| The Wayniac Moves in Silence | November 21, 2013 |
Max Bell put beer in the school water fountains. Jonwayne has one of the best live sets around right now, rap or otherwise. I’ve seen him at least four times this year, and he’s managed to leave me captivated, spellbound, etc. each time — I cannot say the same of other rappers I’ve seen multiple times […]
| Poison Crackers: Jonwayne’s Rap Album One | October 30, 2013 |
The bad egg straight from a bad duck, Jonwayne, dropped his debut rap album yesterday. Bluntly titled, Rap Album One, the contents are as no-frills and sharp-edged as the cover. If you want to find the emotions, send the scalpel underneath the jittery tense synthesizers. Falling Deeper is the refrain repeated at the end of […]
| Samiyam Wishes You Were Here | October 28, 2013 |
Kyle Ellison rejected your invitation to play candy crush. “I’m just trying to show you where I’m coming from,” says Sam Baker of his new album, “I’m not about futuristic spaceship beats, just straight forward hip-hop.” It seems like Samiyam has been fighting this battle for years, watching as his head-nodding rap joints are filed […]
| Madlib, The Rock Konducta’s “Black Widow” | October 22, 2013 |
Max Bell is somewhere hidden in this pile of records. Madlib has never left his devotees hanging. There was a good Quasimoto record this June and I’m sure many still haven’t listened to all of the Beat Konducta and Medicine Show releases (19 releases combined). For now, it seems as if Madlib won’t stop melting […]
| Surface to Air Missive: Southern Psychedelic Rock From Leaving Records and Stones Throw | October 2, 2013 |
Jonah Bromwich hopes Neil Young will remember. ‘ Here are two jams from Surface to Air Missive. Formerly of the one-man funk outfit Dream Love (and six other groups and projects before that), Floridian Taylor Ross is a multi-instrumentalist and Beat descendant. His songs with the new four-piece are ramshackle creations, vibrant and sprawling but […]
| Jump Ropes, Suplexes and Homeboy Sandman | September 30, 2013 |
If rap is pro wrestling as Uncle Rush recently said on the Arsenio Hall Show, it doesn’t mean that it necessarily conforms to the modern nitroglycerin stereotype. If it is wrestling, it’s more like the early 80s pre-Wrestlemania version, with deep competition in different realms — in one arena, a flashy gimmick could outstrip technical […]
Max Bell is not fragile. If you’re reading this, you’ve heard of Jonwayne, the “rap game Sam Beckett,” the “open toed Blowedian.” (see here, here, here, or here). Yesterday, marked the release of Cassette 3: The Marion Morrison Mixtape, the third tape in the “Cassette Trilogy.” Taking its name from actor John Wayne — his […]
Dub Club is no longer just another weekly in L.A., if it ever was to begin with. It’s an institution, respected by Reggae heads from Silver Lake to Kingston. There are other places in the states where you can listen to DJs spin Reggae, Dub, Ska, Dancehall, and anything else worth listening to that’s come […]
| Jonwayne’s Notes to Himself | June 13, 2013 |
Jonah Bromwich wants to see the dirt. Is there room for Jonwayne? That’s the question he’s asking himself, as the ghost of his better self flagellates him for oversleeping, for looking like a buffoon, for not being grateful, for not being all he can be. It’s an exceedingly well-written single, channeling the stress of the […]
| Beware of Dub Club | May 7, 2013 |
Max Bell has been known to say, “eh mon,” in mixed company. Stones Throw perennially cracks the top ten (and some years top one) lists for ‘The Best Independent Record Label.’ The same can be said for Dub Club—the Wednesday night Dub/Reggae/Dancehall show that blasts blunted and bone-soothing bass out of Los Angeles’s Echoplex—which should be in […]
