Paul Thompson acts his waist size  Henry Canyons is hungry. Maybe you can tell when he’s bobbing and weaving between French and English on “Evander Holyfield’s Ear”; maybe it’s when he trades foreboding barbs with Billy Woods on “Mood Swings”. One way or another, his new EP One Thousand Plateaus is a vivid opening salvo. […]

Paul Thompson eats rappers as part of a complete breakfast You know MF DOOM as the villain. Operation: Doomsday was the warning shot, the fractured origin story; Vaudeville Villain and the rest of the early-aughts side projects served as a slow crescendo to the main event. When Madvillainy finally hit shelves and cerebellums, there was […]

Respect Paul Thompson’s qualifiers “I keep remembering that the preview audiences, before the critics went, didn’t have anywhere near the amount of trouble understanding what the play was about; that didn’t happen until the critics told them that it was too difficult to understand.” – Edward Albee, 1964 “There are low expectations of people who […]

Paul Thompson once shot the fair one with Blinky Blink When it became evident that Mase and his nimble, sedate flow were inescapable influences on rap in the 2000s, some people had to be a little embarrassed. During Bad Boy’s heyday, a hefty faction of rap listeners wrote him off: he was at best an […]

Just last week, Paul Thompson asked me to christen his kid. Dem Atlas is the kind of person to take a friendly “How’re you doing?” at face value. The short answer: it’s complicated. The unabridged version comes in the form of “All We Got”, the Minneapolis upstart’s first proper release since signing with Rhymesayers. While […]

Paul Thompson hits blunts hard as Ray Mercer “Mama should have cuffed me to the radiator” – Nas, 1999 The critical revisionism on It Was Written is a good thing. In recent years, Nas’ sophomore effort has finally been recognized as the frantic, vital look at New York that it is—all affecting crime tales and […]

Paul Thompson was last scene at Harold’s with a two piece and fries If you still haven’t seen True Detective, don’t worry. We here at Passion of the Weiss present the following footage just as Freddie Gibbs chose to: without context. But as you follow Matthew McConaughey’s Detective Rust Cohle through doors and past stunned […]

Paul Thompson has no time for games cause he’s all grown up It has been suggested of late that Young Thug is mired in the pits of major-label hell. That very well may be true, but if it is, Thugga seems intent on lying, cheating, and stealing to earn his ticket out. The past month […]

Paul Thompson once paid Bill Cosby to be the boss Los Angeles is a series of different worlds stitched together by dry heat and poorly maintained freeways. Pick up a tourist, drive them ten miles, and drop them off—they might as well be in a new universe. (Or maybe they stumbled onto the set of […]

Paul Thompson passed more ese’s than motorcade police parades in East LA. Pharoahe Monch believes in Phil Jackson. When I asked the one-time Madden star how he thought this NBA season would shake out, he gave me his conference champions (Oklahoma City and Indiana, if you’re wondering), before a long, weary pause. “I just hope […]