(I’ve said this in the past but I don’t want artists dying to be only time I actually write new content. I guess I don’t spend enough time giving flowers to the living; I really need to work on that. –O.W.) I always feel awkward paying tribute to an artist that I initially discovered through ..read more

“Give the flowers to the living” (or, in this case, daisies I suppose). I’m appreciative to URB Magazine for many reasons, not the least of which is that they gave me the opportunity to interview and profile some of my heroes, including De La Soul. I wrote a profile on the group as they were preparing to ..read more

I recently published my first freelance piece for 2023, a Los Angeles Times profile of Thes One and how he put together, Farewell, My Friend, a beautiful elegy for his PUTS partner, Double K, who passed away two years ago. (Listen // Buy) It’s been a long while since I’ve worked on a reported piece ..read more

Al Hirt: Harlem Hendoo (Soul In The Horn, RCA Victor, 1967) “Harlem Hendoo” is nothing short of a miracle of a song. When most of us first heard it looped on De La Soul’s “Ego Trippin’ Part 2,” I feel like our collective reaction was “what the hell is this?” and I’m sure many assumed ..read more

A few weeks ago, I was invited to be on a panel about music criticism for the LITLIT book festival in Los Angeles. I was joined by my friend and colleague, Karen Tongson, as well as Tyson Cornell of Rare Bird and Karla Nielsen from the Huntington Library. It was an opportunity not just to ..read more

Rusty Bryant: Fire Eater (7″, Prestige, 1971) 7″ single edits of album songs were a necessary concession to the technological limits of record-making. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, the average 7″ could only hold ~four minutes of music, give or take, depending on the pressing technique and whether you’d be willing to trade off things like loudness or fidelity in order to cram in a few extra seconds. That’s fine for most pop songs — the three-to-four minute song format had already become the norm decades back (itself a product of the limitations of the 78 format) — but not so much for ot ..read more

Cannonball Adderley: Virgo: For Pam (Love, Sex, and the Zodiac, Fantasy, 1974) KMD: Black Bastards! (Black Bastards, Readyrock, 2000) The sad fate of KMD’s Black Bastards is a tale well-told and for those who want the story straight from Zev Luv X/MF Doom’s mouth, then check out the expansive excerpt from my guy Brian Coleman’s Check the Technique 2. The hyper-condensed version for those wholly unaware is that KMD’s 1994 sophomore LP was scuttled by 1) a pair of music journalists offended by the group’s use of Sambo imagery in their ..read more

Last week, I had the privilege of being in conversation with Dan Charnas about his new book, detailing the life, career, and afterlife of James “J Dilla” Yancey: Dilla Time. The event was held on April 21, 2022, at Artform Studio in Highland Park (Los Angeles) and it was me, Dan and Peanut Butter Wolf, discussing Dilla’s musical and personal journeys, complete with an annotated playlist. You can listen to the conversation part of the event here. First off: Dilla Time is a fantastic book, easily one of the best musical biographies I can remember reading and certainly amongst the very best eve ..read more

Betty Davis passed away the other week at age 77 and as many of my readers likely know, I have spent many years in awe of her and her music and had the privilege to interview her for the liner notes that accompanied three of her Light in the Attic reissues (you can read the liners for the first of those reissues, Betty Davis, here). It’ll be one of the great honors of my writing career to have had that opportunity and play a small role in her re-discovery. NPR Music was gracious enough to let me write an appreciation essay for her: “Game was her middle name.” Just a quick excerpt from th ..read more

Joe Cruz and the Cruzettes: Love Song, on At The Hyatt Regency Hotel (Villar, 1973) Though I have a small collection of Filipinx-related records, I freely admit I originally learned about this song from the 2013 French comp, Beach Diggin’ Vol. 1 (I don’t know anything about compilers Guts and Mambo, I gotta say: this comp had incredibly good taste). Luckily, an acquaintance in the P.I. was able to hook up a copy and “Love Song” is on my upper tier of great cover songs. It’s really more of a cover-of-a-cover. The original version of the song dates back to the UK’s ..read more