Jimmy Ness only fools with charcoal “Welcome to the land where it just don’t stop. Trunks pop, tops drop, and the front-end hop.” I like to imagine summer is a lot like the world Houston rapper Fat Pat [RIP] describes on “Tops Pop,” where the music is funky, the cars have impractical modifications and the […]

Premrock is trying to one-up Joel Embiid’s Twitter feed. Photo by Gianna Leo Falcon. Chinatown will always hold a special place in my heart. Not the noir film set in LA but the one of a kind neighborhood in New York City. Summertime in Chinatown smells awful but if you want the best dumplings you […]

Torii MacAdams just finished wiping his car down Summer jams are supposed to be breezy, feel-good anthems, girding the assumption that shit is sweet. It’s easy to view summertime with soft-focus nostalgia, especially in Southern California, a supposed paradise marketed to doe-eyed outsiders since the mid-Nineteenth Century. The truth is, the proverbial shit ain’t sweet, […]

Brad Beatson turns down only for freedom.  In the summer, I’m looking to push play on a playlist and let it ride. It’s too beautiful out. And I know it’s inevitable that some drunken fingertips will hijack the music at some point to play what they want to. So this is my grand attempt at […]

Max Bell once played basketball with Nate Dogg.  Last week, a friend and recent L.A. transplant told me 2Pac and Dr. Dre songs left still bodies staring at the deserted dance floor of a Westside lounge. Outsiders equate lack of motion to tracks from the accepted West Coast rap suzerain with treason. And yet, this reaction […]

Just like T.I., Evan Nabavian was born in the trap The trap is easily the most rewarding source of rap music in 2014. Guys with names like Skippa The Flippa and Purp So Cold give no thought to restraint, convention, or bodily health as they howl and ululate over beats from some garish dystopia. A […]

Dewey Decibel is freestyling right now over coffee and brunch This summer mix is a compilation of my top played tracks in my iTunes right now, an eclectic mixture of tracks that I have been banging on the regular. There is usually a track that comes along while I am grinding on some graphic design […]

Peter Holslin is Seth Rogen’s stunt double I realized recently that I’m a desert person. I enjoy a hike up a mountain from time to time, and as a resident of Southern California, I know the beauty of the beach more than most. But for years, it’s the sand dunes and backcountry scrub that’s drawn […]

Alexy Piyevsky feels the breeze in the West Indies Here is the second installment of my Duke Bloggin reggae compilation series. Unlike the first volume, this one had no specific theme or aesthetic inspiration in mind. Instead it’s an eclectic collection of new or newly discovered songs I have recently enjoyed, mixed in with a […]

Harold Stallworth held you down for six summers. Last week, after many months of grueling deliberation, I finally trudged down to my leasing office and served the property manager with a notice to vacate. In the very near future, I’ll bid a fond farewell to the quaint streets of Montgomery County, to the farmers markets […]