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Street rap has always extracted a maximal amount of hostility in its music, but there isn't a rapper more cold, intense, and boisterous than DC's Paco Panama --- by far, the best rapper in the DMV. Panama is the son of a Panamanian father who was incarcerated for drug dealing, and he also grew up running around the streets. This has made him a force, tremendously so: His music is about consequences; where the money has been made, so has the pain, and so has the memories of watching dreams's go wayward. Although his best music was released in the 2022-2023 era --- check out The Wire Vol. 1 --- Panama has a new album out. Released on New Year Day on all streaming services, The Player Coach is a double album of 32 songs. It doesn't even have that many misses either, he shot more like Dirk than he did Kobe on this album.
Panama's voice is his key attribute. Like Flint's Rio Da Yung OG, Panama's voice is like a veteran who drinks whiskey. It adds to his storytelling. Few bars feel as completely real as "fuck going bar for bar/we go gram for gram" on "Iron Mike", a stand out on the album. On the next song "Sugar Hill" , under a hellscape of a beat, he says "all the white up in the kitchen/it feels like a klan rally." He has lyrics like that throughout the album, and the gothic production by Coltcaine adds a sinister layer to Panama's drug talk. The player side is gothic; the coach side is smoother, much more indebted to mid-tempo beats that Fabolous could have rapped over. Start your new year right, and listen to Panama's hustle stories. Hip-hop will never die as long as the streets exist.
Jan 3, 2025
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Upon realizing that the wind was bound to slap me in the face last night when I left home to buy groceries, I tightened my hooded sweatshirt, put on my big puffer coat, and pressed play on the music of Roc Marciano. Yes, it is the season of winter, where your hands tingle by way of the low temperature. This also means that it is Roc Marciano's season of drug talk, Black nationalism, mafia references, and expensive clothes and dinners. Marciano, or "Roc Marci" for those in the know, is a Long Island (Hempstead) rapper who functions as a specialist for New York hip-hop fans. He is an expert in the lush-sounding, lyrical coke-talk that has permeated in New York for my entire lifetime.
However, it would be a mistake to lump Marci with the rest of the old-soul rappers that are nostalgic for Prodigy. He's much more disruptive than that. First off, he spent decades being underground with Busta Rhymes's collective Flipmode Squad before breaking through without compromising any of his original ideas. Here's the difference between Roc Marci and the traditional boom bap: he is the bridge between generations. He has the flow of Kool G Rap, the ability to be cold and cool at the same time, the grit of Prodigy, but he also has the no-drum and laconic production of Cloud rap geniuses like Lil B and current rappers like Xaviersobased. This is not an annoying kid who talks your ear off about old school hip-hop; this is a sincerely cutting-edge rapper that was able to create something new and brilliant from an already-established style. (The rapper Ka, who died in October, was a frequent collaborator of Roc Marci's. Check him out too).
There's nothing like listening to Roc Marciano in the winter time. His voice is grotesquely seductive, as if he is intimidating you and whispering at you at the same time. See "Wheat 40's", where he flows over a Blaxploitation beat, and starts the song with "I have no home, I'm a rolling stone/Life's one long road, God lighten my load/On the low I might need lipo, white sold underneath the light pole/I believe police might know." Do you hear that? It is the sound of a God MC, taking what I heard growing up, and putting his own self-destructive spin on it. He has more songs that match that vibe, pure id while maintaining a veneer of style and glamour. He's a hero. So much rappers -- even rappers I adore like Conway the Machine -- took his style, and then added their spin, but it was never as good and intricate as his work. Roc Marciano is rap music. He's a trip to Brownsville while wearing a mink coat; he's a trip to the heavyweight match at Madison Square Garden in a polo jacket; he's a Five Percenter who could have been a romantic interest on Golden Girls. (Maybe that's why I connect with his music so much. That's what my vibe is, or at least the vibe I want to convey at all times).
