Jordan Pedersen lives his life in the margins, and that metaphor is really heavy-handed. I’m of two minds about the maneuver Kansas City rapper Gee Watts is pulling off with “Watts R.I.O.T.” On the one hand, on a humanity level, it’s really nice to see a rapper like Kendrick co-sign an underground rapper he’s been […]

Max Bell is excited for Paid Dues. If you haven’t heard Awolnation’s “Sail” yet, then you either haven’t turned on your radio or your TV since June of 2011. Or, like me, you’ve done your damndest to ignore it. The song is everywhere. Like here, here, here, and here.  It’s a well-articulated and well-funded (they’re on Red […]

Deen is not easily amused, except when he is. Hey! It’s new 50 Cent. Wow. Say what you want about the man – and there’s a lot to say if you’re so inclined – but you can’t say that he doesn’t love music. He keeps trying and trying and trying! He clearly doesn’t have to, […]

Complete with inaccurate artwork comes the “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” Remix. Jay-Z has entered the wobbling Wizards part of his career, still capable of averaging 20 a night but a shell of his former self. Forget being renegaded. The Internet always made too big of a deal about that. Eminem got him, sure, but […]

Jonah Bromwich knows who the original Teflon Don is I’m both happy and sad that it’s come to this. It’s awesome that Kendrick won. He put in the work, he made good, uncompromising music and he was lauded for it last year. He’s selling records, and those records aren’t shitty. But along with the other […]

If there was one record from 2012 that combined the drug-addled sociopolitical paranoia of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the wandering and ever-questioning quest for self-discovery burned and soaked into the pages (not the recent film-adaptation) of Kerouac’s On the Road, and the maddening inquiry into the darkness of the human […]

At this second, I should be working on an essay on Kendrick Lamar that will soon be appearing in an alternative weekly near (or not near) you. I am not. Instead, I am procrastinating in the name of research and unearthed this old DubCNN interview with K. Dot before he became Kendrick Lamar. The interview […]

Just once I would like Berlin to be the preferred European locale to signify continental luxury. That would definitely get Kendrick up on Resident Adviser. That said, videos set in Compton featuring LA Kings jerseys are always infallible. This is a fact. The best part of the “Backseat Freestyle” video is watching Sherane making it […]

Slava P’s favorite jig is the Charleston. How would you celebrate the release of an album that was both critically applauded and sold 241k units in its first week? Kendrick decided to do it by dropping free music completely separate from the GKMC canon and serves as an introduction to his new collaborative efforts with the sultan of […]

Adam Wray: continuing to ensure that Passion of the Weiss employs more Canadians than Tim Horton’s. There’s a lot of big talk about this Kendrick Lamar record. Classic, this. Voice of a generation, that. It means nothing. We have no idea how good kid m.A.A.d. city will stand the test of time. It looks and […]