Evan Nabavian is a staff writer for Passion of the Weiss, contributing since 2011 when the powers that be blackballed him for slandering Lupe Fiasco (Lupe, if you’re reading this, I am so sorry). His distinctions include being cited by name in the Wikipedia article for “Ride” by Ciara and having his kitchen depict a crack den in a Freddie Gibbs video. In 2012, he was banned from S.O.B.’s in New York following an altercation where he questioned the tenets of real hip-hop. In 2014, he shared a Pulitzer for interviewing the ghost of Tim Dog. He’s @MooseXL on Twitter and his email is his name at gmail dot com.
Currently Listening:
Tanya Morgan - 12 Minutes at Karriem's
John Barry - Follow Me
Sam Hill - The Sam Hill Story
:$oviet:France: - :Garista:
Ca$h Out - Kitchens and Choppas
V/A - Weightless Vol. 1
Selda - Selda
V/A - Panorama (MP 74)
G. Zadj & J.-P. Decerf - Action
V/A - Synthetic Music (AV 4151)
Magical Ring - Light Flight / More and More
MoneyMakinNique x Johnny Cinco - The Extra EP
Jean-Pierre Decerf - Out Of The Way
J.P. Decerf / M. Baroty - Publipot
Epkitan - We Come From The Trees
Raekwon - We Wanna Thank You
François De Roubaix - Les Plus Belles Musiques De Films Vol 2
François De Roubaix - Les Plus Belles Musiques De Films Vol 3
Dorothy Ashby - Dorothy's Harp
Strict Face - Marble Isles
Roger Davy - Patchwork Orchestra 5
Philippe Besombes - Libra
Hydravion - Hydravion
Hyrdravion - Stratos Airlines
Besombes-Rizet - Pôle
Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes - No2
Ennio Morricone - Veruschka| Winter Mix #5 — Evan Nabavian’s Mount Doom Mix | January 27, 2014 |
There’s the idyllic winter night in New York – Kevin McCallister reuniting with his mom under the Rockerfeller Center Christmas tree after thwarting Harry and Marv yet again – and then there’s reality: convincing yourself that that $9 burrito is worth braving the haunted wastes of Manhattan. When I’m facing wind that feels like it’s […]
| The Piru Croak of A$ton Matthews | January 21, 2014 |
Evan Nabavian once wrote an oral history of The Tales in the Hood Soundtrack. In 2014, the musical tradition of Los Angeles gang culture competes with budding movements in the South and Midwest to be the national sound of inner city conflagration ere it retire as the – yo, fuck, sorry but check out Yams’ […]
| Willie the Kid & Alchemist Let the Money Stay | January 9, 2014 |
Evan Nabavian is holding four aces. The lexicon of macks, dons, players, pimps, hustlers, and Gs gets an overhaul from Willie The Kid on “Let The Money Stay.” His neo-noir vignette is a string of salient details: lily white leather, pink panties, sauvignon blanc. Absent are minks, canes, and hard-toe gators. Rather, Willie’s rhymes assume […]
| Same As It Never Was: Knxwledge’s “Rap Jointz Vol. 1” | December 10, 2013 |
Evan Nabavian never owned stock in Polaroid. Rap music is especially fun when it confounds and Knxwledge’s Rap Jointz Vol. 1 does that a few times with analog madness and inebriated performances from the underground’s best. I started checking for the LA-based, NJ-born beatmaker in 2011 when he dropped his Hexual.Sealings LP of haywire neo-soul […]
| Brainfeeder Ballads for Bowser: Thundercat’s Nintendo Tribute | November 19, 2013 |
Evan Nabavian is the lizard king. Hiroshi Yamauchi stories are the best. When the late Nintendo boss couldn’t find his driver, he had one of the company’s engineers drive him to a meeting. On the way, the engineer spoke to fill the silence – the boss didn’t talk much. The engineer recalled seeing a man […]
| Passion of the Weiss Fall Mix #6 — Evan Nabavian | November 12, 2013 |
I’ll make this quick because I’m hearing things that suggest I’ve worn out my welcome at this particular Dunkin Donuts like, “This guy needs to buy more than two munchkins every hour to use our WiFi” and “Why the fuck does he think it’s OK to take his shoes off?” Fall is a bullshit season, […]
| Mack Wilds’ “New York Love Story” | November 7, 2013 |
Evan Nabavian first saw the man in the cape. My favorite kind of R&B is the kind that borrows liberally from hip-hop. Obvious bias there when you consider that I eat out of a Boot Camp Clikk lunchbox, but hear me out. Just as rappers relinquish some thuggery and soften up for the single, R&B […]
| Black Supaman: RZA & Christian Rich Connect | October 21, 2013 |
Evan Nabavian invented grape Kool-Aid. The other day my boss said something like, “Let’s review your report tomorrow?” “Bong bong,” I said. A pause. “Indeed.” Read any RZA interview in the past ten years and you’ll get the “Wu-Tang Forever” spiel about the influence of the Wu in the world today. Drake echoed those sentiments […]
| Azizi Gibson, The Ghost in the Shell | October 7, 2013 |
Evan Nabavian’s favorite Ghost is Dennis Coles. Rap fans’ years of bellyaching about radio pandering left them bereft of rappers who can rap well and make songs with real musicality. The infighting created an ideological divide between rappers with skill and rappers with style (oversimplifying, of course) where hooks and catchiness fell in the latter […]
| The Insanity of I, Ced | August 1, 2013 |
Evan Nabavian gave Frasier Crane most of his psychiatric tutelage. Fat Beats was cool for me because it was a place where the music files on my computer existed in real life and names like Marco Polo and Blu & Exile didn’t elicit the blank stares they got back at my dorm. It was a […]
