Max Bell put beer in the school water fountains. Jonwayne has one of the best live sets around right now, rap or otherwise. I’ve seen him at least four times this year, and he’s managed to leave me captivated, spellbound, etc. each time — I cannot say the same of other rappers I’ve seen multiple times […]

The bad egg straight from a bad duck, Jonwayne, dropped his debut rap album yesterday. Bluntly titled, Rap Album One, the contents are as no-frills and sharp-edged as the cover. If you want to find the emotions, send the scalpel underneath the jittery tense synthesizers. Falling Deeper is the refrain repeated at the end of […]

This episode is either one of the best Shots Fireds we have ever done or the most offensive. I suspect both. It starts out with us slandering Street Fighter II characters and moves into the Marilyn Manson and Gucci Mane song “Pussy Wet.”  Then we throw shade on Drake’s “Wu-Tang Forever,”  discuss tranny knife fights […]

When I picked him up for our interview, Jonwayne was wearing a soccer shirt, athletic shorts, and flip-flops. And he was wearing that same getup when he performed an excellent set to a mix of stoned teenagers and OG Jonwayniacs that same night at Echo Park Rising. That’s not entirely true, I guess: he’d judiciously […]

Max Bell is not fragile. If you’re reading this, you’ve heard of Jonwayne, the “rap game Sam Beckett,” the “open toed Blowedian.” (see here, here, here, or here). Yesterday, marked the release of Cassette 3: The Marion Morrison Mixtape, the third tape in the “Cassette Trilogy.” Taking its name from actor John Wayne — his […]

“Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne. I’m not gonna cry about my pa. I’m gonna build me an airport, put my name on it. — Tobias Funke. Jon Wayne is Jonwayne’s real name. Marion Morrison is the birth name of the football player/frat boy turned cinema star we know as John Wayne. For the […]

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 […]

No excuses to ignore Jonwayne. The sandal-sporting savage has made it his mission to murk everything before him in 2013. You liked Madvillain and Edan? This is what those influences produced. What makes it original is that Wayne takes the ideas and spirit rather than the specific sound. So the layered punchlines and syllable practice […]

I’ve started and deleted about a half dozen intros in an attempt to describe “Cool Runnings.” This track taken from Jonwayne’s Cassette 2 exists to defy description. He and Zeroh rap like Kid Icarus, words as arrows, patterns that dip and dive like an aerial show. Sandal game is impeccable. Too many things go right […]

Jonah Bromwich has the Neptune blues In his own singularly unappealing way, Joey Bada$$ expressed an important idea about DOOM. In his interview with Narudwar, Joey pointed out that the man with metal fingers is an important influence for those know who about him, but could never be mainstream, “because that just wouldn’t be dope.” […]