Chris Daly kicks it like Liu Kang.  Nocando is a man of many talents. A free style street fighter capable of spitting Chun Li kick-like licks. The host of the Low End Theory, which if you don’t know about by now, you just don’t know, you know? Launcher of labels named after X-Men nemeses. Wearer […]

Max Bell also endorses the Howie Mandel and Fred Savage vehicle, Little Monsters. Nocando has been riding the wave for a minute. Low End Theory remains popping and popular as ever (ask  your local fire marshal). Hellfyre Club dropped one of last year’s best rappity-rap releases  (Dorner vs. Tookie) and will soon be headed to […]

I host a podcast with the rapper of this song. Said podcast returns tomorrow. In the interim, after more delays than an Italian train line, Nocando’s Jimmy the Burnout drops on Feb. 4th. “Little Green Monsters” is a song about jealousy, with a title inspired by a Max B lyric. Liphemra handles the hook with […]

Max Bell favors Michael Concepcion for the TDE Connect. Hellfyre Club is one of the strongest and most necessary branches of the hip hop tree. The natural and logical outgrowth of Project Blowed, much of their roster has weathered the calms and storms of the ever fluctuating indie rap landscape for years, refusing to break […]

Nocando and Kail combine for the spookiest rap Halloween moment since Tales From the Hood. Stay spooky. Full moon out. Wolves howling. Apples with razor blades. Don’t leave your Halloween bucket around me.

Three generations of art-rap coming together to get cold. If you’ve been following LA rap for the last decade, you don’t need me to play connect the dots. The Blowed influence filters in through the abstraction and questioning of false claims. Even if you exclusively want rap harder than basalt, you can’t deny the honesty […]

Nobody, Nocando, and the ethereal disembodied falsetto of Baths take a trip to the beach, smoke some seaweed, scream “Free Max B,” and invoke Aztec Gods, in the video for the single from Vivid Green that Chris Daly already vivisected. Essential listening if you’ve ever wondered how to turn a snorkel into a “water pipe.” […]

If you’ve been paying attention to the last half-dozen episodes of Shots Fired, the only podcast to offer advice on how to adopt a puffin, you might notice that we’ve steered away from the one episode, one topic approach. There are only so many ways you can break down the history of independent rap and […]

Apologies for the relative inaction in these parts. I have been traveling and listening to the song on Yeezus that makes me want to listen to Mos Def’s “Traveling Man.” This is, of course, a lie because I only have time in my life to listen to ESGN and Run the Jewels and Migos (as […]

The latest Shots Fired aims to get at the core of Dumbfoundead’s career, fan base, and racial stereotypes he’s encountered.  If you’re unfamiliar with the Koreatown rapper, this LA Weekly feature I wrote a while back should help you catch up.  We talk about battle rap, Project Blowed, his huge Nepalese fan base, being compared […]