The Witzard

Sometimes, you need to look to the past as much as the future. The Overview Effect by emcee-producer duo Jermiside & The Expert is a vast musical collage of Psychedelic soundscapes merged together with Hip-Hop's golden age. A socially conscious Psychedelic Hip-Hop album equally inspired by Marvin Gaye's narrative on What's Going On (1971) mixed with tripped out beats reminiscent of Edan's Beauty & The Beat (2005.) The production on The Overview Effect takes on late 60's Psychedelic Folk/Rock, viewed through a 90's B-boy mentality of heavy drums and dope breaks. Built with a keen ear for detail, Dublin-based beatsmith The Expert densely layered his productions with tons of samples, seamlessly weaved together; swirling strings, sitars, Moog synthesizers, and crunchy guitars are all inter-woven and present together here, accompanied and embellished by trippy sound effects. "In terms of song-writing, very few songs on this record have a "classi...

When we last spoke with Phoenix-based/Philly born and raised rapper, producer, wrestling super-fan, and former teacher Raheem Jarbo AKA Mega Ran, he was preparing to unleash his DJ DN3 & Fresh Kils-produced Biggie tribute, Notorious R.A.N: Ready to Live. Ran's since "[taken] on a rigorous touring schedule, [hosted] a wrestling podcast Mat Mania , and [made] high-profile appearances on WWE television" and "returns to release the introspective and enlightening album, EXTRA CREDIT." His latest collection, EXTRA CREDIT—which even I had absolutely NO IDEA about until about 2-3 weeks prior to its release—is effectively a "greatest hits" collection made up of equal parts new tracks, old tracks, and re-imagined versions. Anchored by a few RNDM left-overs, EXTRA CREDIT features production work from K-Murdock (mixing & mastering,) The Rockit Scientist, Charlie Mumbles, ECID, Kaito Kobayashi, RandomBeats & Middle East Modern, DIBIA$E, Wann Sklobi, Y...