| How Music Becomes News (brought to you by AT&T) | October 7, 2014 |
Will Hagle knows “news” is just an acronym for north, east, west, south. 1. A PR Company disperses a press release to any media outlet that may be marginally interested 2. A music blog finds the post fitting with its #brand 3. An unpaid writer embeds the YouTube video, copies a few lines from the […]
| Mick Jenkins is Trying to Get Over The Water[s] | September 24, 2014 |
Will Hagle is waterproof — that means he can’t be wet The public service announcements in Los Angeles remind us to remember our watering days. Houses with even addresses should only water their lawns Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Odd addresses can take Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. On Mondays we all take a break to dump […]
| Place of Birth: Jon Waltz “Home” | August 12, 2014 |
Will Hagle might scream and yell like Samuel L. The place Jon Waltz calls Home is also the city from which DJay and Skinny Black hail. Meaning it’s Memphis, but also sort of a fiction. When you leave a place and come back it’s never the same as it was in your mind. Absence may […]
| Whip Appeal: Baby Ace & Rob Gullatte Talk About Houston | July 30, 2014 |
Will Hagle has outlawed lean in his apartment complex Everything about Houston is repellent to my Yankee blood. The wide highways, the airport’s name, the Astros, the fact that it is both in the South and in Texas. Still, every time I pop Boss of All Bosses in my CD deck I find myself screaming […]
| Lounging With Martha Quinn: Kevin Abstract “MTV1987” | July 22, 2014 |
Will Hagle still kicks it with Quddus Kevin Abstract is a digital native. He presents himself as a child of the web, from his website to his location description on Twitter, which reads, simply, “internet.” That location description seems accurate especially for Kevin Abstract but also for anyone listening and talking about music in 2014. […]
| Spell His Name Right: Namebrand “Suicide City” | July 18, 2014 |
Will Hagle invented the first 15 pound laptop If the song’s video-less YouTube video is any indication, “Suicide City” consists of a hodgepodge of skyscrapers a la the backdrop for Last Week Tonight. More likely it is Los Angeles. More specifically it is Long Beach, the city from which Namebrand hails. The song follows themes […]
Will Hagle reverse engineered his backpack. In my head I am creating a roster for an All Star team of rappers that I mostly can’t understand but still recognize as genius. For some reason it is a baseball team but Tony Parker is still MVP, MF Doom is behind the plate in a catcher’s mask […]
Will Hagle pities the fool that acts shitty in the midst of the calm, the witty War, by nature, is divisive. Trauma is universal. If you didn’t agree with or just didn’t care to hear Pharoahe Monch’s political thoughts on W.A.R., the album could be easily alienating. P.T.S.D. is similar to his last album in […]
| Kevin Abstract and the Last of the Genres | May 14, 2014 |
Will Hagle knows how to leave anything in 30 seconds Someone once told me, genre is a flat circle. Everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re gonna do over and over and over again. Truly creative artists are those outside that circle, looking down and laughing. Genre distinction may not actually matter to most […]
| Everyday is a Holiday With Michael Christmas | May 13, 2014 |
Will Hagle prefers to bat his best hitter second in the lineup If you don’t want to be bothered with a long-winded ramble about my personal feelings towards Boston, skip these next four paragraphs, which can be boiled down to this: Michael Christmas is a good rapper and I’ve been watching too much Cheers. In […]
