Jonah Bromwich has seen it all, wide-frame. Many rappers have switched their subject matter to the mundane. Rather than boasting about being a Rawsian fake gangster, they make up for a lack of subject matter with outsize boasts about the cars they drive and the clothes they rock. The key to Curren$y’s appeal is that, […]

Jonah Bromwich taught A$AP Ferg how to put in work. The conventional wisdom: MGMT made a minor indie masterpiece with Oracular Spectacular. Then they weren’t man enough to handle the resulting success – they crept inside themselves and became a small band that was unwilling to even attempt to match the bombast of their first, […]

Jonah Bromwich owns several Sunz of Man CDs. Over the last decade of pop-rap, superstars have often tended to use their album’s first single as a mission statement. Jay-Z’s “Change Clothes,” was derided as being a crappy, superficial single, but the song’s chorus and verses introduced The Black Album’s themes: a mature Jay, acknowledging his […]

Jonah Bromwich owns several copies of Is This Desire? We’ve been riding for Meg Myers — the Los Angeles-based singer who readily blends violence and sex — for a minute now, I can’t say I’m surprised that the rest of the world has yet to catch up. There’s long been a space in alternative music […]

Jonah Bromwich is personally invested. That Wale has sold out is indisputable. He was a prime example of the first wave of blog rappers (Kid Cudi, J. Cole, B.O.B. etc). and one of the first post-Kanye artists to figure out what to talk about now that any topic was acceptable. He put out two excellent […]

Jonah Bromwich is a jaarhead. An awkward metaphor for you: Random Access Memories is like a chair made out of oak, crafted by those with knowledge of the ancient and highly esoteric craft of chair-making. It’s a solid, dependable album and it’s about as exciting as a well-made place to park it. Spoiler alert, Thomas […]

Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out a roundtable on Yeezus. Jonah Bromwich is up first. One of the biggest issues separating music critics from fans is the critics’ constant demand for reinvention. For the most part, a fan of any given artist would be happy to hear their favorite album remade again […]

Jonah Bromwich wants to see the dirt. Is there room for Jonwayne? That’s the question he’s asking himself, as the ghost of his better self flagellates him for oversleeping, for looking like a buffoon, for not being grateful, for not being all he can be. It’s an exceedingly well-written single, channeling the stress of the […]

Jonah Bromwich sees the shadows of tomorrow. If I had to pick an artist that I thought people might be listening to fifty years from now, I’d give serious consideration to Madlib. For one thing, there’s the prolificacy—when you put out thirteen albums in a single year, you’re significantly multiplying the chances that someone is […]

Jonah Bromwich is the sausage king of Chicago. When it comes to music hyper-fandom, there are generalists and there are specialists. If you’re a generalist in the internet age, pretending to any kind of omniscience is a herculean task.  There’s no way to keep abreast of a broad swathe of everything when everything is so […]