Amber fields of grain? Check. Meditative poses. Check. All white pantsuits. Evangelical overtones. Mike Epps baptizing K. Dot in a pool of liquor? Triple check. I don’t know how I feel about the “Death to Molly” banner at the end of this video. I understand that Kendrick is mostly drug free and believes in intense […]

Max Bell may have written positive words about a Drake album once. There are a number of early articles/blog posts/pieces of writing I’d like deleted, wiped from existence. Some of those pieces could’ve benefited from more time spent behind the keyboard, some might’ve needed more editing from whoever was kind enough to let me write for […]

Joshua Lerner is dropping knowledge like Galileo dropped the orange. “I try to start off with sixteen dots on the paper.” This is how Rakim explains his process of writing to Ice-T in Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap. He continues. “If it’s a sixteen bar rhyme then at least I know what I’m […]

Jordan Pedersen lives his life in the margins, and that metaphor is really heavy-handed. I’m of two minds about the maneuver Kansas City rapper Gee Watts is pulling off with “Watts R.I.O.T.” On the one hand, on a humanity level, it’s really nice to see a rapper like Kendrick co-sign an underground rapper he’s been […]

Max Bell is excited for Paid Dues. If you haven’t heard Awolnation’s “Sail” yet, then you either haven’t turned on your radio or your TV since June of 2011. Or, like me, you’ve done your damndest to ignore it. The song is everywhere. Like here, here, here, and here.  It’s a well-articulated and well-funded (they’re on Red […]

Deen is not easily amused, except when he is. Hey! It’s new 50 Cent. Wow. Say what you want about the man – and there’s a lot to say if you’re so inclined – but you can’t say that he doesn’t love music. He keeps trying and trying and trying! He clearly doesn’t have to, […]

Complete with inaccurate artwork comes the “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” Remix. Jay-Z has entered the wobbling Wizards part of his career, still capable of averaging 20 a night but a shell of his former self. Forget being renegaded. The Internet always made too big of a deal about that. Eminem got him, sure, but […]

Jonah Bromwich knows who the original Teflon Don is I’m both happy and sad that it’s come to this. It’s awesome that Kendrick won. He put in the work, he made good, uncompromising music and he was lauded for it last year. He’s selling records, and those records aren’t shitty. But along with the other […]

If there was one record from 2012 that combined the drug-addled sociopolitical paranoia of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the wandering and ever-questioning quest for self-discovery burned and soaked into the pages (not the recent film-adaptation) of Kerouac’s On the Road, and the maddening inquiry into the darkness of the human […]

At this second, I should be working on an essay on Kendrick Lamar that will soon be appearing in an alternative weekly near (or not near) you. I am not. Instead, I am procrastinating in the name of research and unearthed this old DubCNN interview with K. Dot before he became Kendrick Lamar. The interview […]