Ryan Hemsworth swings by the podcast to talk about how he has dealt with the past year and the ability to recalibrate as a person and producer. His new work, Quarter-Life Crisis, is a collaboration between various artists who’ve come to prominence over the past couple of years, many of whom got their start playing scrappy DIY shows. Yohuna stops by to talk about her contributions to the self-titled debut EP and we chat about the genius of Lil' B, Young Thug, and more. Enjoy! Visit the website: h...
Jan 06, 2021•44 min
Enigmatic rapper MF DOOM known for intricate rhyme schemes and his signature mask died on October 31st. Enjoy this tribute to the super villain.
Jan 01, 2021•30 min
I celebrate my 100th episode by inviting one of my personal favorite producers of all time, Detroit's own, Apollo Brown. He is constantly conjuring fresh innovations out of a tried-and-true formula. The drums are hard and nasty. The full effect blends sadness, depression, and tenderness with the savage ferocity of brass knuckles hip-hop. For the last decade, the Mello Music Group artist has singularly re-defined and expanded the foundation of what boom bap production can sound like in the 21st C...
Dec 23, 2020•46 min
Underground legend and original Swollen Member ”Moka Only”, member of a Masonic lodge in Vancouver, B.C. and the originator of the LongMile term sits down with me to talk about his storied career, getting his due, and what lies ahead for him as he eyes semi-retirement. Sitting on multiple days of unreleased music and lots of new releases including another Martian X-Mas and It Can Do, The Serene one is back with a whiff of poplar and gradient shades of dusk in audio form. Industry talk and gems g...
Dec 16, 2020•48 min
PG County Beatsmith/Emcee Kev Brown and Washington DC based emcee/producer J Scienide join me on the podcast this week! We chat about Rock Creek Park, Busta Rhymes sitting on 300 Dilla beats, and the origin story of the Sophomore project "Stray From The Pack". “Out the Safari.” The single off said album finds the emcees dropping potent prose on J Scienide’s soundscape. Honored to have them both swing by, as their history goes deep within hip-hop. Witness the birth of the Drum Machine Tape Casset...
Dec 09, 2020•49 min
Ray Angry aka Mister Goldfinger's goal is to inspire social and economic change through music because it is a universal language and you can create harmony together. By doing so, we talk about the genius behind a number of musicians he's worked with including Geri Allen, Steve Wilson, Christina Aguilera and more. We run a scenario on how he'd score a Martin Scorsese film, and we chat about how the pandemic has ramped up his songwriting output during these strange times. Of course, we also run it...
Dec 02, 2020•46 min
With the release of TALK SOON, Detroit artist NOLAN (a/k/a Nolan The Ninja) is finally trusting instincts. At the start of the pandemic while most people were worrying about how to keep their businesses open, NOLAN was starting one. We chat about his journey into owning an LLC, the end of his Mello Music Group tenure and what lies ahead. This interview has been in the works for a long time and as we explore art direction, aspirations and more we highlight how his latest offering is a sonically v...
Nov 25, 2020•41 min
Nick Wisdom and AstroLogical, better known collectively as Potatohead People join me on the show this week to celebrate their latest release Mellow Fantasy. We chat about growing up in Canada, and how having a family in radio and early music theory lessons influenced them to venture into seasoned beatmakers. We talk about influences of yacht rock, Israeli folk, Balkan, Mizrahi, jazz, and rock music and the art of sampling. A jazz-like responsiveness to the input of collaborators is a key compone...
Nov 18, 2020•35 min
Off the heels or oral surgery and Bradventure III, Ohbliv swings by the podcast to chat about east coast living, making beats via the pandemic, racism, and the future. An all-encompassing conversation that leaves no stone uncovered as I pry into the mind of the prolific Mutant Academy member. While the rest of Virginia was smirking at the Simpson trial, Ohbliv was busy being a classically trained producer making lo-fi, soul-based, crate diggin’ backpacker music. I also pitch an idea for his next...
Nov 11, 2020•35 min
Eli Escobar is the quintessential New York City DJ. Over the past ten years he's built a reputation around his parties, and we revisit the last days of FatBeats, Turntable Lab, and the New York music scene. A life obsessing over disco records, we chat about Madonna, Velvet Rope, the pandemic, and his new EP Night Class. He was prepared to disregard them entirely until one evening he was listening back and ended up grouping five of those tracks together and began to hear them in a new way. It's a...
