Crowd decides best beats at Big Tune hip-hop event

When Red Bull's first Big Tune competition was in Seattle in 2004, its format was the same as it is now: 12 hip-hop producers let a crowd decide whose beats are best. It's a simple idea.

Designed and run by local rap luminaries, it's now a national competition.

Friday, Capitol Hill's War Room hosts a 21-and-older qualifying round. Twelve producers will compete — some established, some unknown — but only two will advance to the Big Tune finals at Neumos in October, an all-ages event where they will meet qualified battlers from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and New York. One winner will receive production gear and studio time.

"It's thinly veiled as a competition," says Big Tune's mouthpiece Jonathan Moore, talking from a bench at Madison Park Beach. "It's more of a showcase."

Big Tune is about music and pride, but Moore says the competition is also useful for networking. At Houston's Big Tune, mainstream MC (and Houston native) Slim Thug was in the audience and liked what he heard: business cards were exchanged and eventually a track was recorded.

All of Friday's contestants are basically freelance beat providers, and Big Tune is a great chance to do some free advertising.

Big Tune allows music to speak for itself, and thereby helps producers without managers or marketing teams. It's this egalitarian bent that Moore stresses, but the spirit of Big Tune is simpler than that.

For fans of the music, listening to loud hip-hop beats in a club is fun.

Andrew Matson: matson.andrew@gmail.com