Two things about Blue Scholars:

One, the duo's new EP, OOF! is something like a vacation from the heaviness, the rain, the autumn of Bayani, their masterpiece and most significant contribution to local hiphop. OOF is Hawaii; Bayani is Seattle. OOF! is lighter and more playful than previous EPs and LPs, and yet it is a lightness and playfulness that is not outside of Blue Scholar's continuum. What links this EP to the others, and what defines the Blue Scholar's approach to music, and why OOF! is a successful work of hiphop, is textuality. I have written elsewhere that early Slum VIllage is all about sexuality; the Blue Scholars are all about textuality. This aspect comes before even their socialist or progressive politics. By textualilty, I mean a commitment to texting, or, to get to the root of the word "text," weaving. Listen to "New People," for example, and we hear all around all of this busy weaving—in Geo's raps and in Sabzi's beats. Hiphop is not usually made this way, with this emphasis on texture—in fact, I can only think of early Pete Rock and CL Smooth (Smooth being the idealist ancestor of Geo's brand of densely weaved realism). It is this musical and poetic program (texuality) that is the source, I believe, of Blue Scholar's consistently original sound.

Two: This has to do with Sabzi and Grynch's track, "The Life I Chose," which is on the Mass Line website. Watch this:

And listen to this. Only hiphop could salvage Journey.