The pixel killers and slanted squad of gumshoes that comprise the Wrecking Crew are heading out on a tour of the West. The goal is to wind up in Los Angeles, mumbling off the most high octane moss, surrounded by scantily clad aspiring astrologists. So basically the plot of Altman’s version of The Long Goodbye. […]

Zilla Rocca takes a break from life as a Bourbon general to break down why Billy Woods is every otherground rapper’s favorite rapper. Superman sucks. Spider-Man is a bitch. But they both have day jobs. Billy Woods has a day job. I don’t know what it is, but he has one. He released an album […]

Yuppies and tanks, sharks and banks, odd birds with feminine grace. Cobb Salads. Zilla Rocca cracks wisecracks in code, hard-boiled tutorials courtesy of the noir masters. Roc Marci needed no pulp fiction. Hempstead offers its own education of broken glass, bricks and birds. Has-Lo operates on the beats, making guitars sound like swords being sharpened. […]

Curly Castro was due. Anyone following the Flatbush-born, Philly-living rapper over the last couple of years would have noticed the extra crank and personality that was coming through his rhymes, features and collaborations. It was time he applied it to a coherent album.  His formal debut, Fidel is focused, tight and varied while delivering a […]

Rap game flooded with a deluge of “5 AM in Toronto” freestyles. Exercise some creativity. Pick up your pickaxe. Dig up some dirt. Ring Zilla Rocca, throwing right hand hooks like Rocky, the real Rocky, over Gaslamp Killer and Adrian Younge’s Veteran’s Day distortion. A few people didn’t get GLK’s last record. A comment section […]

No shish kabobs, afro-picks, and dashikis. The Wrecking Crew come with scallops, Columbian neckties, and tailor-made suits. Plus, the occasional goose that needs to be fed. For anyone raised on the Wu as holy scripture, this is far better than any fan fiction you could ever conceive. This is building a heavily fortified compound addition […]

Don’t let the green grass fool you, Zilla Rocca is as regional a rapper as you could find.  Occasionally, he slips into the Shadowboxer noir-hop executive trench coat, but on the new Party with Villains EP, he pulls from the bullets and bourbon sagas of South Philly crime reporter George Anastasia, the legacy of Allen […]

You may not appreciate Zilla Rocca’s rap singing, but you can’t deny that his artwork ranks among the most consistently best in the business. I personally do not deny his rap singing and enjoy the palm trees and tiki drink ease of the first single from his forthcoming “Party with Villains EP.” Driving the getaway […]

Fresh kill from the Wrecking Crew. More black-clad pulp bangers pulsing out of the badlands between Motherless Brooklyn, The Big Sleep, The Fantastic Four and Charlton Heston before he burned his b-r-a-i-n for the NRA.  Curly Castro channels his inner Robert Thorn on “Soylent Green,” a track excised from his forthcoming Fidel, where he pairs […]

When Zilla first told me about the concept behind Wu-Tang Pulp, I thought it was a terrible idea. The Wu canon is inviolate. There is no way to improve a song like “Bring the Pain” when Method Man raps as smooth and stellar as nutella. A banger like “Fish” is better than even pot-encrusted Branzino. […]