Toptree issue1 by Top Tree

Facts

Serving: Issue #2 Serving per Container: 1 Calories: Tree Million

Amount/Serving

%DV

SHANNON PERRY

EAZY-DUZ-IT CARS

FINE HIGH ART

...AND MORE

*Percent Values (DV) based on Top Tree Diet

December 2016

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This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination, and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug There mayand be health associated with consumption ofconcentration, thisconcentration, product and For use onlyand by and adults twenty-one andoperate older. out of reach ofunder children. hisThis product product has has intoxicating intoxicating effects effects and may may berisks habit be habit forming. forming. Marijuana Marijuana can can impair impair coordination, coordination, judgment. judgment. Do not Do operate not a vehicle aKeep vehicle or machinery or the machinery under the influence the influence of this of this drug.drug. This product has intoxicating and beassociated habit forming. Marijuana concentration, and judgment. Do and not older. operate a vehicle under the influence of this drug. ThereThere may may beeffects health be health risksmay risks associated withwith consumption consumption ofcan this ofimpair this product product and and For use Forcoordination, only use only by adults by adults twenty-one twenty-one and older. KeepKeep out out of the ofor reach themachinery reach of children. of children. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product and For use only by adults twenty-one and older. Keep out of the reach of children.

WATERSKI TO TEXAS BUDO & KRIS ORLOWSKI

THUR

FRI

SAT

! W O N E L A S N O S T E K C I T

upstreammusicfest.com

MILAN ACKERMAN, JANETT OGOLA, RIK RUDE, ERIC CHOI, ESSEX, ANDRE GREENE, ERNESTO YBARRA, LUCIEN PELLEGRIN, MARK ABEL, JASON MADDOCKS,WEIRDO, SAVITECH, ALIVE + WELL, BAIT, KEXP, GAY CITY, REIGN CITY, MELI DARBY, 2312, GOODRICH & GOLD, NOWHERE FC, SPADE, FUCKJERRY, KANYE WEST, SWISHAHOUSE, PLZ COME AGAIN, CRISPY, OC NOTES, VITAMIN D, SKYWLKR, SOULECTION, MICHAEL WATTS, BUDO, STAS THEE BOSS, SAL’S BARBERSHOP, JOSH D, EMO NIGHT LA, MOELASSES, OLD GROWTH, TRYFE, ARCHIVE, FRESH GREENS, NIGHT SHIFT, COGNATE, LORD VINTAGE, DELUXE GENTLEMEN, AND TITAN

TOPCOAT’S HIGH-ART NAIL SALON EVENT “DEXTERITY” WITH THE WOMEN.WEED.WIFI COLLECTIVE, IS UNLIKE ANYTHING ON YOUR SOCIAL CALENDAR When attending an event it’s not that peculiar to see a charitable donation replace the customary cover charge. Canned food, lightly-used toys, blankets and the like. However, if you want to attend “DEXTERITY” the Topcoat x WOMEN.WEED.WIFI salon party November 10th at LoveCityLove, you’ll be asked to bring something else — feminine hygiene products. Likely a first for Seattle’s often banal social gatherings. This female-centric evening is by women, for women but not gender exclusionary. So for the guys stopping by, there was a concerted effort to make them understand one of the many distinctly female experiences — buying expensive toiletries in this case. "We wanted guys to realize ‘woah these tampons cost $7?’ — guys get to go do this, many for the first time,” Gwendolyn McKenzie, Topcoat co-founder explains. “It's an event for women, but it's not excluding anybody, so we hoped the men would see how many options there are because truthfully most just don't go down that aisle in the grocery store.” All items collected at the door will go directly to “All Cycles Outreach Project,” which makes these essential items available to homeless women for free. >>>

