When I was in college, one of my best friends regularly employed the slogan, “every day is a Friday.” It was a myopic mantra only able to ring true for four years — tops. Or forever if you live the life of sloth and indolence that we practice here at Kramerica Industries. Barring an existence […]

Zilla Rocca, the black cherry plucker, public pool poisoner, Scorsese Cinephile, bottle breaker, corner store crusher, flavor aficionado, Chef conisseur, root beer fade fanatic, dime store detective, pulp fiction sage,  comic book kingpin. Al Pacino poltergeist, dame dropper, Barcelona breakfaster, Mojito masher, Cohiba filtered flatfoot, noir-hop creator. Best consumed with a Winchester and a Winchester. […]

Charcoal hands. Purple ties and purple tapes. ZR and Has going crayola, a fresh coat for a tired blend. Indirect homage to Ice-T and straightforward pounds to Edan and Elzhi. Kids raised on Wu-Tang slang slashing in opal and in the color of money. Biggie referenced in mustard spread. Egg shell tiles. Nostalgia stashed in […]

“Saturday Nite” feels less timely at 11:00 a.m., Sunday morning, but the beauty of Zilla Rocca’s Nights and Weekends mix is that you can blast it until we have to stop wearing white (does not apply to Cam’ron, whose ability to breach the furthest parameters of the color spectrum remains on Technicolor Dreamcoat level ). […]

Has any relatively obscure rap song had a better second life than “Broken Language?” Forget Red and Meth’s 08 version, a decade and a half later, the stalagmite set remains enthralled by Smooth Da Hustler’s & Trigger Tha Gambler’s Tunnel banger. From Action Bronson’s “Moonstruck” to Zilla Rocca, Has-Lo, and Curly Castro’s “The Heat” (American […]

Photo by Liz Padova Three weeks ago, I ran through the increasing numbers of rappers finding inspiration in contemporary bass music (no Da King & I).  Through unintentional oversight, I didn’t include Zilla Rocca and Curly Castro, who have been rapping over dubstep and D&B tracks since before brostep became the popular perjorative (and it […]

Immense respect due to Rock the Dub for surviving a half-decade in the indigent wasteland that is the independent Internet world. Ask any blogger who doesn’t collect a bi-weekly check from some corporate benefactor: scrounging for interesting content, posting multiple times a day, and attempting to say anything remotely insightful is harder than sitting through […]

It’s like Yelawolf said: don’t be so easily impressed, in ’93 you had to rap. So my endorsement of Curly Castro came with reservations. I’ve watched the Philly via Bucktown rhymer go berserk live, seen him match Scribble Jam champ Nocando in a cipher, and enjoyed both of his mixtapes — but to use an […]

It wasn’t Odd Future ransacking Fallon, but this week quietly marked another milestone first for another gifted rap crew, when Zilla Rocca and Curly Castro made their debut on Philly’s NPR outlet, XPN.  Re-working songs from 2009’s “Slow Twilight” for the Key Studio Sessions,  the pair brought live guitar, deft flourishes, and a pinpoint refinement […]

Heaven Razah, the 3rd solo offering from Sunz of Man stand-out Hell Razah, not only is the most slept-on Wu-Tang release of 2010, it also serves as a surefire A&Ring homerun for Jay Electronica’s long overdue debut on an indie budget. Ready? 1.) Get beats from 4th Disciple, Allah Mathematics, Havoc, and Ayatollah. They will […]