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A shot of a free wall in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle.

Shawn McClung/flickr.com

A shot of a free wall in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle.

As Ann Powers wrote in her intro to Grind and Shine, the series of interviews and portraits of Jet City rappers we've been running the past five days, she's no stranger to Seattle. But she remembered the place as a rock town, and now that our hip-hop scene is breaking out as one of the best in the country, she asked me to spend a week showing her around. We met with rappers and producers at coffee shops in an attempt to get to know a different scene, in a classically Seattle context.

As a local who covers music for a living, I took it as my personal mission to introduce Ann to iconoclastic Seattle acts like Shabazz Palaces, THEESatisfaction and Metal Chocolates. They make some of the most vital music in town, of any genre. I also wanted her to see the kind of intense hometown pride a group like The Physics has, and hear about changing times from Blue Scholars, who saw rap become the new rock in Seattle over the course of the last decade — and from Jake One, a local rap historian if there ever was one.

There was a line in Seattle hip-hop in the early '90s, with West Coast keyboard funk on one side, and East Coast jazz-sample production rap on the other. The way it's been told to me, if you listened to one, you dropped out of high school. If you listened to the other, you immediately earned a graduate degree from the University of Washington. That general division still exists: the streets versus self-appointed culture soldiers. Either sound can seem all-encompassing or immaterial, depending on your stance. You can hear echoes from the past in Seattle's current space-y, non-conservative hip-hop, which reflects the regional history of grunge and indie rock, espousing an anti-star ethos and rejecting all labels.

The overarching lesson I learned in these coffee shop convos: Seattle is a city of musical tidepools, segregated by various things — race, class, style, self-image. The way Jake One came of age oblivious to grunge, even though he played basketball with Pearl Jam's bass player. The way OC Notes (of Metal Chocolates) doesn't know who Fleet Foxes is, even though it's currently the biggest group in Seattle, and Notes is a musical omnivore. Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes has told me he's a big Shabazz Palaces fan, but in general, Seattle hip-hop and our also-booming neo-folk movement are parallel forces that don't overlap. There's a lot happening — and a lot has happened — in Seattle. It doesn't all necessarily cross over.

Seattle hip-hop is a scene worth exploring. Ideally, in person, at a concert. Or rolling down leafy Rainier Avenue some Sunday evening, blasting either of the town's two major rap radio shows, Street Sounds on KEXP or Sunday Night Sound Sessions on KUBE. If you don't live here, both shows are online. Links to those, and to various artist sites and fan blogs are below. It is an inadequate list. Click around and you'll find more.

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Blue Scholars are, from left to right, Sabzi and Geo.

Kyle Johnson for NPR

Blue Scholars are, from left to right, Sabzi and Geo.

All week Ann Powers and The Seattle Times' Andrew Matson are having coffee with people in Seattle's fertile rap scene. We're calling the series Grind and Shine, and you can read the interviews and see portraits here.

ARTISTS: In the early 2000s in Seattle, Blue Scholars performed the essential task of bringing hip-hop to music lovers who weren't all that familiar with hip-hop, but were willing to give it a chance. Rapper George Quibeyen, better known as Geologic, and DJ/producer Sabzi Sabzi (born Alexei Saba Mohajerjasbi) are big reasons why today — as opposed to 15 years ago — a rap concert is something the average Seattleite might attend on a Friday night.

The duo's ultramelodic, super-sincere style also resonates especially well with tweens, which has helped their audience beyond Seattle grow as other artists take over the slot of most-buzzed about local act. Blue Scholars is currently regrouping, promoting new album Cinemetropolis more independently than ever before, looking forward to non-Scholars projects with California residents. Geo is set to release music with rapper Bambu; Sabzi will pursue his nascent rap-inspired headphone pop group Made in Heights, with singer Kelsey Bulkin.

SETTING: The Station, 2533 16th Ave. South, Beacon Hill

BEVERAGES: Lattes

At the Station in Beacon Hill, the Blue Scholars are stars — and family. Geo and Sabzi are buddies with the owner, Luis Rodriguez, and his staff. As we talked in this small, warm-spirited establishment, the sound of a barista scraping Mexican chocolate into drinks mingled with the yelps of Geo's kindergarten-aged son and his friends as they played a game on Dad's laptop. The scene felt comfortably hyper-local. The Blue Scholars are clearly still rooted here. But the Internet is helping this most emblematic Seattle hip-hop pair go international in new, exciting ways, as they revealed to us in the final interview of our series on Seattle hip-hop, Grind And Shine.