Gwen and Mary Jane Cha started Topcoat while working at avant-garde retailer Trichome as a new kind of setting to get your nails done. No longer tucked away in some miscellaneous strip mall, they aimed to make a party which livened the activity that is so often treated as an errand. Mary Jane would decorate nail wheels — the press-on synthetic fingernails come connected to a circular round about the size of a coaster — to showcase themes for that Topcoat event. But people wanted to buy the displays, which got them thinking. For close to two years Mary Jane and Gwen kicked around the idea of working with artists to decorate these nail wheels as one-off art projects. In the way skate decks became an established canvas for graphic language, they saw the same potential in this utilitarian object. So they started reaching out to friends of theirs in the art world to see if they felt the same way. “It turns out artists like doing nails, painting and rendering small like that — it's very niche,” Mary Jane points out. So they collaborated with the dynamic DIY collective WOMEN.WEED.WIFI — who had just returned from AFROPUNK in Brooklyn this summer — to begin activating this idea. Close to 40 artists were selected to receive a package with a blank nail wheel, instruction manual and a hand rolled joint featuring a sativa hybrid intended to arouse creativity. The response was all that and then some. Confirmed participants include: Peka Grayson, Mike Wagner, Jesse Brown, Nacho Picasso, Mary Santiago, Angel179, TDub Customs, Jordan Nicholson, Neon Saltwater, Baso, Colin Matsui and Niccatnite but that list is ever expanding. The creations will be displayed as fine art and sold with proceeds going to the artists and the charitable organizations established for the night. The event is from 5-9 pm and coincides with the Thursday Capitol Hill Art Walk. “People that don't smoke weed, are embracing it and getting high for this project,” Gwen mentions with a wry smile. The chemistry between these two professional creatives is a sight to behold. Gwen will ask Mary Jane: “How does one wash dishes with stiletto nails?” to which she replies “wear gloves.” Their rapport is infectious as they chat about the origins of Topcoat — like the time Gwen spray painted glitter stencils all over downtown to try to get tourists to check out a Topcoat event.

“We’re very close,” Mary Jane admits. “Our menstrual cycles are synced like Bluetooth.” Topcoat will also be creating a limited run zine to commemorate the “DEXTERITY” event, that features personal work from Mary Jane and Gwen along with objects from the show, and curated content from WOMEN.WEED.WIFI. An all female sound selector lineup will include Toya B, T.Wan and J-NASTY and the popular podcasting posse HellaBlackHellaSeattle will be doing a “Real World” style confessional collecting audio snippets from guests for a future sound collage arrangement. During previous Topcoat pop-ups at Babeland, home of the “moregasm,” during Holiday and Valentine’s Day events — they started working on a photobooth idea. “We always liked doing hand photo backdrops like high school dances,” Gwen recalls. “Hands are not very photogenic so we decided we’d do partnerships with artists and bring in props like they do at a photo booth. Epicene Creative is doing them for this event." "At Babeland everyone was holding butt plugs and dildos in the photos,” Mary Jane says with a chuckle. The capacity is limited for those hoping to get their nails done so Topcoat advises showing up early to get your name on the list. Sessions take 25-30 minutes, and cost $15-$25 depending on the complexity of the work. Other recommendations include: "Go pee before you sit down at the station, show up early to sign up because you won’t be able to walk right in and sit down,” Gwen notes switching over to her hyper-organized producer brain. “Don't touch your phone, and yeah… remember that a person touching your nails and hands releases endorphins, so be present in that moment. Enjoy it.” More of the gentlemen are getting in on this pampering as well, so know that if it seems weird to you that a guy is having his nails painted, just stay home. Rethink your life. “We used to do $5 pinkies for guys,” Mary Jane remembers thinking back. “Guys are having their nails done more for sure, if you identify as a male and it's weird to get your nails done, please… you need to go home and give yourself pause. Ask yourself where do you live? Did you pick the right place? It's good for people to be uncomfortable. I think of it like being uncomfortable for your own benefit. People admire each other all the time around Seattle but don't say anything. At Topcoat you do say something.”

Words by Chernsicle • Photos by Chernsicle

Danny Brown shares some thoughts on his new work, and the new generation looking up to itself

Detroit’s Danny Brown has been rapping on records since 2003, but didn’t start reaching his current international fanbase until his second official full-length, “XXX”, was released on Brooklyn electronic label Fool’s Gold in 2011. His 2013 album “Old” turned up the electronic elements of his sound and got him booked at festivals all over the world. His latest “Atrocity Exhibition” shares its title, and is partly inspired by the opening track from Joy Division’s “Closer,” (the band’s final record) released just months after lead singer Ian Curtis took his own life. It’s a dark, minimal, but fierce-sounding return to the experimentation of “XXX”, owing more to his hometown’s techno and electro music than traditional hip-hop. Top Tree caught up with “The Hybrid” during the Seattle stop of his albumsupporting tour, just days after the record’s official release — and asked him some randomass questions. >>>

