In the conclusion of a special two part series, the Passion of the Weiss staff crown their top albums of 2014 and learn the value of friendship, decency, and karate.

The “Do Not Enter” tag isn’t a recommendation, it’s a warning. Chester Watson returns with the melancholy slink, bowing his head sullenly in the shadows. The hardest 17 year old rapper seething over paisley dust loops ready to collapse with the rest of the abandoned house. They don’t. This is another fragment from the darkness […]

The third Pharaoh being Chester Watson, spitting gilded hieroglyphics and raps for those with wrapped heads and without. Dismiss any owl who may claim to be in the lineage, but merely has intimate knowledge of what Yeezus did in a sarcophagus. Chester is closer to the lineage of Monch, the saturnine one who rocked scarabs […]

Jonah Bromwich has a 40 ounce with quinoa and hemp for breakfast Chester Watson’s got a new pay-what-you-like release on his bandcamp page called my girlfriend made me drop this, which had me imagining some stoned-out, space-alien-eating-R.-Kelly-and-wearing-his-skin-instrumentals. While that’s not quite the case here—these are rap beats proper—Chester has softened his sound a mite, from […]

Mexican wrestling masks, Afu-Ra hair, stray cats, and strong blunts comprise the short list of shots for “Act IV | Scene IV-V-VII,” the mini-movie from the agnostic Buddhist, Chester Watson. Ennui is rarely this unnerving. There are rare Japanese snacks and bodegas, villainy fit for a Dumile, and a monotone style fit for your favorite […]

Dirty and drugged loops that sound like something Capadonna would’ve milked a cow over. Bring forth Chester Watson, head full of scabs, frame full of high blood pressure, kicking these rotten samurai skeins. Higher than Hemp heads, rugged as Hempstead. This is just 96 seconds of severed arteries and bullion bars. He tweeted yesterday that […]

Dewey Decibel is an emcee/visual artist from Philadelphia who has a deep love for breakfast foods and brunettes. This is a mixtape that reminds me of the ones I used to make for myself when I was in High School. I would dub cassette tapes with all of my favorite hip hop tracks jammed together […]

Smileswithteeth is the solo project of Gabriel Gutierrez, a Montreal based beatmaker and producer making music for the morning commute. Sampling songs for texture instead of melody, his music falls into an often meditative state, while still being propelled by the current of left-field house and hip-hop. His album, Everyday Always, comes out May 12th […]

Max Bell is flush. RZA and GZA were right: You have to read the labels. If you don’t, you might get poisoned. Oakland based independent label Hot Record Societe released Chester Watson’s Space Nobility  (review here) last year. Their latest release comes from 22-year-old Santa Ana rapper/producer Broke/ (the slash is intentional), whose five-track EP Sketches dropped earlier […]

Twenty years beyond the triumph from the G-U-R-U, the wild one with the monotone style, comes the monotone Samurai. Chester Watson, the Tin Wooki, the 16-year old with St. Louis blood, a Georgia address, metal-faced ancestry, and worries piqued by witches curses, too much weed, and/or the struggles inherent in being a teen prodigy. Stress […]