Rebel Radio

Arrested Youth will outwork you. He writes music every day and says he approaches music the way he approached training when he played soccer growing up. We dig into the relationship between work ethic and creativity and talk about what it was like collaborating with his fans on last year's Arrested Youth & The Quarantiners, as well as being embraced by pop-punk legends Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 and...

Christie Zee is a force. She's a direct link to the underground and the origins of hip hop. Producing the world's most important turntable battles as CEO of DMC USA. Creating park jams that celebrate the essence of the culture. And more. And more. Dig the stories she shares. A masterclass in vision, passion, and will. Might just make you dust off your turntables, or at least watch a DJ get down on...

Rob Swift is a turntable legend. He's been a DMC champion, a member of the X-Men (later X-Ecutioners) DJ crew, a solo artist and producer, with a new project out now called Halls of Karma featuring The Real DMT, available everywhere you stream your music. Rob has taught the art of DJing for many years and has recently opened his own school: The Brolic Army DJ School (https://brolicarmydjschool.com...

Mia Martina is a real-life overnight success story. Her first time in a recording studio was to record vocals for "Stereo Love" for Edward Maya. The song was an instant hit and now has over 50 million YouTube views and has been streamed hundreds of millions of times all over the world. It was the opposite of grinding your way to success. But for Mia, that was only the beginning. She quickly had to...

Find out why Audiomack was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies. Founder Dave Macli gives us some insight into how he goes about competing with the world's largest companies. "If you came up with a list of companies you don't want to compete against, it would be like Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon. And that's pretty much what we're going up against every day." Hint: It's all about...

Tritonal's Chad Cisneros gives us some insight into how he and his partner have stayed at the top of the electronic music game for over a decade. First, it's about productivity: "You produce when you're sad and you produce and you're mad. You produce when you're lonely and you produce when you're inspired and you produce and you're uninspired and you produce every day because that's what you need...

Marcus Welch co-founded Quadio as a streaming music platform for college students, and quickly found that his audience wanted much more than that. He's currently re-launching as a community around music and musicians, helping them network, learn, collaborate, and build their careers. He also created Quadio Records and Quadio Music Distribution as further outlets for helping young artists. We get i...

LaRoyce Hawkins is our guest this week. For eight seasons, he's been in your house as Officer Kevin Atwater on NBC's Chicago PD. Turns out he's also a talented rapper, comedian, poet, and has a strong sense of his "assignment" in life and business. I loved his story about how he chose acting as a career path, and how he relies on mentors like his grandfather and Eriq La Salle to help him stay focu...

Part 2 of 2. If you missed it, go back to last week's episode where we dig into the journeys of hip hop journalists-DJs-political activists-college professors Jeff Chang and Davey D Cook, authors of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip-Hop History. In part 2, we dive deeper into the political and social context that has driven the worldwide explosion of hip hop culture and how it continues to impact polit...

Part 1 of 2. There's so much good stuff in this interview we had to split it into two parts. Jeff Chang and Davey D have written the definitive hip hop history. They should know. They're both hip hop journalists, and DJs, and political activists, and college professors. Dave has been tearing the Bay Area airwaves and the internets since like forever. As we discuss, his charts and playlists played...

Joe Conzo was there — with his camera — at the very beginnings of hip hop. He was homies with The Cold Crush Brothers and became the documentarian for the group, and the scene, at a time when they were setting the pace. In our interview, we dig into the twists and turns life has thrown at Joe. They are many and severe. Might have crushed a lesser man. But Joe comes out wiser and appreciative of th...

J Boogie has been an important part of the Bay Area underground music scene for over 25 years. His DJ sets, remixes, and his artist project J Boogie's Dubtronic Science bring together hip hop, jazz, funk, soul, reggae, Latin, Afrobeats, house... and ya don't stop. Our interview touches on both the upside and downside of exploring such diverse interests. We also talk about what it means to a creati...

Panos Panay and Michael Hendrix are the authors of Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation. Through conversations with artists including Pharrell, Hank Shocklee, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, and more, they explore lessons in leadership and decision making that we can all use. They should know: Panos is SVP of strategy and innovation at Berklee College of Music and Michael is g...

