Tony Starks sluggish and twisted in the Couples Therapy-era teams up with the Canadian jazz fusion cream team. The beat, a Vitamin B shot, courtesy of the always good BadBaddingtons. It hits that Adrian Younge/RZA/Moricone murders-at-Lake Como vibe that Ghostface should be able to use to walk on water. The results are more mixed. The […]

The only guide to the music of DJ Quik that you'll ever need.

Still mourning the tragic death of Imperial American Rap asshole, Tim Dog — the Queens rapper/producer/author/chinchilla emperor known as J-Zone has kept busy. Just yesterday, he let loose the “Stick Up b/w “Mad Rap” 7.” The former, a filthy Hammond groove worthy of Mulatu. The latter, a rant of misanthropic beauty aimed at soccer moms, […]

Art by Kmeron It’s been a decade since Madvillain, which I already spent 16 years of my life lionizing earlier this summer. Less remembered is this live show that DOOM did that January at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge. It eventually found it’s way to outside oxygen, courtesy of Nature Sound’s, Live From Planet X. The […]

For a fusion jazz trio inhabiting the Supreme’d and Stussied costumes of normal early 20-somethings, BadBadNotGood boast extraordinary talent. Beyond preternaturally refined chops, they have a patience that affords their songs a natural ebb and flow — the same one mastered by their smoked-out and sedated forebears. The time signatures on “Velvet” alternate between the […]

The third Pharaoh being Chester Watson, spitting gilded hieroglyphics and raps for those with wrapped heads and without. Dismiss any owl who may claim to be in the lineage, but merely has intimate knowledge of what Yeezus did in a sarcophagus. Chester is closer to the lineage of Monch, the saturnine one who rocked scarabs […]

Is there any good in "i"

Last week, I was updating the blogroll for the re-launch of this site and remembered that not only do blogrolls no longer exist, no longer do most blogs. I’m not talking about Tumblr accounts where teenagers achieve new and thrilling scientific breakthroughs in Giff.ery each week. I’m talking about the wave that crested in the […]

Just when the world seems to be immolating on an August Monday, Peaking Lights drop a slab of wobbly synth-funk to act as Alka-Seltzer on your skull. Some soothing tropically-tinted California glaze about beaches with a dark undercurrent about breaking free of all that haunts you. Noir vs. sunshine in four and a half fluid […]

It’s been two complete decades since Children of the Corn spawned from the Danger Zone on 139 and Lenox. Big Lamont and Murda Mase were the initial breakout stars, but Killa Cam is the only one who remains relevant (or alive) in this dwindling era of the turn up. You don’t need another analysis about […]