Dad Bod Rap Pod

Hard to believe but the year is a quarter over, so we spend the intro discussing our favorite records of the first three months of 2022. After that we have a good interview with Wildchild, a veteran MC who burst onto the indie scene with Lootpack in the 90's and has been putting out music ever since. His new record Omowale is an excellent example of grown man rap, still dope but dealing with matur...

This week we have some Academy Award chatter and then we are talking about the true old school period of hip-hop's history. Sometimes called the park jam era, the period when hip-hop was primarily a practice of urban youth and not a recorded music is an under-discussed and deeply important time in history. Our guest this week, Easy A.D. of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers was a major part of a pi...

This week we wade into the fast food fish sandwich diss track discourse, also known as the Filet O' Fishscale controversy. After that we have a great chat with Washington D.C.-based rapper/producer J Scienide. We talk about his career, his collaborations with Kev Brown, his label deal with Fat Beats and then conclude the interview by playing his track Bomb Scare off of the recently-released album...

Spring has sprung which means it's allergy season but also baseball season, so we are playing two today. First up we have a good chat with Brooklyn-based producer Steel Tipped Dove. It sounds like hyperbole, but it is a fact that some of the best modern rap music in the world was recorded in his home studio. He also released an album, Call Me When You're Outside, late last year featuring some of o...

Like many fans of independent music, we were taken aback this week at the news of Bandcamp's sale to a larger company. We spend some time this week discussing potential ripple effects for the hip-hop community. After that we have an interview with Sage Francis, an icon of independent hip-hop, seasoned battle rapper, recording artist, activist, and owner of Strange Famous records. Dave and Demone t...

Our guest this week, Illingsworth is a unique character in the underground hip-hop universe. The Detroit-based rapper, producer, and all-around artist brings a personal sound and sense of humor to all of his work. He's here to promote There In Spirit, a collaborative EP where the great MC Homeboy Sandman raps over Illingsworth's beats. In the intro segment, the fellas discuss the unexpected, recen...

This week we are joined by Kurious, an MC who has been active from the golden age all the way up to the present moment and shows no signs of slowing down. We discuss his entire career, from debut album A Constipated Monkey all the way up to his most recent release Koncrete Jungle with producer Ro Data released on Chong Wizard Records. The fellas also talk about hip-hop memorabilia. DBRP is a proud...

This week we are joined by one of the greatest freestyle rappers to ever walk the planet, the legendary MC Juice. His life and career have had the fair share of ups and downs but the one thing no one can dispute is that Juice is one of the most gifted extemporaneous rhymers in the history of hip-hop. In this in-depth interview we cover some of his greatest battles, his recorded music, the psycholo...

This week we have a great conversation with rapper Fat Ray of the almighty Bruiser Brigade. We are fans of Ray's album Santa Barbara and his streetwise, verbose approach to rapping. Bruiser Brigade had a breakout year last year, with each member releasing memorable solo albums as well as their excellent crew album TV62. Fat Ray talks to us about Detroit, the legacy of J Dilla, his chemistry with t...

It's Dilla Time, folks. We are joined this week by acclaimed author Dan Charnas to talk about his excellent, deeply researched new book on the life and musical innovations of the great producer J Dilla. Dan is a longtime chronicler of hip-hop culture, an educator, as well as a former label executive so he is uniquely positioned to tell the story of the heartbreakingly brief but undeniably influent...

This week we are pleased to be join by one of the coldest MCs to ever emerge from the Bay Area, Casual. He is a monster freestyler, has crafted classic albums, and is a foundational member of the influential Hieroglyphics crew. We touch on his recordings, his legendary radio battle with Saafir, his extracurricular pursuits such as the new cryptocurrency Hierocoin, and much more. We also talk about...

This week we are joined by author, podcaster and cultural commentator Shea Serrano. You may know Shea's work from Grantland, The Ringer, or his recently-released New York Times best-selling book Hip-Hop (And Other Things). Shea has an inspiring hustle and career arc, but at the end of the day he's just a dude that loves rap music. We talk with him about his various exciting projects, his interacti...

Our guest this week is South Memphis rapper Lukah, who put out two excellent records in 2021 and is one of the more interesting MCs to emerge recently. Lukah's music is tough to classify, he doesn't belong to any particular sub-genre or scene, but his vivid writing and fluid delivery are winning him fans and critical acclaim nationwide. We enjoyed talking to him and are looking forward to his next...

