Because who isn’t a fan of Sidney “El Sid” Moncrief? The Jon Konkak Mediocre White Rapper Award: Mac Miller Upending 35 years of time honored tradition, the stigma to being a mediocre white rapper has vanished. Somewhere in dirty Jerse, Milkbone plots a comeback, and I wonder if any of these kids will turn in […]

Sabina Tang skipped the Kanye secret show and Perez Hilton’s party in order to file this. Thus, she will be forever ignorant of the wonders of Cyhi the Prince and liquid cocaine boogers drawn on Kid Cudi. I’LL NEVER TRUST THOSE THINGS AGAIN So you may have heard: the overhead camera, boom and all, fell […]

While Jeff sells out at Pop & Hiss, and Hannibal sheds followers on Twitter, Sabina Tang will be contributing Austin reports for Passion of the Weiss. Her Twitter can be found here. SIXTH STREET, AUSTIN, TEXAS, DURING SXSW Ever played Rock Band 3? You know the opening animation, where your outrageously outfitted CG band slowly […]

Almost 25 years have elapsed since the Rick Rubin-helmed, Licensed to Ill found the Beasties staking their claim as the first major rap group to incorporate guitar-hero rawk (“Rock Box” aside). Such juxtaposition seems prosaic today, but it’s almost impossible to grasp how revolutionary sampling Led Zep, The Clash, and Sabbath once seemed—and that was […]

Along with sets from Dirty Projectors and Akron/Family, Grizzly Bear’s performance under the pale icicle-lit eaves of the Cedar Street Courtyard, made for one of the most memorable moments of the festival. Particularly, this collaboration with Beach House’s Victoria Legrand on Vecktamist stand-out, “Two Weeks.” In administrative news, expect part two of the Rap-Rock piece […]

Maybe we ought to blame Kanye–even though this trend started well before him, and will likely persist long after he retires to pursue French anime interior spaceship design. Like it or not, ‘Ye’s massive success re-removed a lot of barriers into the major label rap game. No longer did you need street cred, or an […]

Last year was my first year in Austin, so I can’t really speak to nebulous notions of the SXSW “good ol’ days.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that the place has expanded exponentially each year since the rise of the Internet, and the demolition of the quasi-mythological monoculture. In layman’s terms, this boils down to: the web […]

It was my third night in Austin. Devin had just blazed through an epic set that had been celebrated in the appropriate fashion , El-P was currently on-stage and I was wandering around the Def Jux party with four cups of Jack in my stomach, a head full of smoke and the strange desire to […]

Unlike Sasha Frere-Jones, my main gripe with indie rock don’t stem from it’s lack of blackness. More than anything, I have trouble dealing with the idea that Jenny Lewis is indiedom’s official pin-up girl. No joke, I think she won first in the 2006 Stereogum poll and came in second in 2007. The winner last […]

    A Pitchfork party without Sparks? That’s like Eliot Spitzer without whores: fatigued, thirsty and miserable. And rest assured, Sparks flowed like the River Ganges, even going as far to sponsor the bash, which wasn’t really as bad as it was boring. A bunch of people sitting in bleachers trying to look affected and […]