KCRW’s Anthony Valadez doing the Lord Quasimoto’s work and mixing a hybrid blend of the best of Stones Throw from the last 16 years. This takes you from early boom-bap from Peanut Butter Wolf and Charizma to the Stark Reality (the jazz group who gave you the sample for “Figg Get Da Money”) to Madlib, […]

When I picked him up for our interview, Jonwayne was wearing a soccer shirt, athletic shorts, and flip-flops. And he was wearing that same getup when he performed an excellent set to a mix of stoned teenagers and OG Jonwayniacs that same night at Echo Park Rising. That’s not entirely true, I guess: he’d judiciously […]

Don’t even ask me what’s going on in this video. Pretty sure you have to be German or gypsy to understand even a fraction. There are accordians and what appears to be a new sport in its nascent stages. It’s probably already being televised on Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. That’s the name […]

The illustrious Folerio paid a visit to Shots Fired headquarters in traffic-clotted downtown Hollywood. Better known as Peanut Butter Wolf to non-Polish audiences, Mr. Butter Wolf has ran arguably the best independent label of the last decade and a half. Maybe you heard of the little records with donuts and masked men on the covers. […]

As I mentioned prior, this is the song voted this summer’s most likely to take someone behind a liberal arts college and get them pregnant. By me. Polls closed early. The video is here now. Lots of beaches and hand holding, ideal to cool off after a day’s worth of listening to songs about sex, […]

“Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne. I’m not gonna cry about my pa. I’m gonna build me an airport, put my name on it. — Tobias Funke. Jon Wayne is Jonwayne’s real name. Marion Morrison is the birth name of the football player/frat boy turned cinema star we know as John Wayne. For the […]

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 […]

Tosten Burks drove a Sienna for a month last December and you know what, he liked the spaciousness. If you’re not bumping Dam-Funk in your minivan this summer, you’re missing the point of summer and the point of minivans. Further proving the brilliance of his revivalism, he’s getting funk icons like Slave-singer Steve Arrington to […]

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 […]

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 […]