We're back with a fascinating interview with author Shawn Setaro, a reporter for Complex who has written the definitive account of the life, times, and trial of Danny Hernandez, better known as 6ix9ine. Shawn's dogged reporting, clean prose, and empathetic viewpoint make his new book Complex Presents Dummy Boy: Tekashi 6ix9ine And The Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods a fascinating read. Fans of DBRP shoul...

For our 200th full-length episode we are proud to present an interview with legendary Bay Area pioneering rapper Too $hort. DBRP hosts Demone, Dave and Nate grew up listening to Too Short's music and watching his steady ascent in the music industry. We are very excited to bring you this deluxe examination of $hort's career with contributions from friends of the program Cutso and Controller7. Too $...

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Whether you call it list season, a banquet of blurbs, or time for top 10s, this is when we sit back and survey the year in hip-hop music and culture. If you only listen to one of our episodes this year, this one is the most intentional about recommending new music to listen to. We call it Quibble Jam because we are all bringing our unique perspectives to t...

A few weeks go a crazy, awesome, unexpected thing happened to us. We were contacted by Siah, an excellent but mysterious underground rapper who made one exemplary EP in 1996, then a few singles and scattered guest appearances, then seemed to disappear from the rap world altogether. That's the legend anyway. The Visualz EP, released on vinyl on indie label Fondle Em Records, is a one-of-a-kind exhi...

This week we are pleased to have the opportunity to speak with Rob Sonic, a talented MC/producer who has been active in independent hip-hop for decades as a solo artist and in groups like Sonic Sum and Hail Mary Mallon. In this wide-ranging conversation we cover his influences, writing style, and recently-released album Latrinalia. DBRP hosts Nate and Dave are huge fans of Rob's early work in Soni...

It's the DBRP Thanksgiving special! A little personal tray of stuffing to help you through the holiday weekend. We are joined by the hilarious standup comic David Gborie, who you may know as the voice of Comedy Central or from his excellent long-running podcast All Fantasy Everything. David is such a hip-hop head that he literally did not listen to any other kinds of music until his mid-20's, and...

This week we have a conversation with journalist, author and label head S.H. Fernando, who recently released From The Streets Of Shaolin: The Wu-Tang Saga. The book is an insider's account of the Wu's rise to the top of the rap industry, full of fly-on-the-wall observations and sections on every major group and solo project op to We-Tang Forever. Fernando also ran WordSound Recordings, a left-fiel...

We are joined at the round table by friend of the program Curly Castro to chop it up about Jay-Z's recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, worldwide DOOMSDAY celebrations, and much more. Castro recently released an album entitled Little Robert Hutton on Backwoodz Studios, make sure to give that a listen. Next up we have a talk with DJ Abilities, who recently released his debut solo album Phonog...

On a beautiful, sunny fall day in San Francisco we were able to sit down with one of our favorite producers, Blockhead. We talked about his upcoming full-length collaborative album with Aesop Rock, Garbology. We also got into touring in this odd time of the pandemic, the state of the rap scene, and some basketball talk. Really fun interview, Blockhead is an engaging, funny dude with a long track r...

Great talk this week with rapper Chip Fu of Fu-Schnickens. The Fu were a groundbreaking act in many regards, and we talk through their history, their unique rap style, and yes, the Shaq connection. Chip is a great storyteller, taking us back to the golden era, inside Battery Studios, when some of the greatest music ever was being produced by him, his peers, and his label mates. We also talk about...

Where we're from, in the Bay Area of California, DJ culture is ingrained in our experience of hip-hop. Legend has it that sometime in the ate 90's, turntables began to outsell guitars. I've never been able to see any kind of documentation on that apocryphal stat, but if it's true then a lot of those turntables must have been sold in a 50-mile radius from San Francisco. We grew up seeing DJs at sch...

What makes a song an underground anthem? Is it more important to have an iconic beat that soundtracked a generation? Is a big, hooky chorus the most important thing? Perhaps lyrics with inspiring levels of wordplay. We discuss all that and more, name some of our personal picks, and then turn our attention to Time's Up, the signature track and underground anthem from our guest this week, the legend...