The Witzard

"Tired of [people] making this an issue of anything but the music. While you were spending time looking pretty, I was working on my craft," self-proclaimed neck-beard rapper @jonwayne recently sounded off on Twitter ; "I can lose weight, cut my hair, trim my beard, get a tan.... none of that is going to make me a better emcee or producer. So, shut the f*ck up." Stones Throw sums up another recent Twitter -based turn of events pretty simply, "He made the announcement [Sunday] night, and here's the track. Simple as that. See you next week." Jonwayne effortlessly laces up 32 bars over an unspecified J Dilla beat, which he's re-dubbed "No" aka the first in a newly-announced Monday afternoon freestyles series. It was preceded last week by an unofficial starter track, "Special Herbs Medley," wherein Jonwayne rapped over 20 cut-and-pasted DOOM instrumentals in just under five minutes. While Dilla 's characteristically of...

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...

Noisey premiered Chuck Inglish 's new Federal Prism single, "Swervin'" late Tuesday afternoon, which features a semi-reunion with his former Cool Kids band mate Sir Michael Rocks (FKA Mikey Rocks ). Likely the first single from his upcoming Convertibles album, "Swervin'" marks The Cool Kids' first recorded appearance on wax since about 2011. Mikey Rocks randomly mentioned what sounds like a fairly amicable split win a Dec. 2012 AllHipHop interview: "You break us up, we're still going to turn out nice as f*ck separately, and when we come together, we transition that energy into making a dope record. Right now, man, I think we just need to be focusing on blowing up... We might come together as something else different. But as The Cool Kids , no, because we're not the same people, we've changed and evolved into two different artists." More or less, part 2 in Chuck Inglish 's auto-themed series that started with D...

"The recurring theme in this group is we are all NASTY producers who can rap, NASTILY. [It's] a completely self-sufficient, well-oiled machine," Jonwayne lamented about Digital Diamonds , via Twitter late Friday afternoon. He released a Nirvana -sampling track online a few months ago along with Scoop DeVille under the group name, which has now expanded to include Chuck Inglish . It's Inglish's first major project since The Cool Kids went on indefinite hiatus [broke up?] While Jonwayne on the other hand, is currently busy mixing/mastering his proper Stones Throw debut and Scoop DeVille has produced tracks for everyone from Snoop Dogg to Das Racist (R.I.P.) and Kendrick Lamar 's recent hit singles "The Recipe" and "Poetic Justice." "Delirious" is a CLASSIC hard-hitting Hip-Hop beat that sounds like it might've been collectively co-produced by Jonwayne, Chuck Inglish & Scoop DeVille . It seems to sample some...

Jonwayne must've tracked down a copy of that bare bones Nirvana - "In Bloom" (a capella) mp3 when it leaked way back in 2008. I'm pretty sure that Jonwayne chopped up and remixed Kurt Cobain 's POWERFUL, echoing vocals into a broading Boom-Bap track, which has now been cleverly re-titled "In Spite." Wayne quietly uploaded the track to Soundcloud just a few days ago under the musical moniker, "Digital Diamonds" and fellow rapper-producer Scoop DeVille is the other 1/2 of his new Rap Band . All of the new track's assorted, miscellaneous parts are essentially built and anchored together around Cobain's skeletal vocal performance. "In Spite" somehow manages to inter-weave Kurt's heart-felt wail right against Jonwayne/ Scoop DeVille 's rhymes, effortlessly blending in like a deep-rooted hook. I wonder what Digital Diamonds have in store for us next... a mixtape? Joint album? They've gotta be up to something, ...