Recommended for the car thieves, miscellaneous flockers, getaway drivers, black lunged, paranoid vagrants, gun runners, strudel connoisseurs, wearers of both loose and tight pants, and fans of rap music. Danny and Bronson, beat by Al, from the GTA V soundtrack. Enjoy with a coffee and a danish with a chisel concealed inside it.

The song is called “Good Samaritan,” but the impulse is to beat, rob, and bloody the track until it’s twitching half-dead in the road. The Wayniac links up with Alchemist, with assists from Ras G and Samiyam at the Santa Monica laboratory, that industrial furnace contributing to the demise of the ozone layer, one exhaled […]

Because I am not-so-secretly animatronic and cynical, I cannot get into Future Islands. The histrionics and over-the-top aspects are a little too Beauty and the Beast soundtrack, the dance moves a little too frumpy dad, the pop sensibilities a little too on the nose — as though it’s indie rock and punk filtered through a […]

Beware the Internet hype machine. That’s probably the best advice to give to young artists, those recipients of a deafening wave that inevitably leads to a (temporarily) crippling crash. Joker saw the tsunami hit hard circa 2009, when his purple variant of dubstep, became the ballyhooed mutation. If you’re keeping track, it was right around […]

Earlier this year, House Shoes appeared on Shots Fired. When asked if he liked any pop music whatsoever, the only thing he replied was Phil Beaudreau. It’s a slight stretch to call this pop because it never genuflects into anything that we’d consider modern pop music. No auto-tune or trap snares, ratchet minimalism, compressed sounds […]

If Flying Lotus wanted to do a Rick Rubin and revive the 666-fighting spirit of Krayzie Bone, I would not be the only one celebrating like I had just won the rodeo. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are permanently underrated because they exist in no category and thus elicit few comparisons. As loved as it was, barbershop gospel […]

One day in the future, a group of flamingo-haired, brony-tailed, and #Aeropostalecore college kids will be sitting in a Versace lecture hall and taking notes on their iced out tablet devices about the singularly fascinating career of Jody Highroller. You cannot dismiss Riff Raff because he will continually move the polo goals further, more blindingly […]

Do the math. The same week that Kobe Bryant breaks the all-time shots missed record, the same week that Serengeti gears up to release the KD LP III, the same week that the Kings start to make people believe that they’re actually for real, we get the return of Shaq-Fu. Technically, this excavated track came […]

If you took the pedantic stance that all forms of revivalism are irrelevant, you could make the case against Yowda and Y.G.’s “That’s How it Goes.” In a way, this is no different from the Joey Badassery “Yo, let’s take it back to 95” ethos prevalent on the East Coast. But there’s a thin line […]

In advance of his sixth solo album, "Bells and Whistles," Blockhead talks gentrification, simplicity, and the New York Knicks.