Meet the Bands of MusicfestNW Presents Project Pabst 2017: The Last Artful, Dodgr
The Portland rapper's new album, "Bone Music," is a model citizen in terms of what it means to spit rhymes in 2017.
ByMark Stock
We're only a few months away from MusicfestNW presents Project Pabst! Each week leading up to the festival, we'll be introducing you to one of the 18 acts on the lineup.
WHO: Alana Chenevert.
SOUNDS LIKE: If Macy Gray fell through an ultra-contemporary wormhole and emerged as a rapper on a mission to tame the socio-political beast.
LATEST RELEASE:Bone Music, a collaboration with producer Neill Von Tally that seems so nonchalantly textured and aware that it’s a model citizen in terms of what it means to spit rhymes in 2017.
FOR FANS OF: Missy Elliott, Vince Staples, Frank Ocean, Sharaya J.
WHY YOU CARE: Because whip-smart hip-hop delivered in style by a queer African-American woman in Portland is still a very rare thing. Chenevert is refocusing the spotlight on a Rose City rap scene that’s had about as much of chance over the last decade as an old craftsman home on North Williams. Her lens is very much experiential, having grown up on the volatile streets of Los Angeles before settling in Portland in 2015. She speaks with mercurial intonation of blue-collar struggles and simple escapism with one ear to the ground and the other fixed on the soundscapes of tomorrow. No song better exemplifies her spot-on ability to bend her rubbery lyrics around an impulsive mix of genres than “Jazz Crimes.” It cements Dodgr as a hip-hop futurist, treating R&B, electronica, moody industrial trance and brooding synth-pop to pulsing, progressive commentary.
SEE IT: The Last Artful, Dodgr plays MusicfestNW presents Project Pabst at Tom McCall Waterfront Park on Saturday, Aug. 26.
MusicfestNW presents Project Pabst is Aug. 26-27 at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Get tickets here.
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