A mix and Interview with Frite Night artist and funk aficionado, B. Bravo

For his Fall Mixtape, Max Bell blends his favorite Chicago rap songs from Da Brat to Chief Keef.

Max Bell once played basketball with Nate Dogg.  Last week, a friend and recent L.A. transplant told me 2Pac and Dr. Dre songs left still bodies staring at the deserted dance floor of a Westside lounge. Outsiders equate lack of motion to tracks from the accepted West Coast rap suzerain with treason. And yet, this reaction […]

Max Bell is just chillin eating lamb brain I gave up on my unspoken dream of becoming a rapper a long time ago. There are enough decent white rappers and Aesop Rock is already Aesop Rock. But there was a time when I wrote rhymes in the margins of college ruled notebooks, more focused on […]

There’s the idyllic winter night in New York – Kevin McCallister reuniting with his mom under the Rockerfeller Center Christmas tree after thwarting Harry and Marv yet again – and then there’s reality: convincing yourself that that $9 burrito is worth braving the haunted wastes of Manhattan. When I’m facing wind that feels like it’s […]

The weather has no bearing on the blues. They will overtake you in sunny Santa Monica or in the coldest Chicago winter. The question is not if, but when. I’m not exactly feeling the blues now, but they’re never wholly gone. They wait in a street sign or a supermarket that forever signifies more than […]

I’m in my third decade on the planet and I’m still not sure that I understand what the exact point of a mix is. Even if I’ve been making tons of them for years. What I do know is that I’m inherently incapable of making a mix without trying to sneak in some shit the […]

These are the basics: Paul Preston (PBDY) was born and raised in Long Island. He moved to Phoenix as a teenager. He wound up in LA. He rolls with Brainfeeder. He shares a house at the edge of a cliff with the Gaslamp Killer and several others. He makes the sort of mixes that you’d […]