The Witzard

It's pretty safe to say that Fall Out Boy are far from the righteous Chicago Punk band they used to be and quite honestly, their most recent album was far from "Saving Rock and Roll." But I also have to admit that FOB 's live show, which I caught on Temple 's basketball court, was an enjoyable Pop-Punk experience all in itself; a mix of tracks both old and new spanning from Take This to Your Grave (2003) to Save Rock and Roll (2013), scattered with giant branded beach balls and momentary piano/acoustic guitar break-downs. Post recording and releasing Rock and Roll, Fall Out Boy headed down to Alt. Country /former Punk youth Ryan Adams' Los Angeles -based studios. Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Andy Hurley, Joe Trohman & Mr. Mandy Moore managed to record 8 tracks over a 2-day period at PAX AM Studio , sessions which would eventually become the PAX AM Days EP ; It was officially announced in the wee hours of Sunday-Monday morning that the Ryan Adams -...

It's pretty damn awesome that Kanye & Joaquin Phoenix even hang out, let alone co-produced a track for Pusha T together; "King Push" is most likely culled from Phoenix's I'm Still Here era (2009-10), when he may or may not have quit acting to become a Hip-Hop producer/rapper. Pusha T previously lamented to Pitchfork back in August, "as soon as I heard it, I was like, 'Listen. I hope you're not playing this for me just to show me how good this beat is [Kanye] !'" It's a surprisingly Boom-Bap -rooted, Clipse -ready rattling beat, which it seems is now being pushed slightly ahead of My Name Is My Name 's previous semi-questionable Chris Brown -featuring "Sweet Salvation" single. Taking some much needed time off from Kanye 's recent "I Don't Like" ranting spree(s), G.O.O.D. Music & DONDA unleashed "King Push'" companion music video mid-Friday afternoon. Directed by Nathanie...

" JIMMY KIMMEL IS OUT OF LINE TO TRY AND SPOOF IN ANY WAY THE FIRST PIECE OF HONEST MEDIA IN YEARS." " JIMMY KIMMEL , I DON'T TAKE IT AS A JOKE... YOU DON'T HAVE SCUM BAGS HOPPING OVER FENCES TRYING TO TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR DAUGHTER." " JIMMY KIMMEL , PUT YOURSELF IN MY SHOES... OH NO, THAT MEANS YOU WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TOO MUCH GOOD P*$SY IN YOUR LIFE." "YOU CAN'T PUT YOURSELF IN MY SHOES. YOUR FACE LOOKS CRAZY... IS THAT FUNNY?... OR IF I HAD A KID SAY IT, WOULD IT BE FUNNY???" "SHOULD I DO A SPOOF ABOUT YOUR FACE OR YOU F*CKING BEN AFFLECK ... #NODISRESPECTTOBENAFFLECK #ALLDISRESPECTTOJIMMYKIMMEL!!!!" "I LIKE YOU, YOU KNOW ME, I WENT TO YOUR FAMILY'S WEDDING." "WHO YOU MADE IT CLEAR TO ME WASN'T YOUR FAMILY WHEN I WAS ON THEN PHONE WITH YOU 5 MINUTES AGO, YOU MANIPULATIVE MEDIA MUTHERF*CKER." " SARAH SILVERMAN IS A THOUSAND TIMES FUNNIER THAN YOU AND THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS I...

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: I kinda feel like everyone is making fun of Miley Cyrus and she TOTALLY doesn't even get it ha. What ever happened to the little girl who played Hannah Montana , "Partied In The USA" that one summer, and passionately sang about "The Climb" or whatever? Maybe it's just bad parenting; either way, I'd assume she's crushing her dad's achy breaky heart. I feel like "We Can't Stop" and Miley Cyrus' whole quasi-affiliation with Hip-Hop is just a giant Rick Roll , too. But on the other hand, if Kanye & Miley 's rumored "BLKKK SKKKN HEAD" remix ever comes to fruition, that'll likely be the theoretical icing on the cake. "Wrecking Ball" is the second single pulled from her upcoming Bangerz album and it's a little more along the lines of a modern-day power ballad, sans it's now-infamous scantily-clad Terry Richardson-directed video. During a rec...