Roc Marci is cool, in an era rappers where rappers are losing their cool by either being insular, emo kids (Nettspend is a star but the music is brain-dead right now, sorry not sorry), or they're weirdly collaborating with Trump and the right wing for more fame and clout. Start with 2010's Marcberg and 2012's Reloaded --- for my money Reloaded is one of the five best rap albums of the 2010's --- and then check out his new album, The Skeleton Key, which comes out this Friday (it is produced by The Alchemist).
ROC MARCI, I LOVE YOU!
Dec 11, 2024
jesus! every time I put Curry through my eardrums, i feel like i'm getting knocked back to the year 2000. his music is so...aggressive? but in the best way possible. dude only knows one speed and that's 200 MPH from start to finish. wow. i mean, does this guy even take a breath? it's like a rollercoaster for my soul. and i'm sooooo here for it. keep doing your thang potnaaaaa
Feb 19, 2025
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2000s era concept rap album about an intergalactic rap battling warrior in the year 3030. Best known for being Ice Cube’s cousin and his appearance in Gorillaz ‘Clint Eastwood’.
From pitchfork’s review in 2008:
“On Deltron 3030, he unravels an album-length narrative about the titular year, in which he's a superhero named Deltron Zero (a plot not entirely dissimilar from that of RZA's Bobby Digital). Armed with his two sidekicks, the Automator (here saddled with the unfortunate sobriquet "The Cantankerous Captain Aptos") and scratch mastermind Kid Koala (aka "Skiznod the Boy Wonder"), Deltron-Z combs the galaxy, supporting his secretive Earthling existence by participating in weird rap battles where one's rhymes summon psychic powers that physically damage the opponent.”
Feb 22, 2024
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I'm often accused of being an "old soul", a categorization I vehemently dislike because it pretends as if my taste is because of nostalgia, as opposed to what is actually cool and compelling. (If something cool comes out now, I enjoy it, but we're in a down period when it comes to culture). But, something old about me, is that I do not care at all about TikTok ending, if does happen. If Elon takes it over from the Chinese, you might as well leave anyway, but I'm just worried at why this is a huge deal for people. It's just an app. Another one will be made. TikTok is not culture, it directly flattens culture into these ten second clips that take music, movies --- things that you need to process --- into something that is now consumed by everyone at a rapid pace, not allowing for the nuances, the style, the aesthetics to sit with us.
I have never watched something on TikTok and thought that this is something in that pushing American culture to deeper heights. I am sorry. Now I am sure they're good stuff on the app, but it's not really a necessity. Whenever I hear the words "it's blowing up on TikTok", my mind immediately growls.
I understood why X becoming overrun with Elon bots and right wingers is a big deal; X actually created things, made careers, made American life, and American events available to be seen by everyone. However, TikTok is a corrupt fantasy, chopping at the wires that make physical connection important.
Read a book! Go to the movies! Go to the restaurant of a cuisine that is unheralded, go to a baseball game. Who cares about TikTok?
Jan 14, 2025
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Like almost every morning, I make a big ol breakfast salad for myself. Eggs, greens, onions, tuna, spanich, olives. I never taste anything as filling as this. It's perfect. Great if you are looking for a big breakfast to hold you down during your work day. Get yourself a salad spinner; makes it easier.
5d ago
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There's something quite startling about Martin Scorsese's 1980's period compared to the rest of his decades as one of America's greatest filmmakers. In the 80's, he was weird, strange, and making weirdly manic films that feel more New York than even some of his movies about the mob. They're movies about characters who aren't glamarous people that they want to be, but rather, are losers who can't seem to correctly fucntion in normal society. They're non-violent sociopaths. I saw The King of Comedy at Metrograph recently, and it's exhilarating, hilarious, manic, and scary. With Jerry Lewis, Bobby De Niro and Sandra Bernhard, Scorsese was able to create a world where incels who are bad at comedy are wishing for fame. Sound familiar?
This is a great movie. In 1983, it was a box office flop. But in 2025, it is magical in how it's telling the future. A future of scam artists who don't want to work to get there, and don't want to sit in their mediocrity: they want to steal to get their fifteen seconds. Go watch this masterpiece.
Jan 28, 2025