The Clown, the King, and the Colonel, as the late Anthony Bourdain satirically referred to them as, would only dream of crafting chicken tenders of this magnitude. It’s real simple here. No jokes or gimmicks. 4-piece box combo. Four chicken tenders, perfectly seasoned fries, a piece of Texas toast (as I appropriately ate in Texas), […]

Read more "Food Spot Review: Raising Cane’s (DFW Area)"

Punta Cana is what Pollo Tropical wakes up in the middle of the night screaming about. Your rice doesn’t get scrapped from the bottom of the pan here. Employees are never scrambling to throw a couple of raw chickens on the grill as they see a flock of uniformed-workers roll up to the drive-thru window. […]

Read more "Food Spot Review: Punta Cana Dominican Grill (Westbury)"

If you believed that McDonald’s was the happiest place on Earth when you were growing up, just know that you were being lied to. You have to understand that a giant bee in a red tuxedo beats that raggedy clown every time. Jollibee, Filipino in origin, offers one of the oddest selections of cuisine I […]

Read more "Food Spot Review: Jollibee (Manhattan)"

An underwhelming amount of anticipation and a lack of features seem to be the formula for North Carolina-turned-NYC rapper Jermaine Cole. Back with his fifth studio album at age 33, we now turn our attention to the legacy that ‘KOD’ could possess as critical acclaim and streaming numbers pour in. Streaming numbers on Spotify for […]

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First and foremost, props to Anthony Fantano (@theneedledrop on Twitter, fantano on YouTube) for both the Reddit link and inspiration for filling out this bracket. Secondly, all choices are my own and are based upon two factors. For one, my personal preference. For two, how “quality of a track” I felt it was. I enjoyed […]

Read more "K-Dot March Madness Bracket"

Madlib. Doom. Beats. Bars. Well this project’s got all four. Let’s break it down. This early 2000s hip-hop project via Stones Throw Records is best known for its collaboration between revered rap lyricist Daniel Dumile aka MF Doom and respected producer Otis Jackson Jr. aka Madlib. The project did not receive the financial attainments that […]

Read more "Project Reviews: “Madvillainy”"

The beginning of 2018 gave us a point of reference as to look back at the past year of music. While music had many moments within the time span, one statistic stood out above all (at least for us). Hip-hop was the supreme genre, and January’s Grammy Award Show reinforced this notion with the industry’s […]

Read more "Hip-Hop Culture in China: Condemned and Banned"

Since its release on January 19th, ‘God’s Plan’ has set the Apple music record with 60 million listens in a week-span (as reported by Billboard.com). Earlier in the week, Drake had also crushed the Apple music first-day record for listens in 24 hours, with over 14 million. But why should we act surprised? ‘God’s Plan’ […]

Read more "Why the “Scary Hours EP” Encapsulates Drake’s Formula For Success"

Highlighting my top picks from 2017, while dissecting progression, production, lyricism, and more in the process.

Read more "Top Projects of the Year (…in no particular order)"

In terms of dates that remain solidified within the minds of hip-hop heads coast-to-coast, few have done as much for the East Coast movement of rap’s golden age as November 9th. Coming off of the outpouring of praise from their previous project, “The Low End Theory”, A Tribe Called Quest would quickly place its second […]

Read more "Hip-Hop Chronology: November of ’93"