It must be pretty hard to try to stay "Punk Rock," rebellious, and still keep food on the table these days; Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA V) was released last week and features a pretty awesome, broad-spanning in-game soundtrack. Rockstar uploaded an expansive 59-track 3 volume collection to iTunes: The Soundtrack, Original Music, and The Score (composed by Tangerine Dream ). Included within are tracks, both new and old, from the likes of Clams Casino , Tyler The Creator, Oh No , Yeasayer, Jai Paul , Lee "Scratch" Perry, Yellowman , WAVVES, and recently re-invigorated Hardcore super-group OFF! The Keith Morris -penned "What's Next?" was conjured up exclusively for GTA V and plays alongside Black Flag , Descendents, The Weirdos , and The Germs on a fictitious radio preset. Noisey reports that Morris, just off a stint with Black Flag off-shoot FLAG , should "head [in]to the studio soon to record a full-length of all new tracks." VICE R...

Guilty Simpson , one of Hip-Hop 's most criminally under-rated rappers, has worked with everyone from the late great J Dilla to Geoff Barrow (Portishead), but has somehow only released one full-length solo record, Ode to The Ghetto (2008). Post-Ghetto, Simpson has worked with a brigade of Stones Throw affiliates including Madlib , Oh No, Quakers , Four Tet, MED , Roc "C," Percee P , Apollo Brown , and Philly -based producer Small Professor . Initially linking up for "Spare Razor" (2012), Guilty & Small had so much sonic chemistry that Matt Diamond at Coalmine Records/Diamond Media 360 signed the pair and eventually coaxed them to record a 10-track album, Highway Robbery . It's 7 tracks-worth (and 3 remixes) of relentlessly hard-hitting "Golden Era" -reminiscent Hip-Hop ; including features from Statik Selektah , Boldy James, A.G. (Diggin' In The Crates Crew), DJ Revolution, Elucid , Castle, and a Scooby -crafted remix. Small ...

Full disclosure here: "Shake Your Body (Down to The Ground)" is quite easily amongst my favourite Michael Jackson/The Jackson 5 tracks; thanks to my wonderful parents (married 29 years today!) who exposed me to Jackson, Billy Joel , Elton John, Stevie Wonder , etc. records at a very young, impressionable age. While Justin Timberlake is currently ramping up to unleash the second part of his first album in nearly 6 years, The 20/20 Experience , he stopped by BBC1 Live Lounge over the weekend, just days after debuting new material at iHeart Radio Music Fest (Vegas). Along with familiar hits new and old, Timberlake and The Tennessee Kids ripped through a pretty spot-on, Funk -laden version of "Shake Your Body." Random coincidence or not, Justin Timberlake was very recently awarded the coveted Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at this year's MTV VMA's , where Timberlake briefly reunited with his wildly popular and now-defunct "boy band," N...

Rising comedian Kyle Mooney is one of the latest additions to a recently-gutted SNL , after a few long-time cast members made their final departure(s) last season; Director Henry Demaio recently pre-cast Mooney in his latest music video creation, "Moving Pictures," which itself is pulled from The Stepkids' second album recorded for Stones Throw , Troubadour (Sept. 9-10th). It's a mildly trippy affair, fittingly outfitted with plenty of real-life moving pictures, as the cameraman slowly pans across various scenarios. The Stepkids seemingly used green screens to their full advantage and were able yo "travel" to sun-soaked beaches, an awkward house-party with a kiddie pool, various city streets and sidewalks, an ever-changing trendy beach/desert party, and a giant-joint rolling super-science lab. Now, on a purely sonic level, "Moving Pictures" is really what we've grown to expect from The Stepkids : a seamless hybrid of cheesy Yacht Rock...

Once you get past the inherent trippiness and utter nonsense that comes along with White Denim 's latest "Pretty Green" video, it's a pretty damn great Rock "N" Roll number. Austin 's finest recently teamed up with director(s) The Modern Plow Collective to create what The Line of Best Fit (who premiered the video) describes as "a particularly hungry acid trip." It features both quick glimpses and extended scenes of White Denim dressed in all sorts of fucked up food masks, face-encompassing beards, empty-looking gold masks, green screened giant lips, and a bunch of 90's-reminiscent cheesy CGI video trickery. Forget about anything vaguely weird that Michael Jackson ever released, White Denim have easily produced the most tripped out performance video I've ever seen! ha Sonically, I think "Pretty Green" sounds a lot like The Black Keys and I'm sure we could sit here and argue ALL DAY about who came first... Wilco ...

