Heat Rocks

The Grammy-nominated ladies of King are Anita Bias alongside sisters Amber and Paris Strother and it seems only right to have a super-sized guest talk about a super-sized album: Outkast's massive double LP from 2003:  Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.  Amongst other topics, we talked about how each of the three women first crossed paths with Outkast, what the group meant for the rise of the South in th...

When we approached Bardo Martinez of Chicano Batman, we figured he'd go with a left-field album choice and he did not disappoint.  Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse  was a cult LPs for years, one of the most overtly political albums of the entire '70s (least of all on Atlantic Records!) and might have been wholly forgotten if not for '90s hip-hop producers rediscovering it and using it as sample f...

Frannie Kelley, alongside Ali Shaheed Muhammed, hosts the  Microphone Check  podcast and when we invited her onto our show, she wanted to talk about one of her formative musical experiences as a teenager: TLC's sophomore album, C razySexyCool.  The three of us talked about how TLC shaped adolescent ideas about sexuality and femininity, how the group repped the hip-hop South at a time when that was...

Vernon Reid is one of rock's greatest guitarists, having rising to stardom in the 1980s as a member of Living Colour. It's not surprising, therefore, that he'd choose an album by one of rock's  other great guitarists: Jimi Hendrix and his final album,  Band of Gypsys , recorded live at the Fillmore East and released in the spring of 1970. Reid gave us an amazing lesson into what exactly made Hendr...

We invited Philly hip-hop star  Bahamadia  to join us and she kept things tri-state by picking the 1974 debut album by New Jersey's The Kay-Gee's, originally an off-shoot of Kool and the Gang. The Kay-Gee's may not be household names in the same manner as Kool and the Gang or the Ohio Players but especially on this debut, they cooked up an impressively diverse and surprisingly eclectic set of trac...

To talk about Kendrick Lamar's studio LP debut, we wanted to find someone of K-Dot's generation, another L.A. young gun, and who better than pianist and composer, Kris Bowers? Like Kendrick, Kris grew up in L.A. and just as Kendrick has ascended the hip-hop ladder, so has Kris in jazz, as he won the prestigious Theolonious . But more than that, the web of Los Angeles musical ties was bound to brin...

Bosco  was an artist that Morgan knew, from jump, she wanted to get on the show. A Savannah native who's now an L.A. transplant (by way of Atlanta), Bosco's been steady climbing the ranks in the music game and has had a breakout year in 2017, especially wiht the release of her full-length,  b. For her pick, Bosco wanted to revisit one of the formative albums that shaped her imagination as a kid: E...

Jay Smooth was always on our list of "people who we gotta get for Heat Rocks." His cultural and political commentary, much of which he does through his pioneering  Ill Doctrine videos , have positioned him as one of the hip-hop generation's leading pundits and he's also hosted one of the longest running rap shows in the world:  The Underground Railroad  on WBAI. For this show, Jay wanted to revisi...

This is a special "prequel"   episode, originally taped in December of  2016 . Back then, Heat Rocks was just a mere glint in the eye Morgan and Oliver. All we had was a basic concept: how about a podcast devoted to doing deep dives into an album? We invited Univ. of Oregon musicologist Loren Kajikawa, author of  Sounding Race In Rap Songs ,  to help us tackle one of the most important albums of t...

Artist and producer  Suzi Analogue  originally hails from Missy Elliott's native state of Virginia though these days, she's rooted in Los Angeles, having come up within the city's beat scene. Suzi wanted to talk about what she described as the "underdog" album, Missy's enormously successful yet somewhat forgotten sophomore album,  Da Real World , one in a string of five back-to-back platinum LPs f...

This episode is the edited version of our special live launch party we held on Nov. 11 in Los Angeles, as part of the  Voyager Institute . We were joined by Grammy-nominated soul artist B.Slade, a self-described  "Rhythm   Nation -pedia" who, indeed, brought incredible insight and knowledge to our discussion of this seminal Jackson LP. How many people can name every single dancer in Janet's "Miss...

This week, we are joined by  The Shacks , the NYC-based duo of singer Shannon Wise and producer Max Shrager. Maybe you heard their cool cover of The Kinks' "This Strange Effect" on  that Apple ad this fall? Or maybe you were already up on them from  their EP , released by Big Crown? Either way, Max and Shannon threw us a curveball with their choice: a 1994 compilation of nearly two dozen sides rec...

This week, we are joined by cultural critic Ernest Hardy. Oliver first got to know Ernest through his remarkable writing in the  LA Weekly  and other outlets, some of which has been compiled into his  Blood Beats Vol. 1  and  Vol. 2  collections. For this episode, he chose Sade's  Love Deluxe,  which came out 25 years ago this fall. Ernest's deep love and appreciation for Sade was readily apparent...

This week, we are joined by Anil Dash, the tech entrepreneur and activist whose love for The Purple One is legendary. He takes us into the Heat Rocks deep dive for Prince's  1999 , the album that marked his new wave turn.   All three of us share tales of our older family members being scandalized by the sexy-sexiness on the album.  Mmmmmm...spicy.  More on Prince and  1999 : The original  Rolling...

This week, we are joined by Los Angeles rapper, Ill Camille. She picked Common's  Like Water For Chocolate  from 2000, a moment that marked the Chicago's turn towards becoming a hip-hop elder statesman, backed by the production might of the Soulquarians crew. Camille's love for the album runs deep and during the course of our taping, she'd bust out Common's rhymes, line for line. More on Common an...

This week, we are joined by Dam-Funk,  Stones Throw recording artist , resident DJ for the legendary  Funkmosphere  parties and all-around apostle of the boogie. He was one of the very first artists we invited to tape Heat Rocks, back in its pilot stage, and we're very pleased to finally shared the episode in which he took us on a deep trip into Change's  Miracles.   Along the way, we talked about...

This week, we are joined by Shea Serrano, contributor at  TheRinger.com , author of both  The Rap Yearbook  and the brand new  Basketball (And Other Things) .  For his heat rock, he choose DMX's smash debut LP,  It's Dark and Hell Is Hot.  *woof* During our conversation, we learned how it was Shea's grandmother, of all people, who introduced him to DMX and how that album became the formative sound...

This week, Morgan and Oliver are joined by Ann Powers of NPR Music and author of the new book,  Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music.  Together, the three dug into  Like a Prayer,  Madonna's critical breakout album form 1989. As Ann lays out, Madonna had already established herself as an MTV-era mega-star with her previous albums but  Like a Prayer,  with its...

This week rapper, producer, and songwriter Phonte (Foreign Exchange, Little Brother) joins Oliver and Morgan to talk about the R&B group Intro's 1993 self-titled debut album. The trio's release was part of the changing tide of R&B music, when slow jams were giving way to more uptempo hits and singers were exchanging suits for Timbs and jeans. Phonte shares about what Intro's brand of new jack swin...

On the premiere episode of Heat Rocks, future soul artist Joi Gilliam joins Morgan and Oliver to talk about They Say I'm Different , the 1974 album by the unsung queen of funk, Betty Davis! It's really an obvious pairing: Betty Davis was one of the most original and fascinating figures of the 1970s, and Joi is an artist very much cut from Betty's cloth, but a generation later. We had a super fun c...

What's a heat rock? Oliver Wang and Morgan Rhodes explain in this sneak preview of their new show, coming to you October 3rd. New episodes every Tuesday!