Q: You’ve been ahead of the curve with a lot of trends and styles, musical and otherwise. A friend of ours used to say you were more of a tastemaker than most music journalists and bloggers out there. We’ve discovered a few different people from following you… We think you were one of the first people we ever heard talking about (Atlanta rapper) Young Thug? A: “I was definitely one of his first supporters… I was in Sweden of all places, in like 2012, and one of the promoters that was around was like ‘have you heard of Young Thug’ and I was like what? His name sounded so generic that I thought he was gonna be like, a French rapper... I got home and I just remembered it for some reason. And I was like ‘oh shit, there is something here.’ This is back when he had like “Fuck My Tattoos” (laughs). You were seeing flashes of what he was gonna be, that’s why its kinda tight to see how far he made it.” Q: Word. So what kind of stuff are you listening to these days? Rap and non-rap. A: “I listen to a lot of Conway and Westside Gunn… I like Retchy P, Da$h, those New York, New Jersey guys. For non-rap, I’m just really stoked about the Bon Iver album. The (first) two songs that (he put) out are crazy, so I’m just real excited to see what that’s about to be. It’s dope, I’m really impressed, he inspires me, and I can’t wait to hear it.” Q: We remember seeing a YouTube video where they sat you down with the guys from Insane Clown Posse since you’re both from Detroit and all that. Violent J said something about how “you can only be new once,” and it looked like that really resonated with you at that point, right after “XXX” blew up. A: “Man, I still have a lot of conversations with him, and he’s given so much advice and so much game about this music shit... Like it don’t make no sense. I’m really supposed to be way further… Like as an independent artist, from what he’s told me, with my fanbase and stuff, I should be signed to myself at this point. But one day, you know?” Q: You’ve always been a bit older for being a relatively new artist, but your style of rap doesn’t really come from classic hip-hop. But you’ve always gone out of your way to show love for the old school at the same time. What do you think about some of these younger, newer Internet rappers like Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert who are making blog headlines for being ignorant or dismissive about old school rap? A: “Man, my whole take on it — that shit’s just kids rebelling. But from my standpoint, it never was not cool to me to look up to the OG’s when it comes to anything. If I was in the hood, it was the dudes hustling on the corner… It was never teenagers looking up to teenagers. That’s like the blind leading the blind at that point, you know what I’m saying? At the end of the day, no matter what you wanna say, being old is cool.” As told to TOP TREE • Photos Courtesy of the Artist

Selected Lyrics by Top Tree Sticky icky nugs / real furry buzz / this my party pack / call it the cotton club Towel under the door / Hotboxing hotels / Security knocking / What’s that smell? / Ornette with a fortress / Scorching Frontos on porches / Torching up the purple / Got me spinning in a circle / I’m Coltrane on Soul Plane / Propane flow game Bitches know my name from / Cancun to Spokane / Got it in my carry on / Smoke it till its all gone “Get Hi” Riding around with the windows up / Smoking like it's ten of us / Just me in the back seat / With the driver bumping them Isleys “Rolling Stone” I'm smoking dope, I'm smoking dope / Got a half a pound of artichoke / Scale broke, so we eyeball it / Her titties out just like New Orleans “Pneumonia” Roll ‘em back to back / When that’s over we gon cop another sack / Put some wax on that / I’m smacked “White Lines”

Got good karma / Feel the persona / Got the Hermes towel while I'm up in the sauna / Smoking on ganja / Tasting like caramel / Ass so fat think she get it from her momma “Golddust”

The diabolical DJ from the downtown scene uses neural triggers to appeal to weed smokers in his musical blends

DJ Smoke L.E.S. aka Peety Weedy, is the consummate “True Yorker.” He’s seen the warehouse raves turn to a lounge scene, and has blazed up in back alleys adjacent to all of them. "I was into house music, big room stuff in the 80s NYC,” Smoke L.E.S. recalls fondly. “World Choice, Save The Robots — that was after hours, coming out at 9 am and shit. By ’94 you couldn't just do whatever you wanted in a club anymore. Young kids were messed up, dying in the rave scene. Then we see the small bar, chill lounge scene. But it ended up being tight quarters. Sweating and dancing — Nell's for example. Later on spots like Indochine, Sticky Mikes. Bill Spector did the best parties in town, anything he did we'd go. Right now TheGoodLife! parties are my favorite shit to go to. You become family with the folks that go there." He’s made a cottage industr y of making mixtapes for the uplifted audience, especially the annual 4/20 arrangement for TheGoodLife! — he also holds down a regular rotation spot at their fabled Tuesday party. These mixes are scientifically engineered to appeal to weed smokers on a cellular level. “I use neural content, since we're all weed smokers details are a big deal,” Smoke L.E.S. says of his cannabis-inspired compilations. “It's comedy. Whatever pops out to grasp us. And definitely tunes that make your body feel a certain way." According to his reports, blunts are still the preferred mechanism for getting high on the natural supply. "I got guys who get fronta leaf flown in fresh from Jamaica,” Smoke L.E.S. explains. “They ship in these big plastic bags. They burn mild, when you know how to roll ‘em right. Anything but a White Owl. Vanilla Dutches are still the undisputed champion of blunts in the hood. That's fake shit, I don't even think it's tobacco. More like cardboard paper with flavor drops." Decriminalization has allowed offenders to avoid the handcuffs for minor possession and public consumption, and it feels like the war on drugs is conserving its ammunition these days. It wasn’t long ago he was being booked for a half burned joint, so pardon the celebratory vibes if your walking by smelling his aromatics on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. "In the Tombs for a roach, yeah man. I know it from first hand experience on several occasions,”

