​Had he not passed away on Feb. 10, 2006, beloved hip-hop producer J Dilla would have turned 38 years young today.

Not the household name of say a Dr. Dre, Timbaland or Jermaine Dupri, the man born James Dewitt Yancey was -- and remains -- an underground hip-hop icon thanks to his work with De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Common and MF Doom. Dilla was part of the Detroit-based groups 1st Down and Slum Village.


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​From the man who brought us "Rifles Burs" and "Snacks" comes a new song/video called "Imdabes." It's already blowing up Youtube, so I'm going to go head and call it now: It's an instant classic, the kind you don't take home to mother.

On the track, Gillionaire tells listeners that he "be the one that win Street Fighter tournaments," "got the highest score in the world on my SAT" and that he's in the best at "watching all them '90s videos -- Power Rangers, All That, Kenan & Kel."
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Brass

​You might not know who Speak is, but you do know his work. In late October, I wrote a piece for our sister paper, LA Weekly, on the Moreno Valley rapper, who co-wrote Kreayshawn's massive hit, "Gucci Gucci."

The revelation raced around the blogosphere. Shortly after the news broke, Speak released his album, Inside Out Boy, which contains beats from Odd Future's production duo The Super 3, and was entirely mixed and mastered by the collective's DJ/producer, Syd.

So he's got business acumen. But his work isn't the only thing giving people whiplash.

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​Orange County has a lot of garages but only a select few of them are used for actually storing cars. Most of them function as what Marc Maron once referred to as the "museum of forgotten hobbies." But for every dusty treadmill or beer brewing kit that lies neglected there are hundreds of determined bands strumming and drumming towards their dreams of stardom. And those bands need equipment. And probably some sound proofing.More >>

Black Friday Record Store Day

​Like it or not, the holiday season is upon us. As we all know, the big kick-off is Black Friday, when everyone shakes off the inevitable Thanksgiving food coma and hits the streets to forage for the best deals on gifts for friends and family.

Rather than heading to the nearest mall to wait in hellish lines in national chain stores, we suggest you support local independent businesses and hit OC's top notch record shops.

We've made it easy for you and listed every shop with Record Store Day deals, their addresses, and their hours for Black Friday. You'll find vinyl exclusives, limited edition merch, and crazy deals on new and used vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and more. Brave the crowd. We promise it'll be worth it. More >>

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On Oct. 18, I introduced two YouTube videos that are not only changing the face of music on the Internet as we know it, but are also re-shaping and re-defining the idea of swag. The songs ("Rifles Burs" and "Snacks") are so life altering, so hard ("Gunshots are the beat!") and so damn good that the artist doesn't even list his name on the videos. Thanks to a comment left on that post, we are led to believe that the emcee in question might or might not be named Gillionaire.

In that blog, I called "Rifles Burs" "the video/song of the year." It's true: the track leaves a sticky trail of swag all over listeners' ears just like how my hair used to leave a stain on the pillows of all the girls I was with when I rocked a greasy pompadour (which was pretty swag on my part).  Without further ado: Q&A with the one-man Internet swagging machine...Gillionaire.


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Presumably, Joseph Gordon-Levitt listens to good music

​So Joseph Gordon-Levitt--child actor-turned-unlikely-leading-man---is starring with Seth Rogen in cancer comedy 50/50 and will be on the big screen again with next year's The Dark Knight Rises.

But not many people know that Levitt has artsy cred--he owns hitRECord, a production company that works on new media from artists all over the world. As he told LA Times in a recent interview, "The idea was to put these projects up online on our website, hitRECord.org, and anybody can come and contribute to them. We call it an open collaborative production company. I direct things and curate things and we end up making short films, music, and art and writing."

The company is having its gala show called the Fall Formal in October, which is a culmination of everything they've done so far: an anthology release with a DVD of our short films, a CD of rock music and a book of our art. There'll be  live performance and a short film screening, "but there's going to be a lot of collaborative art-making. The audience is not just there to watch."  

If you do go, keep your eyes peeled; Gordon-Levitt has acted as an MC for hitRECord events, but he just might bust out a guitar and perform a few ditties for you. His best songs, after the jump.

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Henry Denander

​Poetry readings are boring. And I'm not just saying that as a guy whose sole exposure to the genre was a force-feeding of Maya Angelou in community college. Nope, I actually read -- and try to write -- the stuff and even I think most of these gatherings are really great if you are
suffering from insomnia and not much else.

Gerald Locklin agrees. The 70-year-old Long Beach writer (who also spent approximately two decades in Seal Beach) doesn't just get behind a podium, stick his face into a book and mumble through some poems. This guy goes for it, and by that I mean he makes this shit come alive. During a Locklin reading, audiences are bound to get a handful of really solid narrative poems about life in academia (of which he knows something about seeing how he begin teaching at Cal State Long Beach in 1965), jazz, art and day-to-day slices of life, but the highlight of these shows is when Locklin puts down the poems and moves away from the podium for a song-and-dance routine that never fails.

Locklin's repertoire is limitless, but lately he's been almost guaranteed to tap dance, sing a Lady Gaga routine and tell the story about the time he auditioned for a talent show when he was in elementary school. 

For the uneducated, it's easy to dismiss Locklin's showmanship as his way of hiding the fact that he can't write. Nothing could be further from the truth. With more than 125 published books and 3,000 published poems, short stories, articles, reviews and interview, Locklin is a master of the written word. Don't believe me? Well, you should because Charles Bukowski agreed. The two were friends and anyone who knows anything about Bukowksi knows his persona leads us to believe that he A. didn't care much for people and B. cared even less for other poets. To give a detailed account of his career would take up too much space, so visit his website at www.geraldlocklin.org. Trust me, I ain't getting paid to plug his site, so that must mean there's something worth checking out there.

In the meantime, Locklin is reading tomorrow night at Golden West College Community Room 102 (15744 Goldenwest St., Huntington Beach) with John Brantingham and Pam Arterburn. The reading begins at 8.  

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Pitchfork reported today that indie fuzz band Best Coast's song "Boyfriend" got a sonic re imagining courtesy of Norwegian musician Lindstrom (one word.)

The song chosen for this second draft was "Boyfriend," which in our humble opinion is not the most stellar Best Coast jam--sort of a whiny, droning ode to unrequited lust (yawn).
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