Tacoma doesn't have the strongest hip-hop scene. It's often overshadowed by what's going on in Seattle. The one thing Tacoma hip-hop does get credit for is having authentic street MCs who make hardcore hip-hop. The Seattle scene is known for Macklemore, Blue Scholars and other good hip-hop in that vein. Hip-hop fans in Washington know to go to Tacoma if they want something grimier. The Tacoma street-hop scene is musically shaped by one man: Big Squeeze. Virtually all known street artists from Tacoma have had production and recording done by Squeeze. I said in one column a few weeks back that Big Squeeze is the Dr. Dre of Tacoma hip-hop, meaning his musical sound shaped what everyone knows as Tacoma street music.

                  Squeeze humbly has been making and recording classics for 20 years. When you meet Squeeze, you can tell he has the inner confidence of someone who has done a lot of credible things for our hip-hop scene. He's easygoing and very skilled in the studio. He knows how to make an MC feel at home. Squeeze is good at giving ideas and advice to artists recording in his studio. When recording, Big Squeeze often hits the artist with a compliment right when it's needed.

                  Squeeze has worked nationally with C-Bo, Kokane, Yuckmouth, Bosko, Kuddie Fresh, Kurupt and many more. He quietly has been making masterpieces in his own home studio for two decades. Big Squeeze has single-handedly orchestrated the very sound that is associated with the most well-known and respected aspects of Tacoma hip-hop. Squeeze and Squeezeit Production are on all online digital music sites and players. You can find them on all online social networking sites as well. Just googleing Big Squeeze Tacoma will bring up pages of national hip-hop coverage about Big Squeeze, going back to the early 2000s. Since there's been the Internet, Big Squeeze has been getting national props on it.

He's a true original architect of the quintessential music that is the soundtrack to the most famous parts of our city, the streets. Let's face it, and I'm talking to all you N.I.M.B.Y. fake liberals and all you progentrifiers. Tacoma is cool not for 6^th Ave. or the museums - Tacoma is cool because we have tough streets. We also have musicians who paint music with the colors, sounds and textures of these streets. Thanks to artists like Big Squeeze, Tacoma's most famous and notorious facet has been well-documented. Long live Big Squeeze and the canvass that is the Tacoma streets.