Nov 04, 2020•39 min
Triple threat Producer/Singer/songwriter behind some of the most popular songs, had a really amazing idea to release roughly a song a week in the month of October. Skylar Grey swings by the podcast to talk about her journey leading up to the body of work you have been enjoying all month long. Housebound because of the pandemic, she adopted this new way to reach out to every corner of the world and offer her new songs to her fans. We chat about her transformation into Skylar Grey and how she appr...
Oct 28, 2020•27 min
It's 1979, two albums come out - Just a Touch of Love by Slave, and The Specials self titled effort. Two totally different albums. One is a funk classic and the other is a British ska revival classic. 41 years later because of those two records and the impact they had on two musicians, you got a guy who was playing guitar in El Corte, and you had another guy in the states listening to Baritone Tiplove. They come together, join forces, and are now one of the premier funk bands of the last half de...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr
MeLo-X is not underrated and he's not just a producer. Don't dare pigeon hole this visual and auditory master, and I explain why, as we navigate through various mediums of remixing, visual arts, directing, singing vocals, creating album art and more. He has collaborated with Beyoncé, Jesse Boykins III and more and this year sees him evolving and levelling up even more as this year Beyonce released a track called “Find Your Way Back”, now remixed by MeLo-X. This comes with the release of the delu...
Oct 14, 2020•43 min
Stones Throw is proud to announce The Clearing, the debut solo album from Chicago musician and producer The Twilite Tone, aka Anthony Khan, to be released 9 October. Tone first linked up with Common in the ‘80s, as DJ for him and No I.D. and co-produced much of Common’s debut album Can I Borrow A Dollar. Today, he joins me on the podcast to chat a bit about the past, present, and...well no future, because as I learn, the present is the opportune time to evaluate, harvest, and grow. The Clearing ...
Oct 07, 2020•39 min
KAYE is the musical moniker of Charlene Kaye, former frontwoman of indie darlings San Fermin. Each release propelled her singular creative vision while magnifying her electric frontwoman energy. We discuss her journey as she navigates growing up in an Asian household with a love of music, to enrolling in University of Michigan and Parsons to further her learning to be the best artist she can be. Her newest single was indeed co-produced by her and we chat about how she created a stop-motion music...
Sep 30, 2020•40 min
Soundscape extraordinaire, Mr. Len, joins me this week in quarantine to discuss a myriad of topics. First we chat about what keeps him busy nowadays as well as reflecting back on Company Flow and the soul days of Brunswick Records. Although he's been in the game for so long, his music still remains in demand by waxing dystopic with rhyme schemes inspired by EPMD and lyrical content colored with imagery from his favorite sci-fi books and anime films. So, it is definitely an honor to chat about de...
Sep 23, 2020•33 min
J. Ivy's incredible talent has taken him around the world but still calls Chicago home. His new album, “Catching Dreams” is available now. We chat about his start getting the call to visit Kanye in the studio to be a part of College Dropout to explore the ups and downs of his career since then. With all that’s going on in the world, he questioned if this was a good time to share a piece of his heart. But what experience has taught him, is that the world needs an abundance of love. We chat about ...
Sep 16, 2020•40 min
Eric Lau joins me from South East China during quarantine to chat with me about how his region differs from the U.S. in terms of how we are dealing with the pandemic. As a music producer using his trademark sounds and style to tell illuminating tales, we both get into how his music creates a sound that connects to the root of musicality and rhythm, entertaining and uplifting people through creating inspiring music that he has become internationally loved and recognised for.We also chat about his...
Sep 09, 2020•34 min
Romero Mosley swings by the podcast a year after he dropped his masterpiece 'Forever Is for Dreamers' to reflect on the aftermath of the reactions, marketing, and consensus of the project as well as dive into Cleveland culture, music and more. Now based in L.A., it presents a different backdrop for his creative process to create feel-good anthems with messages to complain less, appreciate life and just trust the process. Assisting in asset delivery, creative pitching, playlisting, and music sear...
Sep 02, 2020•37 min
Sly5thAve and I grew up in the same hood our whole lives, but eventually he moved to New York where he found a home at The Clubhouse in Brooklyn. Home to a host of New York talent, he credits The Clubhouse as being largely responsible for his entire sound. As we chat about those memories, we leap forward to his new album ‘What It Is’; his first new music since the critically acclaimed project ‘The Invisible Man: An Orchestral Tribute to Dr. Dre’. Having spent the past three years performing the ...
