Max Bell may have written positive words about a Drake album once. There are a number of early articles/blog posts/pieces of writing I’d like deleted, wiped from existence. Some of those pieces could’ve benefited from more time spent behind the keyboard, some might’ve needed more editing from whoever was kind enough to let me write for […]

Joshua Lerner is dropping knowledge like Galileo dropped the orange. “I try to start off with sixteen dots on the paper.” This is how Rakim explains his process of writing to Ice-T in Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap. He continues. “If it’s a sixteen bar rhyme then at least I know what I’m […]

Max Bell is excited for Paid Dues. If you haven’t heard Awolnation’s “Sail” yet, then you either haven’t turned on your radio or your TV since June of 2011. Or, like me, you’ve done your damndest to ignore it. The song is everywhere. Like here, here, here, and here.  It’s a well-articulated and well-funded (they’re on Red […]

Deen is not easily amused, except when he is. Hey! It’s new 50 Cent. Wow. Say what you want about the man – and there’s a lot to say if you’re so inclined – but you can’t say that he doesn’t love music. He keeps trying and trying and trying! He clearly doesn’t have to, […]

Max Bell is the Morris Day of the blogosphere. First impressions can make or break you. That’s always been the case, but lately, they’ve become the foundation of hype for still-developing rappers who aren’t yet worthy of the adulation. When I think about the too-much too-soon trend, the first name that comes to mind is […]

Complete with inaccurate artwork comes the “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” Remix. Jay-Z has entered the wobbling Wizards part of his career, still capable of averaging 20 a night but a shell of his former self. Forget being renegaded. The Internet always made too big of a deal about that. Eminem got him, sure, but […]

Jonah Bromwich knows who the original Teflon Don is I’m both happy and sad that it’s come to this. It’s awesome that Kendrick won. He put in the work, he made good, uncompromising music and he was lauded for it last year. He’s selling records, and those records aren’t shitty. But along with the other […]

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 […]

At this second, I should be working on an essay on Kendrick Lamar that will soon be appearing in an alternative weekly near (or not near) you. I am not. Instead, I am procrastinating in the name of research and unearthed this old DubCNN interview with K. Dot before he became Kendrick Lamar. The interview […]

Just once I would like Berlin to be the preferred European locale to signify continental luxury. That would definitely get Kendrick up on Resident Adviser. That said, videos set in Compton featuring LA Kings jerseys are always infallible. This is a fact. The best part of the “Backseat Freestyle” video is watching Sherane making it […]