Apologies in advance, maybe - I decided to try a thing where I get real worked up about some inconsequential gripe and then scribble about it until I exhaust my thoughts on the matter. This is that, more-or-less unedited.

*Sniffs, takes a sip*.

I can’t front: churning the ol’ newsletter out week by week has become pretty routine (not necessarily a bad thing). In the ten-or-so minutes before I send out a given week’s edition, I decide what I’ll be writing about the next week, then put it out of mind until at least Saturday morning. Over the weekend, I’ll adjust my listening habits to emphasize whatever it is that I’m supposed to be thinking about and take note of any recurring phrases/ideas in the accompanying internal monologue.

Because I started out writing with an LA-focused rap blog, it takes me a little longer than it should to give up-and-coming LA acts a chance due to the overwhelming and sometimes undeserved hyperbole that my, uh, colleagues lay on them day in and day out. I'll likely keep this policy in place for the foreseeable future, but the late-2017 emergence of 03 Greedo and the newly-free Drakeo the Ruler has made me think twice. In form, there's nothing about Cold Devil that's particularly revolutionary - except, of course, Drakeo himself.

Remember Araabmuzik? Mr. Fast Fingers, producer of Get It In Ohio? Weird name but it’s cool, his shit's got two a's? Put out that album Electronic Dream in 2011 and hasn’t been heard from since? Turns out that he was part of a whole scene.

This is, to put it bluntly, that shit. Of the entire history of music that has attempted to position itself as post-DJ Screw (most hilariously and memorably, Parquet Courts; second place, A$AP Rocky), this is the only thing that's ever backed it up. I think it's a slowed-down DJ mix of some very rare old dancehall records, but honestly I have no idea - there's no tracklist, I missed out on the 50 cassettes (though Christmas, my friends, is merely 350-odd days away), and the label description (exercise of style, focusing on a counter-factual historical approach of dub music) is unintelligible.

This was a lot of fun. The Pharcyde (currently composed of founding members Imani and Bootie Brown) doesn't do too much touring anymore, but in mid-November a local radio station booked them for two straight nights at Ophelia's Electric Soapbox, which appeared to be some sort of combination concert venue and dinner theatre. It's always incredibly nice to find out that your favorite goofy rap legends are exactly how you would expect in person, a fact underscored by the apparent requirement that at least one of Imani or Bootie be dancing to the venue's background music at all times.

Books I’ve Enjoyed In the Last Three Months But Foolishly Didn’t Bring With Me to Write About So More On These Later
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
- Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
- Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.

Songs.