Grieves

The only reason I ever started listening to Grieves was because he sampled the Velvet Underground’s “We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together”. After all, there’s nary a Lou Reed riff that won’t make me sit up and pay attention. But then I listened to more songs by Grieves and learned this is the dude’s whole trip. There’s punch in his rhymes, but it’s the way he lays them over top of a solid melody that makes them uber-palatable. Out of all the white boys in local hip-hop, something tells me Grieves holds a lot of promise for this very reason: addictive rhymes met with piano, guitar, and semi-ironic samples of the Velvet Underground and Three Dog Night make him a prime candidate for heavy KEXP rotations. With Bedroom Stompers (CD release) and DJ Swerveon). BRIAN J. BARR

Listen to a sample of Grieves' "Greedy Bitch."

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Fri., Jan. 4, 9 p.m., 2008