Aug 26, 2020•37 min
Real talk, in 2015 when vinyl was making a resurgence in the hip hop game I blind-bought a Clear Soul Forces record from Fat Beats and the production made my jaw drop. Turns out the whole record was crafted by producer NAMELESS who still vividly remembers his earliest days crafting instrumentals as a teenager growing up in Flint, Michigan during the late 1990s. What that means for me is I can now sit down half a decade later with him to reflect on Flint, making video-game beats while being compa...
Aug 19, 2020•33 min
Devo Springsteen, is an entrepreneur and Grammy Award-winning producer, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and holder of an MBA from Columbia Business School. If that wasn't enough, he helped his cousin Kanye West found the label G.O.O.D. Music and was instrumental in signing John Legend a decade ago. Now, he is releasing interactive video technology through his company, Adventr. It’s already disrupting marketers’ expectations of what can be done with video and transfo...
Aug 12, 2020•46 min
Small Professor is on the mic this week to put me on game on his extensive family tree to extends to musicians, singers, and poets. His new body of work A Jawn Supreme (Vol. 1) is showcased (Vol. 2 coming) during these modern civil rights movements but the best part just might be that we're due to hear more very soon. Vol. 1 is available now, with Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 due out later this year. You can hear how this album reflects these days and times, especially during the hellscape that is 2020, on...
Aug 05, 2020•39 min
Another week has passed and here we are in the same situation as the previous as well as what seems to be the foreseeable future. Many of us are coping, others are struggling with not being able to live their social lives that they are accustomed to but we’re all in the same boat in trying to survive. DJ, Producer, burger connoisseur and a collector of all things fresh, Skeme Richards started DJing in 1981. He stops by the podcast to drop knowledge on Philly, the Second City of Hip Hop... and ho...
Jul 29, 2020•44 min
Mark De Clive-Lowe was gracious enough to spend a little time with me as we dive into his 10,000 hour journey. It all starts as he was born in New Zealand to a Japanese mother and New Zealander father, and was first introduced to jazz through his father’s record collection. He rose to prominence in the early 2000s, way before jazz hybridity became a worldwide phenomenon, but alas, De Clive-Lowe was busy designing its blueprint. De Clive-Lowe showcases his breadth of skill as a producer, composer...
Jul 22, 2020•48 min
The internet is a beautiful thing when during times of extreme lockdown I can host producers from across the pond and bring you stories the lie therein. Jean-Christophe Le Saoût, better known by his stage name Wax Tailor, has produced numerous bodies of work, and we chat about the challenges of the modern music business, his unique approach to sampling, and what it means to record during quarantine. Wax Tailor is currently working on his next album The Shadow Of Their Suns and is preparing a new...
Jul 15, 2020•46 min
Big Wild and I chat about his transformation from Massachusetts-bred, hip-hop beatsmith to Spotify chart-topper, to now Portland-based bandleader and creative visionary. His latest single "Touch" marks a poised shift in creative direction for Big Wild, as his first new song since 2019's Superdream, the debut album that showcased him as his own vocalist, lyricist, and instrumentalist for the first time ever. Since then, the project's divergent and rapid ascent has surpassed hundreds of millions o...
Jul 08, 2020•38 min
Throughout his impressive career, much of his focus and energy has been put into music. We chat about his life and how he first started producing at the age of 12, and his initial placements on Yo Gotti classic 'Life' project. Since then, he has provided work for Young Jeezy and Kanye West’s double-platinum single “Put On” and for laced T.I. with four records on Paper Trail. In the years that followed, he’s become one of the most in-demand artists in music. As we discuss this journey we chat abo...
Jul 01, 2020•35 min
Legendary producer Prince Paul, and his longterm collaborator Don Newkirk, who had a longtime presence with Bernie Worrell and Def Jam, as heard on De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, have joined forces again to score the docuseries Who Killed Malcolm X. In conjunction with the project, they have released a new album called By Every Means Necessary, a dramatic score of drumbreaks and strings, layers of melody and calls for revolution of the spirit. This is a Prince Paul project minus the humor ...
Jun 24, 2020•34 min
Born in Tokyo, raised in Tanzania, England, and Japan, Shing02 came up in the independent SF Bay Area hip hop scene in the mid '90s. He has released numerous recordings showcasing his bilingual MC skills, most notably the Luv(sic) series with the late producer Nujabes. we talk about his family history going back hundreds of years and the experiences and encounters that have shaped him to be the amazing visual artist he is today. We bring it back to Telegraph Ave, his days at University and linki...
Jun 17, 2020•40 min
