Jordan Pedersen is a ball of confusion (oh yeah). The video adaptation of the feeling when your checking account is single digits, of when you fuck up at your day job and are within spitting distance of the chopping block. Friends of the site Zilla Rocca and producer Blurry Drones (Martin Douglas) don’t wallow in […]

Jordan Pedersen once played guitar on a cover of “You’re So Vain” for a cute girl’s vocal recital. In which Jillian Banks plays alt scene Freddie Gibbs, calling out a fake thug for “wearing what you think is hard.” The LA weird R&B diva has a knack for the casually devastating: “everything’s a game/always trying […]

Jordan Pedersen frowns upon slutty boy shaming. The crosstown classic. Two DC natives rhyming over a classic and doing it justice to boot. Fat Trel crumbling street bromides, Uptown XO flexing his Tupac flow to kick knowledge. Killas meetin killas in the city where younguns killin for pennies. Uptown and downtown (if not literally). The two […]

Jordan Pedersen wishes the internet would shut up about bacon. For my money, there are few generic trappings more appealing than dream pop. Call it bourgeois exploitation if you like, but cloak something in enough fuzz and echo, and I’m usually sold. It’s music game wrapping stuff in bacon. Well I guess good songs help, […]

Holy fuck Jordan Pedersen misses Breaking Bad.  The term “classicist” gives the entire movement an unfair advantage. It opts for the word “classic” when, if it were being honest, “old head” might be more appropriate. Or, thinking pessimistically, “stale.” As Mike Ehrmantraut told Walter White, “Just because you shot Jesse James don’t make you Jesse […]

Jordan Pedersen might call himself “ethnically southern.” Don’t get me wrong, Berry Gordy scared the Funk Brothers into being the best backing band in Motor City. James Brown fined his ensemble into perfection. But there’s nothing quite like the deep-fried crackle of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section. Sometimes recording under the name the Swampers, keyboardist […]

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 […]

Jordan Pedersen wants Jeremih to know how irritating AutoCorrect makes it to type his name. The increasing miscegenation of the “indie” and “pop” worlds – I use those terms *very* loosely – is a boon to all fans of the musicks. As Zeus alluded to in his review of the crossover event of the year […]

Jordan Pedersen has not seen Paid in Full, but he was a big fan of ER. The degree to which a rapper is freed from the need to say much of anything is in direct relation to how good said rapper is at rapping. Understandably, many rappers overestimate the latter, and things get off-balance: A$AP […]

When Jordan Pedersen says he has bitches on the phone, he’s referring to unpleasant customer service people. In Fist Stick Knife Gun, Geoffrey Canada talks about life in the Bronx before the proliferation of guns, about how you could get into a fight with another kid from the neighborhood without fear of getting shot up. […]