Dec
07

Question in the Form of an Answer: Celph Titled

There are only so many things one can say about a rap record in and of itself. It takes more than good rhymes, a whole persona or idea, to captivate fans these days. That’s why I leaped at the chance to speak with Celph Titled- one of the most prominent, animated, and true-to-form underground emcees… Continue reading »

Dec
07

Drinking Lemonade in the Shade, Getting Blazed With a Gang of Pilgrims

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0OVD0_YJnU Though the mainstream media mostly treats him as a stoner curio, Snoop Dogg’s recent career arc has been deceptively interesting. Whether it’s impeccable guidance provided by management or whether his synapses are so scorched earth that he can’t determine good ideas from bad ones, Snoop has evolved into the most unpredictable veteran in rap.… Continue reading »

Dec
07

Douglas Martin’s Dirty Shoes: How to Make Ambient Sadcake’s Delicious Recipe

Douglas Martin heard The Sandwitches can make one hell of a Grilled Cheese. The time has come. December. The month out of the year where people who get paid (and sometimes not) to think too much about music have to bang their collective and individual heads against their desks and try to put a bunch… Continue reading »

Dec
06

Mixing Up the Medicine

By virtue of (Charlie) Murphy’s law, low-budget Hi-Fi music will always reign supreme over low-budget lo-fi. Somewhere Wavves is absorbing the shots subliminally fired by the title of Madlib’s latest Medicine Show: Low-Budget Hi-Fi Music. One of the most overlooked things in Otis Jackson’s bizarro record-a-month odyssey has been the artwork, iconography, and distinct worlds… Continue reading »

Dec
06

DITDC: Jay-Z – In My Lifetime, Vol 1

 Sach O is the one that got away. “What I did with ‘[In My Lifetime] Volume One’ was I tried to make records. I had just made ‘Reasonable Doubt’ … it wasn’t successful in music industry terms. It was a cult classic on the streets, but it wasn’t successful in the music business and I… Continue reading »

Dec
03

The 30/30 Club

Jay-Z once told me that he was rap’s “Grateful Dead.” I’d wager that he has only heard “Truckin’” and “Touch of Grey.” Then again, it is possible that he believes the distinguished salt–and-pepper look is a new rap trend that he should start. On to the next one. We must listen to everything Jay-Z says.… Continue reading »

Dec
03

El-P — Lab Rat Bravely Escapes On Hovercraft Only To Crash Directly Outside Gates

You can interpret the song’s title in a variety of ways. The lab rat could be America, aspiring to Hovercraft away from its problems before crash landing into double-digit unemployment and Kim Kardashian debit cards. The lab rat can be a metaphor for the spastic torment of the creative process. The lab rat can be… Continue reading »

Dec
03

Ten Things I Learned from Jay-Z’s Decoded

Jonah Bromwich decodes Decoded so you don’t have to. 1. I knew Marcy Projects wasn’t Mt. Holyoke before I started Decoded but three scenes from Jay’s old neighborhood really struck me. According to Jay, kids in Marcy would go up to “leaning nodders” (heroin addicts ) and push them off the benches they were sleeping… Continue reading »

Dec
02

Danny Brown Can’t Find His Mind

File this under Danny Brown meets The Pixies meets grimy futuristic robot fight music. Somewhere on a hard drive slathered in hallucinogenic fungus lurks the files that The Hybrid cut with the Johnson and Jonson crew (Mainframe and Blu). I don’t know the origins of this track, but I’d bet it was cut during Brown’s… Continue reading »

Dec
02

The Curren$y Boom

Renato Pagnani likes it when people talk fast over 4/4 beats.  Over the last several years, frequent collaborators Curren$y and Wiz Khalifa have had reasonably similar career trajectories. Both excel at making sleepy stoner jams equally indebted to Lil Wayne and Devin the Dude. Both have seen massive success in 2010 after bubbling for several… Continue reading »

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