A big bowl of pho is many things. Filling, delicious, cheap as hell, and found pretty much exclusively in Vietnamese restaurants. You don't get fusion pho, or instant pho, or faux pho: you just get a huge amount of aromatic broth, rice noodles, beef parts (brisket! tendon!), herbs, and bean sprouts, hopefully at a place whose name is "Pho" followed by a few numbers.

And now, thanks to some rising stars out of Seattle, pho (pronounced "fuh" ) is becoming rapper food. Macklemore , who's blown up thanks to his mega-hit "Thrift Shop " (and is appearing on SNL this weekend ), is one of the noodle soup's biggest fans. He's tweeted pictures of tour mates chowing down on big bowls and commented on the dubious quality of Connecticut pho .

"

It's my ultimate go-to," Macklemore told Bon Appetit . "I never leave a pho experience regretting my meal."

Even though he was raised in Seattle, he didn't have his first bowl until 2003. But from then on, he was hooked. "Pho feels healthy, it's filling and

it helps white people learn how to use chopsticks," he said. "That's always a good thing."

Another Seattle rapper, Sabzi , the producer in the duo Blue Scholars, thought that pho was important enough to deserve its own song, video, poster series, and art Kickstarter . A verse in his song, "Wassup Pham," says it all: "Wassup dude? We eat pho, dude. You like tripe? Aight, so do we too. If you come to the town I'll probably see you, if you really down with the ill Viet food."

Food has always been a big part of hip-hop--it's tied up tight with class, race, weed, and puns, the quadrafecta of lyrical material--but it's also always been a way to shout out the local delicacies and the local rap scene, no matter the point of origin.

Nas was "in the hood like Chinese wings,"

Ludacris got "mind-blowing Dirty-South bread/Catfish fried up, Dirty South fed," and on Christmas in Hollis,

D.M.C.'s mom was cooking "chicken and collard greens, rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese."

"Pho is absolutely a part of Seattle culture," said Sabzi, "all of South Seattle is secretly run by Vietnamese people. There's pho places, all kinds of banh mi, Viet bakeries, billiard halls. There are different sides to Seattle, but I've spent the last 10 years in South Seattle, so I eat a lot of pho."

Macklemore and Sabzi came up in the same generation of Seattle artists--Sabzi has remixed Macklemore songs, his brother helped shoot a Macklemore video, and Blue Scholars' booking agent is Macklemore's manager--and both said pho was just one of the standard meals in the city. And for musicians on the make (remember: Macklemore's smash hit is about shopping at a thrift store), it helps that it's only about $4.75 a bowl, and hits the spot when you're sick or (this being Seattle) the weather gets gloomy.

"For someone whose job description entails giving high-fives to sweaty drunk people around the world, and sleeping on couches in venues that haven't been cleaned since the '80s," said Macklemore, "it's almost guaranteed I will spend four months of the year with a cold. That hoisin sauce, broth, lime, basil, noodles, beef combination--it's the best comfort food."

Two of the Pho 99 project's posters (Credit: courtesy Townfolk )

Sabzi's whole pho-stravaganza started with a conversation over a bowl of pho, when he and his friends came up with the idea for a poster that laid out all of the soup's key ingredients against a simple white background. "I thought it was a really cool idea, and I have a tendency to make things really complicated," he said, "so it turned into a whole little line of merchandise, and a rap video." To actually get the poster project out into the world, he started a Kickstarter project called Pho 99 , where different pledges got you prints of the poster, pho buttons, or even special chopsticks. It finished in December, and almost doubled its fundraising goal.

He got help on the video from Yenvy and Khoa Pham, the co-owners of

Pho Bac , whose two locations happen to be his favorite pho spots in town. And he believes that Seattle, or at least the West Coast, knows how to do pho best.

"I lived in New York for a few years, and it was hard to find a good bowl easily," Sabzi said. "In Seattle, no matter where you go, it's good--and cheap, too. It's developed and presented as a kind of frou-frou, chi-chi kind of item in other places, and that's not the pho culture I know."

Macklemore, meanwhile, is a partisan of

Than Bros. (which also earns a Sabzi shoutout in the video), and appreciates the little things. "They give you a cream puff immediately when you sit down," he said. "You're practically greeted with it when you walk in the door, before they bring your pho out. Dessert before the meal is such a revolutionary idea, and whoever thought of it is a genius."

It might not have the same swagger quotient as a bottle of Kristal and Rick Ross's narcissistic lobster bisque , but pho is what feeds the Seattle rap scene. Or, in the words of Sabzi, "This is real dude, how I feel dude, and if you don't know by now, then we can teach you. In the back of Than Thao, we can meet you. We hold it down for the clique, and we gon' feed you."

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