The Witzard

Roughneck Jihad (or Jihad, The Roughneck MC) is a Los Angeles-based underground artist and veteran emcee and Awkward is a beat-maker, producer, emcee, and artist hailing from Bristol, UK. Definitely two unlikely collaborators separated by an ocean. Jihad & Awkward first met when Awkward contributed a handful of beats to Jihad's group, Third Sight's then-new album IV (2016.) Awkward & Roughneck Jihad have worked together a number of times since, but always in a fairly limited capacity, including Awkward mastering Jihad's 2018 project, Red Herring Mixtape, and producing the title/opening track for Jihad's 2020 effort, The Red Sentence. All the while, however, it appears as though MC Roughneck Jihad & DJ Awkward have secretly been working on a proper full-length project of their own. It all started to come to light when The MC & DJ released a neck-snapping digital single consisting of two infectious tracks, "RAWK" and "DROMEDARY" bac...

MESTIZO & Controller 7 - Couch "Fan Art" CREDIT: Jason Jägel (@jagel) MESTIZO & Controller 7 are two Underground/Indie Hip-Hop luminaries, who have now teamed up to self-release a collaborative 10-track album entitled Couch . Emcee MESTIZO , a Fake Four, Inc. affiliate, has released music with A7PHA (doseone,) Free The Robots, The Heavy Twelves , Mike Gao, k-the-i??? Meaty Orge, MURS , and Isaiah Toothtaker. Beat-maker Controller 7 , a one-time anticon. affiliate, has contributed production work for projects attributed to Atmosphere , Deep Puddle Dynamics, Sage Francis , sole, Themselves (doseone & JEL,) and Third Sight. Upon Couch 's initial release a few weeks ago, I decided to reach out to Controller 7 on a whim, via email, who told me he and MESTIZO are, actually, friends-of-friends and despite working together, have never met in-person. In addition to having doseone as a mutual collaborator, Controller 7 & MESTIZO "met" through p...

Happy New Year to all of our trusty readers! 2020 marks 10 consecutive years of The Witzard, which is a little hard to believe, even for me! It's been a great ride thus far and we greatly appreciate everyone that visits and supports our site on a regular basis! I'm hoping to do a full site re-design in 2020 (something I've wanted to do for a few years!) but my wife and I are expecting our first child this Summer... so, we'll just have to see what happens, honestly. Hope everyone had a happy and safe holidays season! Here's a selection of new singles that were released over the holidays; let's just call it a best of 2019 year-end/2020 kick-off singles feature. Truth be told, these are some of our favorite artists here at The Witzard and we're excited to see/hear what they have in store for 2020! Festive Beastie Boys artwork courtesy of Pollywog Crew (@pollywogcrew.) Sincerely, Matt "The Witzard" Horowitz It's A New Year, Wavy Baby! ...

Following the recent conclusion of his 3-part Cassette series, Jonwayne can now concentrate 100% of his focus on his long-awaited Stones Throw full-length; Formerly titled "Bohemian Rap CD," it's now called Rap Album 1 and cleverly sports a saltine cracker strewn across it's cover (likely a nod to how far "white boys" have come in Hip-Hop ha). While he was actually born Jon[athan] Wayne , the budding emcee kinda swagger-jacked the other, more infamous John Wayne 's birth-right for his latest mixtape, Marion Morrison (Cassette 3). "Reflection" is just one of 11 largely self-produced tracks culled from Rap Album 1 , which drops October 29th and is currently available for pre-order. Stones Throw liberated what Jonwayne later effectively dubbed a non-single mid-Wednesday afternoon; as Wayne perfectly put it, "If you don't like "Reflection," give yourself some time to adjust to new ideas in Hip-Hop and then listen a...