Smoke L.E.S. mentions with a shake of the head. “I came up in the projects, and you're not carrying a bong with you. We find a blunt or a bambu or something. If you're a kid from the city you're feeling like lighting up even more. It's like catching a tag, basically how much can you get away with?" That defiant attitude is a part of him, and he won’t censor it even when going through security checkpoints for an out-of-town gig. "I've travelled the world, and I never went anywhere without weed,” Smoke L.E.S. reveals. “I enjoy the psychological warfare. The second your guessing yourself, you're a red flag. I would wear like a neon orange backpack, have TSA like 'nah, he can't be that stupid, send him through.'" Medical dispensaries haven’t invaded the landscape yet, and patient authorizations are harder to get than a taxi in a rain storm, but Smoke L.E.S. is anticipating a landslide of them virtually overnight. This was the case with vaping alternatives, one day they were nowhere, the next day on every corner. "Vape shops are all over the place, right? I think it's gonna be like that,” Smoke L.E.S. predicts. “Kinda cornball. But this is a dense city, the person you're standing right on top of may despise weed."

Words by Chernsicle • Photos by Chernsicle and Courtesy of the Artist

TIME: 4:20 PM DATE: OCTOBER 19th CITY: Seattle, Washington ADDRESS: 925 E. Pike St. LONG/LAT: -122.32/47.61 TEMPERATURE: 52Â°F

Gabrielle Kadushin

Amy Aivazian

I LOOK BACK ON THEM LIKE SCENES FROM A MOVIE OUT OF BODY ALMOST LIKE A DREAM

Art Directors: Essex & Amy Aivazian Model: Alyssa Reed Photos: ESSEX Sylist: Amy Aivazian Herb: Kimbo Kush

Dave B and Sango joined forces to make a Seattle soundscape that is bringing gray skies and seagull cries worldwide

Dave B and Sango’s joint album “Tomorrow” sounds so cohesive that it’s a bit of a surprise the two Seattle natives only met a year ago. Even though the rapper and producer were born just months apart and both grew up around the South Seattle/Renton area, it took a connection between mutual friends to finally make their paths cross. “I knew who he was, knew his beats and shit,” Dave said. “Then Warsame — my manager — was telling me about how he and his roommate grew up together in the South End and all these other connections. Just a real hometown thing” When the two met last November, they had already built up loyal individual followings in separate but similar settings. Dave had been a favorite among Seattle’s hip-hop faithful since winning the EMP’s annual under-21 battle-of-thebands event Sound Off in 2013, building an increasingly-strong catalog of projects and EPs culminating with his smooth, hazy late-summer 2015 full-length “Punch Drunk.” Sango had been rapidly gaining momentum as a producer while attending college in Michigan, releasing a steady stream of albums and beat tapes (his first official fulllength “North” dropped the same year Dave won Sound Off) and getting picked up by reputable LA label/artist collective Soulection before finishing his schooling. Both artists say that they clicked creatively when they started working on music together, cranking out a couple of the album’s earlier songs (and standout tracks) “Do Not Disturb” and “Drugs N’ Such” with ease. “We were both like ‘okay, we gotta make an album at this point,’” Sango (who got his name from a character from the anime series InuYasha) said. “Dave’s too good of a rhymer to not be picked up and heard by more people,” he added. “Tomorrow” is carried by the natural chemistry apparent on its tracks — Dave’s bars and hooks bobbing and weaving melodically through Sango’s wavy, soulful textures and booming/grooving drum patterns. Dave’s dynamic, often unconventional flow has always garnered comparisons to a certain Chance the Rapper, and he says it can’t really be attributed to any formal musical training other than singing in a couple choirs and doing musical theater as a kid. “I just try to find a pocket (in the beat or in the music) that I can like, weasel my way into, and the way it comes out is just kinda my voice, it just happens. I don’t even know,” Dave said. “We’ll record a bunch of takes and they’ll all sound different.” Sango’s signature sound bounces between — and sometimes blends together — elements and samples from ‘90s R&B, modern/future bass, and perhaps most notably, Brazilian baile funk (check his Da Rocinha beat tape series for prime examples). “I’ll always sample R&B because I grew up with it,” he said. “Baile funk was a big part of my early 20s, and I’ll always have that in me.”

