Hip-hop rogue Locke makes no apologies

In the local hip-hop scene, emcee Locke gets a lot of crap for being the hip-hop guy who doesn’t know his hip-hop roots.

Locke, aka Andrew Walters, is that dude at the party who gets dissed for not knowing that classic Erick Sermon album.

Sure, he is one of Spokane’s most visible rappers, but he knows his rock history a whole lot better than hip-hop – which is near-blasphemy in the hip-hop community. And he’s not apologetic about it.

While other emcees wear their break dancing upbringing like it’s a backstage pass, Locke is upfront that he was in a garage band in high school.

“There is this image in hip-hop that you have to know your history; you have to know the golden age, you have to know who was what in ‘93, ‘94,” Locke said. “I rejected the idea that you have to study it to make something in that vein.”

There was a time when Locke bought in to that idea, too. He spent an entire summer listening to nothing but hip-hop.

Eventually he reincorporated the other music he loves. Now he keeps his iPod loaded with hip-hop classics from the likes of EPMD, De La Soul and Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, along with getting his rock fix with The Mars Volta, Pedro The Lion and Thrice. Locke’s favorite album, he says, is John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”

Say what you want about Locke, but he’s one of the hardest working young musicians in town, period.

He appears locally with relentless frequency, and he’s affiliated with hip-hop scenes as far away as Montana, Portland and Denver.

Locke and his band, The Chris Wilson Five, play two shows this weekend and two shows next weekend.

• On Saturday night, they play at 9 at Far West Billiards, 1001 W. First. No cover.

• Locke and the crew open a show Sunday at 9:30 p.m. at The B-Side, 230 W. Riverside, for the Boston/Bay Area, Cali-bred Crown City Rockers. There is a $5 cover.

• On Oct. 1 at The B-Side, Locke opens for Portland’s Lightheaded.

• Locke plays Oct. 2 at The Spike Coffee House, 122 S. Monroe.

Locke often appears solo with deejay Parafyn, but in the fall he plans to focus more on The Chris Wilson Five and finish its album, along with a duet album with Denver’s Sentence.

The Chris Wilson Five – drummer Matt Coleman, percussionist Chris Wilson, bassist Vincent LaBelle, deejay Parafyn and tenor saxophonist and keyboardist Jason Schultheis – is a group of musicians from Eastern Washington University hand-picked by Locke and Coleman.

It started out translating samples of songs from Locke’s 2001 album, “Relevance,” but since has evolved its funky sound into a signature that recalls James Brown’s band, The JBs.