Q-Dot, a true 253 hip-hop statesmen, has been getting active lately. Not to say that he was ever sleeping. Last year he damn near single handedly gave Tacoma the second Grit City. Planning an event like that is a full-time job. He stacked the city full of some of the best, newest and freshest music around. Recently, he dropped Indivisible 2.0 - YouTube it. This is a reworked version of an earlier track, but the lyrics are so deep it was worth revisiting. He gets all supreme-mathematical on it, spitting about the relevance of the number 7 in his personal life. The second verse is uplifting in a keep-yo-head-up type of way. The hook is super musical - with Q laying fresh keys over the sweeping sounds. Q is always industry savvy, as his music is now on the Goliath online player Pandora. It's no wonder Q-Dot has been teaching hip-hop classes at the Tacoma Public Library. Not many around here know better than he on how to push product to a national level.

                  A few columns back I propped up my fellow artists for writing support songs for Trayvon Martin. One of the better tributes to come out of the area is done by Tacoma M.C. Kraff. YouTube "Kraff, Trayvon Martin Tribute" to watch the video. Kraff breathes bars over the classic sounding hip-hop track - and he's hecka lyrical. The music, words and images in the video are moving. The song closes with Trayvon's dad speaking to We the People, calling on justice for his son. The video is directed by Yusuf Word, and he killed it. Yusuf is one of the better video directors this city has to offer. He's a good dude too, teaching kids videography at the D.A.S.H. Center for the Arts. He's directed for 50 Cow before - check out Woside444 on YouTube to see the rest of his work.

                  D.A.S.H. (Dancing and Singing in Harmony), located on the corner of South 15^th and M.L.K. at 1501 MLK Jr. Way, is the premier art academy for dancing, singing, acting and music in the area. Children and teenagers can take classes on videography, audio engineering, and almost all genres of dance, hip-hop and spoken word poetry, singing, acting and more.

For more information, visit www.thedashcenter.org.