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.

Satan wants to weigh in on the merits of the deal…

Tanya Morgan’s “Moonlighting” was a fun record.

Trend of the season that I think is kinda gross: liquid-filled records.

Standing on the Corner are great, but selling a 7-inch record for $150 is crazy to me.

Almost forgot to post this one. I wrote about Open Mike Eagle's "Neighborhood Gods Unlimited" for Rolling Stone's The 100 Best Albums of 2025 list. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

The 100-million-dollar lumpen proletariat Louis Vuitton executive.

I wrote about Skrilla feat. Lil Yachty's “Rich Sinners,” Veeze's “L.O.A.T.,” Saba and No ID's “How to Impress God,” Metro Boomin feat. Quavo, Breskii and YKNiece's “Take Me Thru Dere,” and Playboi Carti's “Like Weezy.”

go watch “School Colors” (as mentioned in this article) about race relations at Berkeley High School in the early 90s) and have your mind blown at the echoes out to today

very cool look at the scene that birthed me by @humthrush.bsky.social (I’m quoted a bunch) www.kqed.org/arts/1398432...

Sunspot Jonz!

For Bay Area rap heads, I wrote about the underground rap era of the mid-90s for KQED. www.kqed.org/arts/1398432...

I wrote the year-end Hiphop and R&B column. Congratulations to The Wire for a successful 2025!

Wow...I didn't realize Laughing Squid still existed. Peace to all the creators of internet 1.0 that you don't have to use the Wayback Machine to rediscover. laughingsquid.com

Dear fledgling writers: Never begin an attack on a book's ideas with the sentence, "I never actually read the book." (And yes, this is a shot.)

That comment also bugs me out and I'm the estate!

Rap and R&B musicians deserve as much critical generosity as your boilerplate indie/"electronic"/pop/hyperpop/meme act. A claim that "Well, it's not as good as this Grammy-winning comeback classic from a decade ago" feels like an unreasonable standard.

I reviewed De La Soul's "Cabin in the Sky." www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Rest in power.

Rest in peace to Udo Kier.

Ha ha…there’s a long tradition of rappers and R&B singers making songs inspired by their managers’ lives, but fans think it’s about *them*.

This sentence from the NYT story on college radio bugs me out. We all know that Arthur Russell is dead, right? A record label can't sign *him*, just whoever owns his estate. It's strange how folks freely confuse the two entities now.

Peace to HD Angel, one of the few folks I met on Twitter who I can honestly say I would’ve never met if not for Twitter. pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...

@obsofdeviance.bsky.social Did you see this?

I know it isn’t kosher to critique other rap pieces. But rap writing historically suffers from a serious lack of empathy and an ugly “dudes” perspective, at least with reviews/analysis. (Columns and feature writing isn’t as bad.) As I get older, I feel compelled to occasionally push back on that.

Also, the irony isn’t lost on me that the writer compared a famously gay musician to a rapper who famously gay-bashed an artist on his own label.

I can’t be more specific for political reasons, and I know it’s just a dunk (ha ha). But comparing The Smiths to Drake encapsulates how so many music writers delude themselves by boasting that they’ve heard “everything,” but in reality they didn’t understand any of it.

I just want to make clear that I will always love Klay.

It kills me how folks – even good center-left outlets – stay glued to the YIMBY narrative. I'm not arguing for state takeover. But given the stock available, it seems worth exploring tax-and-regulation solutions as well as building yet more market-rate housing for investors to stash their money in.