Pike Street teeming with Block Partiers; photo by me

Capitol Hill Block Party day one is over. Three notable acts I saw were Macklemore, Shabazz Palaces, and Champagne Champagne.

Block Party photos, videos (including our live broadcast with THEESatisfaction and The Maldives) and Twitter updates are at seattletimes.com/chbp2010.

Macklemore

Macklemore; photo by Alan Berner / Seattle Times

Disclaimer: I only saw part of Capitol Hill rapper Macklemore's Main Stage set, and I saw it from a block away on 11th and Pike. But it was obvious he had a few thousand Block Party attendants locked in, hands up, feeling his music at 4 pm. Macklemore recently got picked up by The Agency Group, a big-shot international booking company, and his Block Party performance proved why: he instantly and powerfully connected with a crowd not made up of hardcore hiphop fans.

With a stage personnel including dancers, trumpet/violin players Owuar Arunga and Andrew Joslyn, and DJ/producer Ryan Lewis, Macklemore's hiphop looked like indie rock fusion and sounded like breathy-voiced super-sincere arena-ready major-chord pop anthems. "And We Danced" was a break from the sincerity, a jokey British-accented rave-up that made a big splash at Bumbershoot 2009 and is now a fan favorite.

Prediction: Macklemore will replace Blue Scholars as Seattle's most popular rap act in coming years.

Shabazz Palaces

Ishmael Butler Palaceer Lazaro; photo by Alan Berner / Seattle Times

What was up with Ishmael Butler Palaceer Lazaro's vocals? Following a lengthy and (what looked like a) frustrating sound check, the auteur behind Central District avant-rap act Shabazz Palaces rapped into his microphone like normal but his voice came out thin and, to my ears, double-tracked and panned to the Main Stage speakers' peripheries. By contrast, percussionist/back-up vocalist Tendai Maraire's vocals came across full and centered. It was a shame because Butler Lazaro is the best rapper in Seattle by roughly one billion miles, and one where details matter, where slight nuances in pronunciation reveal new rhythms and meanings.

He looked great, though, lips sneering, eyes alternatingly downcast and googly. Clothed in all-fuschia everything, with bright white high tops on his feet and a wooden medallion of dislocated angel wings around his neck, he was easily the best dressed Block Party performer all day.

Shabazz's set included songs from its 2009 "Shabazz Palaces" and "Of Light" micro-albums, with minor variations. The seething "Capitol 5" featured a gothic street verse from fellow Central District rapper Dougie, and its extended chant-style outro was excised and used earlier in the set as an interlude. "Find Out" and "Blastit" were notably excellent sounding, with the bass and drums on the former full of wow and crack, and Maraire's mbira on the latter supplying metallic texture.

Unreleased Shabazz songs saw the light of day, too. One had Butler Lazaro chanting "Allahu Akbar" and freestyling over a boom-snap rhythm: "Tendai / stay fly." Another was a slow sweep with swooping bass lines; Maraire played shakers and cooed into his microphone while Butler Lazaro rapped something about being "All up in your system." Toward the end of the set came a new song built around a mantra: "Automatic push button remote control / synthetic genetic command your soul."

Champagne Champagne

L-R: Sir Thomas Gray and Pearl Dragon; photo by me

Best performance of the day, hands down.

Champagne Champagne's artistic premise has always been grand — psychedelic synth-based hiphop — but I've never seen the Seattle group nail it so completely as Pearl Dragon, Sir Thomas Gray and DJ Gajamagic did with their packed-out Block Party set at Neumos.

Not that I've ever seen Champagne be outright bad, but I've witnessed disjointed, unfocused performances in the past, sets where Pearl Dragon's raps were a little too freeform, Sir Thomas Gray was basically an unnecessary hype man, and DJ Gajamagic's synthesizers and drums struggled to fill speakers.

That all couldn't have seemed further behind the group at Neumos. Pearl was a star, patrolling the stage and giving his spaced-out raps with a militant edge while remaining approachable, jumping into the crowd and then back out of it, hair bouncing in big roller curls. Thomas Gray bounded all over the place, rapping on a ton of new material. Of the seven unreleased songs Champagne played, my favorite had Pearl and Thomas rapping about computers over a seriously disturbed beat from DJ Gajamagic, mad stuttering bass underneath a sharp squeaking sound. He twisted knobs on guitar pedals hooked up to keyboards, adjusting sounds often by shape instead of note.

Partial group sobriety, a recent bootcamp-like national tour (opening for the god-awful but popular group Flobots) and countless hours spent practicing in a rented Georgetown space are likely contributing factors to Champagne Champage's Block Party performing excellence. However it happened, I'm glad it did. The group dominated with a weird style that went from heroin slow ("Cover Girls") to amphetamine fast ("Tropical Trina") but always made sense in its own way. Especially when local jazz-rap girlfriend duo THEESatisfaction joined the Champagne gang for two tracks near the set's close, it seemed like a whole tripped-out sector of Seattle rap rose to power.