbling of train wheels that opens this inventive and fresh new album from Seattle’s Common Market to the final track, the songs are full of raw energy and amazingly orchestrated beats and rhymes. Producer Sabzi (Saba Mohajerjasbi) and emcee RA Scion (Ryan Abeo) met each other only recently through Seattle’s Baha’i community, but their synergy and integrating styles speak to a longer partnership. Their songs are full of joy, exultation and frustration, with Scion’s intricate tangles of words and thought processes layering into Sabzi’s forward-moving beats.
Sabzi, who also produces for the Seattle group Blue Scholars, seems to feel more free with Scion to experiment and improvise with a wider array of drum beats and samples on the Common Market album. While his work with Blue Scholars emphasizes a more introspective, calculated quality, his Common Market tracks blossom into unabashed wide open sound.
For his part, RA Scion serves up interesting and creative rhymes, unhesitant to pose questions or probe issues in religion, politics, or world events. His rhymes and rambles, set to Sabzi’s beats, often feel like intimate conversations, snatches of words continuing to echo after the song has ended. Without an ego to represent or an image to promote, Common Market’s debut album feels endearingly like a raw first step showcasing an enormous amount of potential for the further development of West Coast and Seattle area rap.
- Ariel