Max Bell‘s book collection weighs a ton.   Stones Throw has never left you in the lurch. They put out new music every week.  More often than not, it’s good and well worth your time. Occasionally, it’s great and requires innumerable listens. Below are some of the latest offerings from label over the last month or […]

Evan Nabavian has feelings only he and Lebron know Spring brings to mind my hot seventh grade math teacher who, come April, went sleeveless and changed the course of my academic career. I lingered after class on the last day of school but she never tore her clothes off. It was not meant to be […]

I’ve spent a significant part of the last few years taking the death of gangster rap for granted. The narrative that I’ve run with tracks the rise in popularity of artists like (duh) Kanye West, the explicitly fake Rick Ross, and Drake, and the concurrent fall of Young Jeezy, the disappearance of 50 Cent, the […]

Harold Stallworth is infatuated with Donald Goines’ novels. “The creative geography has collapsed over the last few years in Los Angeles.” This is a sentence I wish I could take credit for, but it’s an observation that only a California native, such as this publication’s editor, who lived through an era where Xzibit’s At The […]

Max Bell is not against rap or those thugs. Freddie Gibbs rose from scary Gary to Interscope refugee to widespread critical adoration. Some argue that the dexterous Gibbs can rap well over anything. Yet his last album, E.S.G.N. received mixed reviews.  The album was solid, but it was also what you’d expect too. It didn’t help […]

Harry Samphir kicks up dust when he writes. Madlib’s artistic canon is so extensive it’s sometimes easy to forget about 1999‘s Soundpieces: Da Antidote!, his debut release with fellow Oxnard, CA natives Wildchild and DJ Romes. More than a decade later, the record still holds up as a West Coast underground gem: 24 tracks of […]

The frequently unseen loop digga from Oxnard heads to merry olde to drop a mix fully of hip-hop, psychedelia, and funk music on the Benji B show. There is reportedly unheard Madvillain and new Mos Def in here, but there are a lot of other gems in here too, which means that this is like […]

The Beat Konducta may lack the showmanship of Gaslamp Killer or the sleight of hand of J. Rocc, but there are few on earth more adroit at the art of the Bug Out. Otis Jackson understands the DJ set as both an odyssey and an experiment. This is 50 minutes-plus of him at the Boiler […]

Max Bell is somewhere hidden in this pile of records. Madlib has never left his devotees hanging. There was a good Quasimoto record this June and I’m sure many still haven’t listened to all of the Beat Konducta and Medicine Show releases (19 releases combined). For now, it seems as if Madlib won’t stop melting […]

Part of Gibbs and Madlib’s campaign to get people to no longer rely on KFC. We all know the chicken is mostly worthless there and the sides are what it’s all about. Harold’s is a Windy City institution, but with no LA branch — this offers me no context. I will say that there are […]