Max Bell something something FADE IN INT. APARTMENT BUILDING – EARLY MORNING WARA FROM THE NBHD enters his apartment, exhausted from a long day and night spent hustling. Immediately, his girlfriend begins to argue with him. The baby wakes and begins to cry. Voices fade. Guitars cry. ROLL TITLE CARD – THE ILL STREET BLUES Apart […]

  Max Bell has a $1000 shaved head. “You ain’t gotta think about it, cause you already know.” So goes the hook to “MDA,” the title track from Million Dollar Afro, the collaborative mixtape from Compton-bred rapper Problem and Richmond’s prodigal son IamSu!. It’s the statement of intent, nothing has changed since either man’s last […]

Max Bell spent time among the wise, went through a garment renaissance. If you listen to ’90s hip-hop, you’ll know there’s no shortage of references to Nautica, the nautical-inspired clothing brand turned street-wear du jour for hustlers, thugs, and (I’m guessing) all Wu members pre-Wu-Wear. Biggie claimed he would put “mad slugs through your Nautica.’ […]

Max Bell prefers snuff. Apart from Alchemist’s Russian Roulette, my knowledge of Russian music is little to none. My knowledge of all things Russian really only includes Russian lit and conversation I had with one of my old editors, who just happened to be from Russia.  I have no idea what’s going on over there […]

If you’re not a fan of the Ravens or Curren$y, then I’m sure Sunday was a bit of a disappointment (I fall in with the Jet set). There was the game delay, a half-hearted Beyonce/Destiny’s Child performance, and a batch of hardly funny or persuasive commercials. But one commercial made me pay attention—the BlackBerry commercial. […]

Max Bell once turned wine into water. Any artist worth a damn is willing to diverge from what they’ve successfully created. They’re willing to explore, to branch off into the uncomfortable and unfamiliar, to challenge themselves and their audience. But any departure into uncharted territory holds significant potential for missteps, as well as the potential […]

Max Bell doesn’t remember what he ate for breakfast. I don’t know what it is about Stones Throw, but somehow they always end up surprising me. Maybe Peanut Butter Wolf is a genius (it’s definitely up for debate)? Maybe Stones Throw scours Los Angeles and the rest of the globe for quality music using the […]

Max Bell does not run from a good caveat. Up front, I don’t listen to “electronic” music or “dubstep” or “EDM” or whatever. At least not regularly. When it comes to anything that may or may not be labeled “electronic” music, I fall more in line with the downtempo, Ninja Tune-esque set. Blockhead (Interludes After […]

Max Bell is firmly pro-DuRag, always and forever. If it’s going to come out, it may as well come out now — I owned a durag. Fuck it, I owned a few. One may or may not have been littered with Allen Iverson logos (I definitely had those finger sleeves). Thankfully, I had the good […]

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 […]