Enlarge Kyle Johnson for NPR

Metal Chocolates: OC Notes on the left, Rik Rude on the right.

Kyle Johnson for NPR

Metal Chocolates: OC Notes on the left, Rik Rude on the right.

All week Ann Powers and The Seattle Times' Andrew Matson are having coffee with people in Seattle's fertile rap scene. We're calling the series Grind and Shine, and you can read the interviews and see portraits here.

ARTISTS: Another day, another downloadable bundle of songs from Seattle's OC Notes (Otis Calvin, III). The 25-year-old producer/singer/rapper is Seattle's combination Madlib and Mos Def. Such reductive comparisons don't do him justice — but will get you within rock-throwing distance of his woozy style, which moves fluidly from hip-hop to radio theater to house music.

It's all soul music to Notes, who pumps it out from his underground studio in Seattle's OK Hotel, at the downtown edge of the city, next to the ocean. He has put out three albums this year, including standout work with MC Rik Rude (Ricky Reams, also in popular synth-rap group Fresh Espresso) — a psychedelic hip-hop project called Metal Chocolates. Rik is as stream-of-consciousness with his rhymes as Notes is with his beats — apparently, anyway; it could all be more composed than we know. In Seattle, high school students and recent grads apprentice themselves to Notes. MCs try and fail to freestyle alongside Rik. Metal Chocolates might fit next to the spaced-out vibe of locals Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction, but is its own thing, starry-eyed while rooted to the anxiety of Pioneer Square and its bustling drug and alcohol casualties.

SETTING: Zeitgeist Coffee, 171 S. Jackson Street, Pioneer Square

BEVERAGES: Herbal tea (Rik Rude) and one glass of red wine (OC Notes)

Zeitgeist Coffee in Pioneer Square is right near the old King Street train station — the right spot to meet one of Seattle's most adventurous new hip-hop projects. These guys travel: their sound touches upon syrupy Southern rap, electronica, jazz, psychedelica, even world music. Imagistic and inspired, Metal Chocolates leans easily against the cutting edge of urban music; they're Odd Future without the hate, or The Weeknd with a better sense of humor. Plus, they're sweet guys. We sat down with them for the third interview in our Grind and Shine series.

Enlarge Kyle Johnson for NPR

Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction (from left to right, Ishmael Butler, Catherine Harris-White and Stasia Irons) outside Caffe Vita in Capitol Hill.

Kyle Johnson for NPR

Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction (from left to right, Ishmael Butler, Catherine Harris-White and Stasia Irons) outside Caffe Vita in Capitol Hill.

All week Ann Powers and The Seattle Times' Andrew Matson are having coffee with people in Seattle's fertile rap scene. We're calling the series Grind and Shine, and you can read the interviews and see portraits here.

ARTISTS: In Seattle, Ishmael Butler — aka Palaceer Lazaro — has fans monitoring his every move, treating his future-rap project Shabazz Palaces like a religion. Younger hip-hop artists imitate his style. He invariably sells out his infrequent, conceptual concerts. He also has skeptics who find his free-form music irritating. Butler's star rose and fell in the 1990s as part of jazz-rap group Digable Planets — the group was popular in Seattle, but the fact that he was from the city was never widely known. At present, he is Seattle's biggest rock star. To many local residents, he seems to have emerged from nowhere. His masterful new album Black Up is Sub Pop Records' first major rap release — a ghostly document that moves at roughly one billion styles per hour.

The women of THEESatisfaction are a generation younger than Butler, and ride a similarly spaced-out wavelength. Catherine Harris-White and Stasia Irons sing and rap on Black Up. Word on the street is they have already signed a record label contract, with an announcement forthcoming.

SETTING: Caffe Vita, 1005 E. Pike Street, Capitol Hill

BEVERAGE: Chai

Entering Caffe Vita on Monday morning, we looked for Ann's friend Rick Friel, whom she met when he played in a teenage band with Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready years ago. But he was out delivering beans. The cafe's rock connection turned out to be relevant: Seattle rockers from Kurt Cobain on down have been notoriously uncomfortable in interviews. So were these three rising hip-hop stars. Their music speaks for itself, and they know it.

