Jeff Weiss is a writer from Los Angeles, Ca. He founded POW in late 2005, a curse that continues to this day.
He can be contacted at [email protected]. I guess.
| Special Delivery: One of Fela Kuti’s First-Ever Tracks Gets Discovered | February 12, 2015 |
We tend to ascribe false divinity to genius. Brilliance isn’t always a rite of passage right out of the womb. The truth is more sinuous. Before he became Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie was Davey Jones, a Marc Bolan manque. Before Hendrix became Hendrix, he spent a half-decade in anonymity, honing his style on the road […]
| P.O.W. Mix Series, Volume XVII: Daedelus — “LOVE to make mixes to” | February 9, 2015 |
For the 17th installment in the POW mix series, LA beat scene legend Daedelus takes you from Rae Sremmurd to Arthur Russell, Jeremih to the Escorts.
| The Strength of Narcotics: Vince Staples’ “Screen Door” Video | February 5, 2015 |
The best writers freeze specific details in each frame. For Vince Staples, it’s the screen door, swinging back and forth as his father Nate serves fiends. It’s Long Beach in the 90s, the last lingering peak of the crack era, right after Snoop turned an LBC sweatshirt into a symbol of neighborhood pride. Spike Jordan […]
You can get with this or you can get with that. But you should get with this.
| Welcome to the Big Leagues: Action Bronson & Alchemist Shred | February 3, 2015 |
We are not in the business of posting every song from every rapper. Leave that to the thirsty vultures who need to be regularly doused in Gatorade (or something worse). But there’s rules to this shit. I haven’t made myself a manual, but when Action Bronson and Alchemist drop a song called “Big League Chew,” […]
| Smoking That Super Unleaded: The Rise of Houston’s Sauce Twinz | January 29, 2015 |
The Sauce Twinz aren’t about surprises. If you conceived a stereotypically 2015 Houston rap video, you probably wouldn’t be far off from this. No chrome spinners are invoked. But there are shout outs to Screw and enough double cups to keep the great-grandchildren of styrofoam magnates in mink. The hi-hats are in trap triplicate, the […]
| Video: Nocando – “Third World Hustle” | January 26, 2015 |
The Hellfyre Club’s version of MacBeth by way of Phillip K Dick by way of South Central. Where Busdriver hovers over a smoking cauldron chanting “fair or foul” and Nocando boasts glowing and guilt-riddled eyes, leading a squadron of goons with semi-automatics. Taking breaks to throw dollars at bike-riding harlots. In which the graphic novel […]
| “We Just Wanna Do Some Wavy Shit.” ASAP Yams — The Lost Interview | January 19, 2015 |
Early in 2012, A$AP Yams told the story of his rise in a never-published interview. In the wake of his untimely passing, it's presented here in full.
| Action Bronson Keeping it Thoro on Funkmaster Flex | January 15, 2015 |
As much as we malign rap for sport and clicks, it’s a solid sign for the genre’s health when the capitols are flourishing. LA and New York and Chicago and Atlanta are all amidst minor renaissances. This isn’t anything new, but the popular perception of New York as an overrated convalescent home feels obsolete (at […]
You’re Dead was almost Talmudic in its intentions. It aspired to merge rap and jazz and beat music, write requiems for the dead and resuscitate flat-lining souls. If you can criticize it, it’s via that Icarus curse of over-ambition. Sometimes, the fusion soared. Sometimes, it got soupy and overly ambient. Like many musicians who work […]