He says that his interest in the Brazilian dance music subgenre — which combined latin and afrobeat rhythms with ‘80s/’90s Miami bass and freestyle, and was popularized in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro — started with listening to global genre-bending/culture-splicing artist/ambassador M.I.A. and related Pandora stations. After researching and experimenting with the style for a full two years (with the help of Brazilian producer Kojak) it became one of the signature elements of his production architecture. “I didn’t want to just straight up do baile funk, I wanted to find a way I could add it to my original sound,” Sango said. Much of “Tomorrow”’s production skews toward the R&B side of things, with only the album’s closer “I Don’t Care What Y’all Think” showcasing those baile breaks. But both artists say that was intentional. “We both wanted to do something for Seattle... this album is for Seattle, and it sounds like Seattle,” Sango said. “I had this friend that said ‘man this album sounds like when you’re driving to the South End… like I could go grab a banh mi and like, chill out.” “I think it sounds really grey,” Dave added. “It sounds like today or like the past week (referring to a recent spell of Seattle rainstorms). Really grey, but really full too.” “Tomorrow” sounds like Seattle in the smaller, subtler details too — the waterfront sounds of seagulls and waves as opening track “Zonin” fades in, the Light Rail stop announcement at the end of “Help Me Find A Way.” It doesn’t name-drop neighborhoods or area codes, but it captures the spirit of the South Seattle and Renton areas Dave and Sango grew up in. “That’s where we’re from man, and people don’t really know about that Seattle,” Sango said. “I just checked in with this lady (at my hotel in Atlanta) and she was like ‘well how do you like Washington… living there?’ Basically asking, ‘there’s black people there?’ And I’m like ‘man, are there black people there? There’s more than that — there’s everything.’” Dave said that his relationship to cannabis is typical of a local Seattle product. “I’ve been waking up and smoking the past few days,” he said with a laugh, nodding to the city’s recent fall storm marked by heavy rain and cloudy skies. “But I usually smoke when I’m going back to listen to a song again cuz it makes you listen to it with a different kind of ear... or from a different perspective. When I write or record I have to just let it happen and see what it sounds like afterwards.” “You need that though,” he continued. “When you listen to something like 700 times you know what to expect. But after smoking, you can come back to it like ‘god damn I didn’t hear that!’ People need that with anything they’re doing, not even just music.”

Words by Mike Ramos • Photos by Alan Danilo and Courtesy of the Artist

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“I was a total monster. I was spending $1,000 a week on weed, and everyone I was in the band with at the time smoked as much as I did. There's so much stupid behavior caused by weed, but I always had that cliché: ‘I needed it for creativity.’ I've come to realize that at the end of the day, it's only you yourself that creativity comes from. It doesn't come from weed. In this day and age, the stuff people are smoking is not necessarily even naturally grown from the ground, anyway — it's basically been altered to fuck you up and fuck you up royally. I don't even know how some people are functional after smoking this stuff. I was using it to form this stoned bubble that helped me justify not wanting to interact with people. Personally — and not just musically — there are benefits to not smoking anymore. I’m better off socially. I talk to fans. I'm cool with taking pictures. I'll sign whatever they want me to sign. That wasn't me when I was smoking weed. There's some stoners out there who can appreciate their audience and actually function when they're high. I couldn’t.” – Cedric Bixler-Zavala

9-TIME OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST

BILD NEWSPAPER (GERMANY)

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S U N D AY C A L L F OR A PPOIN T M EN T

herban.buzz/sacredhoop

ISSUE #1

Featuring

Dave B + Sango, Topcoat, The Mars Volta, Danny Brown, Hillary Clinton, ESSEX, Russian Constructivism