Still, we got somewhere once we started talking about the specifics of Pacific Northwest style creativity and the politics of making hip-hop here. In the second interview of our week-long series, Grind and Shine, Jonathan Moore, a scene veteran who now manages both Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction, added key insights from his corner of the table.

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Jake One (left) and Thig Natural of The Physics at Espresso Vivace Alley 24.

Kyle Johnson for NPR

Jake One (left) and Thig Natural of The Physics at Espresso Vivace Alley 24.

All week Ann Powers and The Seattle Times' Andrew Matson are having coffee with people in Seattle's fertile rap scene. We're calling the series Grind and Shine, and you can read the interviews and see portraits here.

ARTISTS: Jake One (born Jacob Dutton) is the rare — nay, unheard of — hip-hop producer who will make a beat for 50 Cent, then turn around and work with an experimental artist like MF DOOM. Overground to underground, no biggie. Recently, he placed standout tracks on Snoop Dogg and E-40's new albums, all while staying closely tied to Seattle, where he's a humble legend. Jake has Seattle Preparatory School students playing keyboards for him, and just the other day he used the Physics studio to track the next album for rising R&B star Mayer Hawthorne.

Thig Natural (born Gathigi Gishuru), of The Physics, is a generation younger than Jake. His trio makes Seattle-centric lifestyle rap, often with a hyperlocal twist. The group reflects some of Seattle's prevalent immigrant populations — East African, Filipino — and crosses between hip-hop micro-scenes, equally at home in South End neighborhoods and downtown art galleries.

COFFEE SHOP: Espresso Vivace Alley 24, 227 Yale Avenue North, South Lake Union

BEVERAGES: Earl Grey tea (Thig Natural) and filtered water (Jake One)

South Lake Union is a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood with shiny new retail outlets galore. Meeting Jake One and his friend, The Physics rapper Thig Natural in this corporate space felt odd, but soon made sense: it was a convenient spot for these two guys, who like so many of Seattle's under-forty set, grew up loving hip-hop and now integrate its pleasures into their hectic lives. Dutton, who became a dad just about a month ago, was bleary-eyed in stay-at-home sweats; Thig looked neat in an office-appropriate shirt and khakis. In this, the first interview in our week-long series Grind and Shine, both were effusive about Seattle hip-hop history and their own determination to make a musical mark.

Enlarge Kyle Johnson

Seattle's skyline, as seen outside the Bauhaus Coffee Shop on Capitol Hill.

Kyle Johnson

Seattle's skyline, as seen outside the Bauhaus Coffee Shop on Capitol Hill.

All week Ann Powers and The Seattle Times' Andrew Matson are having coffee with people in Seattle's fertile rap scene. We're calling the series Grind and Shine, and you can read the interviews and see portraits here.

You know that person you see once in a while at your favorite hangout, the one whose body language shouts, "This is my spot," but who actually doesn't seem to know much beyond where the bathrooms are located? It's hard to be a long-lost regular, trying to keep a smile on your face as you realize that the place you once called home has really changed. Lose your preconceptions and you might find out that home had more going for it than you actually knew.

I was that fool this past week, seeking out music-makers in my hometown of Seattle. I grew up in the Jet City and have spent my life writing about the renewable resource that is Seattle rock. I lived through Seattle punk, went to college with some of the major players in what people here only grudgingly call "grunge," and after a while away, moved back for four years in the early 2000s to work at Experience Music Project, Paul Allen's so-called Jimi Hendrix museum. I've interviewed Eddie Vedder, like, five times! I am so Seattle.

Not long ago, however, I came to really understand that there's more to the culture of Seattle than the rock and roll I know. I'm not just talking about the Microsoft and Amazon execs who took over in the 2000s — they're a cliché by now, too — or popular newbies like Fleet Foxes and the Head and the Heart, currently showing America the softer side of flannel. I like that stuff, but it's not what took me by surprise.

What I never expected from Seattle is a hip-hop community that's as full of potential as any in America. When I last left town in 2006, crews like the Blue Scholars and Abyssinian Creole were on the rise, repping Seattle's Central District and South End, beyond the rock and roll hotbeds of Belltown and Capitol Hill. Filipinos, Africans and other immigrants were building a new city from the ground up. Seattle hip-hop was pumping, and there was a story there. But I didn't think it could go large.