Kendrick Lamar’s haunting, yet beautiful new music video for Humble warms the part of my heart that can’t stop Instagramming with the a6 filter on #vsco. It’s alarming and exposes a variety of black aesthetics pertaining to violence, endurance, pain, and sex. Directed by Dave Meyers & the Little Homies, the video is seductive… Read More

It’s a pleasantly quiet Sunday morning and you’re cruising down a west Oakland promenade littered with the remnants of last night’s youthful debauchery. Broken Hennessy bottles and stomped-out Swisher Sweet roaches laying damp in the gutters evoke the evening’s regrettable decisions and exacerbate your own mild hangover merely with the images they conjure. You stop… Read More

The summers of 2014 and 2015 could not have been more different for me. 2014 was the start of a new relationship, and 2015 was the difficult ending. Although the two summers were a year apart, and although they corresponded to two opposite emotional poles of my life, I associate both summers with many of… Read More

What do you want out of life? What’s your grandest ambition, your most personal desire? What small idea motivates you through each day, and swims in your mind as you fall asleep? For Tupac lookalike, Young Jeezy hater and Gary, Indiana’s best rapper, Freddie Gibbs, the answer is a piñata filled with cocaine. “I mean, what… Read More

In the first four minutes of Schoolboy Q’s new album, Oxymoron, he says the word “gangsta” 67 times. Actually, 66. His 4 year old daughter, Joy, kicks off the album with the line “Fuck rap, my daddy a gangsta,” cementing her place as the hardest 4 year old in the rap game. Through the first… Read More

~Random disclaimer~ This isn’t a “Best Mixtapes 2013,” because there are plenty of those out there. It’s just 5 random tapes that I bang with, that didn’t necessarily get the same coverage as Acid Rap or Run The Jewels type projects.   I$0lyf3 2, by KR: Since getting my show in September, I’ve spent a lot of time on mixtape websites… Read More

Action Bronson hails from Flushing, Queens, but he is a man of worldly tastes, tastes which he never hesitates to indulge, as evidenced by his music and his physique.  Listeners of his previous projects know well his devotion to luxury cars, exotic food, and hospitable women through his ability to endlessly discuss all three in… Read More