Everett Hip Hop Duo RNNRS Reach Their Final Form

What starts on Hewitt must return to Hewitt.

Everett indie hip-hop artists Moth1ne and T-11 began their journey there. And, after a decade, they will return triumphantly to Hewitt in their final form: as hip hop power duo RNNRS. Only this time they’re at the peak of their lyrical and production games.

Micah Glassey and Todd Lindem (performing as Moth1ne and T11, respectively) started their music careers in 2009 when Cafe Zippy was located on Hewitt. The two bonded over a mutual love of Atmosphere and “backpack” hip hop, as exemplified by the record label Rhymesayers. They rapped at the Chinese restaurant Jade Garden alongside Everett acts like Black Magic Noize and Sphyramid.

Micah Glassey and Todd Lindem of RNNRS // Richard Porter

“This was back in MySpace days,” explains Glassey. It was a time when musical artists were exchanging beats via the most popular social media platform of the era. It was easy to find like-minded indie artists and sample the audio spectrum of local music.

Since the early days of late nights at Zippy’s, Glassey and Lindem have since grown into their thirties, had kids, pursued “day job” careers, and recorded solo albums. But their friendship and mutual love for hip-hip never diminished. Over the years the two began to collaborate remotely, first scattershot, then in earnest. They sent one another voice memos and videos of rapped lyrics, beats, and chord progressions.

“Most songs on RNNRS would start with Micah sending me a dope verse or a dope piano riff,” says Lindem. “And it was like, yeah, let’s make a song out of this!” They produced every beat, every hook, every chorus, every line of the RNNRS album. All of it in Everett.

In summer 2021 this project coalesced into their first in-depth, intentional attempt at an album. They met weekly on Fridays in the attic of Lindem’s Everett home to record in his Slanted Room Studio. They traded bars and mixed harmonies, debated lyrics, worked out hooks and riffs, and wrestled the whole thing into a forty-five-minute album, twelve tracks. Thus was the RNNRS self-titled LP born of attic heat and lyrical passion.

“Our goal was to make something, like a big project, and just go until we were tired of it or until it got hard,” says Lindem. Instead, they wrote songs back to back to back in quick succession.

Each week they met with an actionable objective: ok, let’s make a beat, record a vocal track, finish a draft of a song. “We each take a sixteen bar verse or more per song,” says Glassey, “We divvy up full verses and then throw in a hook.”

Their kids played downstairs while they recorded. Glassey and Lindem both have full-time day jobs and families. So it’s not surprising that one of the lyrical currents running through the record concerns working-class consciousness and “the grind of working” as Glassey puts it. Their lyrical content often concerns the travails of being a parent and hustling -- not your typical rap narrative of unfettered money and material excess.

They had a breakthrough halfway through recording. The RNNRS crew went on a 3-day backpacking hike to the Tank Lakes. It was a “legs burning, souls burning” experience. As the two rhyme-sayers trekked from Skykomish into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness they tossed lyrics back and forth through the summer air, narrating the trip, bonding and matching the beat of their stride.

This was, literally and figuratively, a sign that they were on the right path in recording their album. The vibe flowed. “Our legs were burning, our souls were burning,” quips Lindem. And the final stretch of the album was born.