Zuli Jr. is dropping his second album — Stop It God — next month. So it gave us a great opportunity to dig into the details of how to build a career as an independent artist. In a time when there are seemingly infinite tools and channels for building your business, deciding where to focus your energies is more important than ever. We explore what that looks like in an up-and-coming artist career....

Eddie and I chop it up about what it's like raising kids and how their attachment to music is different from ours, how perceptions of gay artists have changed, and what Virgil Abloh stole from him. It's a fun, short talk. Check it out and then go buy a print from his show at www.sugarpressart.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're bringing you a snippet of another great podcast: The Artist And The Athlete. In each episode, Lindsay Czarniak brings together a musician and an athlete who share a real connection — whether that's an existing relationship or just mutual respect. Like Ray Lewis and Kirk Franklin. Or Alanis Morisette and Danica Patrick. The conversations get very intimate — nothing is off the table....

Jason is an inventor and innovator. His latest creation is the Vision headphone, from his company Muzik, which puts a camera into a pair of headphones. He's full of good ideas, holding over 130 patents. But he also seems to be good at raising money. Muzik has over $80 mil of cash from investors including Drake, Kevin Hart, Cardi B, Michael Jordan, and François Pinault of luxury powerhouse Kering....

David started as a club and rave promoter in DC, where he learned "how to spend a dollar to make $10" and how to create experience for his guests. He then took those talents to Silicon Valley where he became a VC, investing in tech companies including Airbnb. He's now the founder of EI.Ventures which is launching a line of "farmaceutical" products — using naturally grown psychedelics to treat ment...

This week we talk to Alphonso Rawls — former pro skater and a leader in skate shoe design. While he was riding for brands like Airwalk, Etnies, Droors, Duff's, among others, he began designing shoes for many of those companies, and others, before becoming head of footwear design for DC. There he designed the Court model, which has been DC's biggest-selling shoe to this day. More recently, Alf laun...

Monalisa is one of those "it's the journey, not the destination" kind of people. She's played a big role in the LA club scene and music scene for many years — as a DJ at Motown on Mondays, Dublab, and so many of our city's great clubs; as the used record buyer at Amoeba and an important link to vinyl for many DJs, producers, collectors; as a promoter / marketer, connector of dots. But to hear her...

Catching up with the homie Eddie Donaldson — sometime co-host of Rebel Radio and founder of street art consultancy Guerilla One. Eddie works with artists and brands to bring graffiti to the masses. He's curating the Love Los Angeles Style online art show, featuring prints from Tristan Eaton, Estevan Oriol, RISK, Taz, Saber, Dave Navarro aka Life After Death, CES, and many others. Coming soon: Find...

Cameron is founder of Intertia Artist Management which handles the careers of some artists on the bubble (meaning you prolly never heard of them but your kids might have, or they will) including 10k. Caash, 7ru7h, and Spaceman Zack and producer of the Family Business Festival, a partnership with Young Thug. We talk about the pivots he's made in his career so far — from metal to EDM and now hip hop...

Mario is co-founder of No Free Coffee, a new coffee brand dipped in urban culture sensibilities ("fire merch"), and launching with Clubhouse chats, an Apple Music playlist, hella content. Very different from the hipster Seattle vibes we're used to with our coffee. Makes sense tho: he's also a creative producer at Instagram and an accomplished preditor (not our word) with credits from the Fader, Co...

Nimesh Patel is getting us through quarantine. With two comedy specials — Jokes for Quarantine and PATEL2020 — plus an album — Head Nimesh In Charge — plus snippets popping up reguarly on YouTube and TikTok, he's giving us a steady stream of laughs to keep us going. Check out our interview where he gives us an hour of insight into how he went from messing around with music to working in private eq...

We catch Mark de Clive-Lowe at home, but only because it's 2020. Otherwise, he pretty much lives on the road, jumping all over the world to play and make music that spans jazz, hip hop, house. Although the first album in his collection was Madonna's "Like A Virgin," Mark has built his career on sounds that are a lot more esoteric and a lot less mainstream. He's generous enough to share some of the...