Son Raw is unflappable. The concept of underground Pop music is a strange one. By definition, Pop needs the mass-appeal to hit as many people possible, while underground sounds target specific niches searching for more challenging alternatives. Today however, we live in an era when Pop has had the life focus-grouped out of it by […]

Son Raw will get no sleep till Brooklyn. For Grime/Bass heads on our side of the Atlantic, this week’s big news is going down in Brooklyn as Keysound Records’ Wen, Beneath, Parris and Dusk & Blackdown touch down for Reconstrvct. I’ll be in attendance, and will likely be very, very drunk. Until then, a shameless […]

Son Raw & Maxwell Cavaseno are all in the same gang It’s been roughly 6-7 years since YG burst on the rap scene. He’s survived two trends/sub-genres coming and going, been incarcerated, and lived a life that the average rap fan fantasizes about. Throughout those years, he’s remained an underground phenomenon, beloved in Los Angeles […]

Son Raw saw the signs. Before we talk about Wen, let’s talk about Keysound, a label that’s officially having its moment in the sun. Born of the same mid aughts explosion that gave us Hyperdub, Tectonic, and Deep Medi, Keysound’s early records weren’t just left of center – they were left of everything. While future […]

Son Raw will be in the UK in May and in Europe early June. He is willing to DJ something that isn’t Techno or Deep House for a reasonable fee. Contact him on twitter if you’re interested. I was actually thinking of skipping my column since I’d already covered this week’s big releases, but there’s […]

You hear that Doug? SON RAW IS COMING TO LONDON. Despite what Drake says, I’m perfectly willing to make new friends, they just have to meet certain guidelines. One of the rituals I expect from my homies is the ability, nay the compulsion, to endlessly quote classic rap tunes and movie quotes. If you get […]

Son Raw is back in the U.S.S.R. Not many club nights manage to attract attention outside of their home cities, particularly small, producer oriented ones. For all the hype around FWD and Low End Theory, theses were not (and are not) bacchanalian parties full of drug consumption and excess, they’re community run events by and […]

Much like the Grammy’s, the Academy’s selection process is questionable. Though it may seem that more often than not The Oscars do a good job of picking the cream of the crop, there are any number of outstanding films in a given year that will undoubtedly be left behind. So a few of us have […]

Son Raw kind of just missed the Pokemon era as a kid Until I checked out the original version of Uncertainty for this post, I’d assumed Jagwar Ma was fronted by a waifish girl from Scotland rather than an Aussie dude with a thing for Madchester era vocal production. A rockist I am not. But […]

Son Raw refuses to cover anything with a “future” genre tag. A few years ago, there were barely enough instrumental Grime tunes seeing official release to make up a scene, let alone enough good ones to incite weekly purchases. Today however, the tide has shifted – consider Boomkat’s renaming their Dubstep/Grime/Funky section to Grime/FWD if […]