Thank you to the SFBA Bench Collective for giving my tired ass a place to sit while waiting for the morning commuter bus. sfbabc.org

A few years ago, this album sparked one of the craziest flame wars I’ve experienced. It was an argument with a well-known critic who violently traded insults with me and claimed that only middlebrow and ignorant fools celebrate Andre’s classic, massively influential performance. It lasted for hours.

Not going to hate…I just hope that all these super-online Socialists/Communists/Radicals who nevertheless take oligarchical money to realize their dream creative and “subversive” projects will extend that nuance to the less privileged of us.

I still think it’s deeply overrated, and I have lingering trauma from all the hype I was forced to swallow when it dropped in 1993. But I admit it has slowly begun to grown on me.

My friend on the Democrats: “Democrats are really lazy.”

Whataboutism isn’t going to save anyone. It’s true that there are parallels in American history to what’s happening now. That doesn’t negate the fact that there is a moment of consequence happening now.

Peace to the good folks in Minnesota. I’m thinking of you.

Hipster rap

I hope I live long enough to see a popular cinema that continues the radicalism of the mid-20th century and doesn’t aspire to middlebrow bromides and corporate charity.

At least it wasn’t Eddington.

I'm fighting a holy war in the mental...

Lead: we're turning into Allmusic Subhead: we're building a paywall

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., here's Larry Heard's "Can You Feel It." Please be safe, and remember: "The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going." www.youtube.com/watch?v=XufX...

I reviewed A$AP Rocky's "Don't Be Dumb." www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

@ericdharvey.com Nice essay. You probably already know this, but in the 2012 Marley documentary, Chris Blackwell said it wasn’t his whole toe that needed amputation, just the infected chunk of it, but Marley’s doctors erroneously conflated the two.

I'm not sure I can take Tom Brady saying "Wow!" every time he talks for four quarters.

I just got an intense flashback of sonic memories when I put on this now-forgotten nu-soul gem by HEAVy.

Headline adjective of the month that’s quickly growing tiresome: “storied.”

I wish the old Twitter existed so I could get annoyed at all the “j cole went platinum with no features” hashtags and “J Cole likes rapping about poop” thinkpieces when “The Fall Off” drops.

my Eyedlmode “Fogville” project on Bandcamp Daily daily.bandcamp.com/features/eye...

I'm finally listening to Celph Titled's "Nineteen Ninety Now" after reading numerous online comments about its "classic" status. Buckwild's production is fire, but Celph's thuggy brewster rhymes about beating up "queers" and "borderline raping" "bitches" are wearing thin.

Late pass?!!??! Feel free to laugh at me. It's fine...I don't mind. humthrush.com/notable-rap-...

Huh…this is cardiac-arrest pizza. What happened to self-care?

a legend of the field and a generous soul. about a decade ago, he made sure that I and other younger women critics got Rock Hall ballots. never forgot that.

More here. When folks talk about how rap journalism lost its way in the mid-to-late Aughts, Bernard was one of the editors fighting against that. allhiphop.com/news/xxl-the...

Rest in peace to James Bernard, who deserves much more credit for establishing hip-hop journalism as a profession than he gets.

Tough day on the timeline.

Rest in peace to Béla Tarr.

Maduro colorway…

Read this story!

Starting the year off right by reading a bunch of depressing headlines on “hip-hop news” sites…

I’m not sure if I can jump on the Salimata bandwagon…

Please (re)read 1984...and/or watch the Raoul Peck doc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politic...

Happy new year to my timeline. I hope you have a fruitful 2026. And remember: Peace is not the word to play! www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqnq...

This year, the outpouring of love for the San Francisco rapper was a beautiful thing, writes Pendarvis Harshaw.

Happy 90th birthday to Esther Phillips: R&B shouter, disco queen, the first teen idol, favorite of the Beatles and Leonard Feather, the Sister from Texas, and singer of one of the best country albums of the 60s. www.texasmonthly.com/arts-enterta...

I wish the blog era still existed so I could read a crazy take on Funkmaster Wizard Wiz from some random post-doctoral candidate that just downloaded his “Bellevue Patient” comp off of Zshare.

I'm watching TCM.

This year I've noticed high fashion piggybacking on experimental cultures that are much more precarious and amorphous than it. Is this new? What effect does it have? Is it even a problem? Attempted to answer these questions in this short end-of-year essay for @thewiremagazine.bsky.social

I'm surprised that stories about the "60 Minutes" crisis haven't mentioned how, decades ago, CBS also censored the program's reporting on Jeffrey Wigand v the tobacco industry due to a potential corporate merger – as shown in Michael Mann's "The Insider."

Late pass: watching the white princelings bounce to Sheck Wes's "Mo Bamba" during the Miami v Texas A&M game.

My friend on the Democrats: “Democrats are really lazy.”

“Watcha gonna do when Pun comes knockin’ at your front door, and he wants waaarrr?? (Ohhhh sheeettt!) Oh yeah, he ain’t a rapper, he’ll kill you!” - Big Pun

I reviewed 21 Savage's "What Happened to the Streets?" www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

ICYMI, I reviewed Nas & DJ Premier's "Light-Years." www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Nas and DJ Premier Are Elder Statesmen With Gifts Left to Share Two hip-hop icons deliver a heartwarming collaboration on 'Light-Years,' the final installment in Mass Appeal's “Legend Has It…” series. Read our ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ review: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Well, there's a photo I never expected to see in my life. Noam Chomsky palling around with Steve Bannon.

Free article idea: Why Jim Morrison was the 2Pac of the rock era.