On 'Unlearning Vol. 1,' Evidence picks up the pieces to puzzle back together a whole new life as an artist.

Brian Josephs will save his rioting for when Coke Boys 4 gets snubbed next year. You’re not about anything if you’re not saying something in hip-hop. It’s one of the only genres — with its beginnings as the “CNN of the ghetto,” the voice of the voiceless, and such — where artists have a perceived […]

Harold Stallworth is like the hip-hop version of Nicky Tarantino. Roc Marciano’s guest features can be unremarkable. His style is a bit too esoteric to gel with D-list underground acts. Even most of his collaborations with like-minded up-and-comer Action Bronson have suffered from a somewhat reluctant chemistry, like haphazardly splicing scenes from The Mack and […]

Max Bell murdered Jar-Bar Binks.  There isn’t one Star Wars reference on Roc Marciano’s The Pimpire Strikes Back. It’s not a blatant disregard for source material so much as it is honest and telling revisionism. In other words, a young Marciano probably wasn’t rushing off to see George Lucas’ The Empire Strikes Back. Instead, he […]

With Evidence, it’s not so much a case of starting the story from the beginning, but figuring out which story you want to start with. The Venice Beach-based rapper and producer packs at least two separate career arcs. Most well known is his work with Dilated Peoples, the trio Evidence formed with Rakaa Iriscience and […]

Jonah Bromwich moves on to the year 3000. The knock on Gangrene is fair: the beats are mostly more interesting than the raps. The easy fix is Evidence, the slow-flow professional, who adds his pedigree to a beat which echoes the dank inter-workings of a futuristic factory — the slow-clanging and gurgles suggesting the mechanical […]

Jonah Bromwich once kidney punched Al Roker. Evidence is the kind of rapper who provokes compliments that kind of sound like insults. He’s a steady, working-man, unspectacular, blue-collar, scrupulous rhymer, with a trademark flow that never gets boring. That should sound better than it sounds because the consistency that Ev has shown over the last […]