Just as Trent Reznor re-formed Nine Inch Nails after a nearly 5 year hiatus for their recent Hesitation Marks album and an upcoming 54-date world tour, comes the first full-fledged NIN sample-based Hip-Hop project: Isaiah Toothtaker & Jacob Safari 's ИOTHING EP ! The aspiring Arizona -based rapper and one-time WAVVES drummer constructed 8 tracks-worth of beats using unlicensed samples; ranging from "A Warm Place" to "The Day The World Went Away," hand-picked from across NIN 's broad-spanning discography. "It’s far from Linkin Park . God damn no. Ain't no Aerosmith and Run-DMC , ain't no Coldplay and Kanye shit, ain't no Onyx and Biohazard shit," Isaiah Toothtaker lamented to The Kid Mero at Noisey , who premiered ИOTHING EP . "This is a proper hit. Nine Inch Nails are some weirdos but so is Young Thug , you feel me?" he continued. Honestly, they're really on to something here, if you think about it....

James Blake is a London -based First Wave Dubstep super-producer; one of the genre's originators, before it got all Americanized , club-ready, and alcohol-infused (ie: Skrillex ha). Blake has always kinda seemed like an on-looking Hip-Hop supporter/closet fan... he actually unleashed a series of white label 12" Harmonimix[es] prior to his self-titled debut: Lil' Wayne , Destiny's Child, Snoop Dogg , and handsome hermit D'Angelo. After working with master swordsman RZA on his second album Overgrown , James Blake recently recruited hyper-rhyming Chicago upstart, Chance The Rapper to help remix "Life Round Here." It's supposedly the "first of many songs with @jamesblake ," if Chance The Rapper 's righteous Twitter feed is to be believed; Blake told Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe Tuesday morning that the track was re-recorded post- SXSW and lamented that "[He] never really felt the track was finished; even when it went on the album...

Pharrell was quite arguably the undisputed hit-making champion of Summer 2013; having his hand in chart-topping mega-hits like "Blurred Lines," "Get Lucky," and "Burgundy." Over the past 10-12 years, Pharrell has effortlessly transformed from a relatively in-demand producer/ N*E*R*D frontman to a viable Hip-Hop-R&B hookman and he's most recently become Daft Punk 's pseudo-lead singer, more or less. "Lose Yourself to Dance" has been slowing picking up steam since it's radio/online release back in August. It's one of 2 devilishly smooth Funk -based Random Access Memories (RAM) cuts that feature Pharrell and Chic bassist Nile Rodgers , along with founding members Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo & Thomas Bangalter , of course. Pharrell stated in a recent interview that the track "makes [him] feel like waking down the street in the middle of the night in London and it's 1984, 1985," elaborating that ...

While last week's "new track" turned out to be a fraudulent remix, Action Bronson has since teamed up with beat-maker Beautiful Lou and Twitter persona/rapper RiFF RAFF ; "Long Pinky" is the final track in Adult Swim 's summer-long singles series, which will be re-upped online for FREE come Monday. RiFF RAFF recently described himself in 140 characters or less, of course, as: "AN ALL-AMERiCAN ALL-STAR... iF U DONT LiKE HiM, THEN U WiLL BE FORCED iNTO EXiLE iN GUAM & EAT EXPiRED GOAT MiLK FOREVER." Action Bronson & RiFF RAFF previously traded bars on the Harry Fraud -produced "Bird On a Wire" (2012) and RiFF RAFF had a brief cameo appearance in Bronson's blistering VICE Records -backed "Strictly 4 My Jeeps" video-single. While this time around, it was kitty [pryde] 's former collaborator Beautiful Lou who reunited the 2 rapping friends, they'll be appearing together on Diplo 's upcoming Re...

While it was filmed on-location at Disney World/Land , Escape from Tomorrow is about as far from family-friendly as it gets; First time director Randy Moore bravely filmed his Neo-Noir Fantasy flick guerrilla-style over a month-long period at 2 separate Disney theme parks, entering undercover as "tourists" along with his cast and crew. Moore strongly suggested that "scripts and all shooting directions [be] kept on iPhones so that "when actors and crew were looking down between takes, passersby thought they were [just] glancing at their messages."" Surprisingly, with little to relatively no suspicion, Roy Abramsohn and his on-screen family entered the park(s) day after day in the same repeat outfits, which Randy Moore 's crew filmed on average Cannon handi-cams. It seems like Escape from Tomorrow centers around a father and son's last day on their semi-disjointed family vacation, whose "sanity is challenged by a chance encounter wi...

"We Got a Love" is Side 2 of a recent limited edition DFA Records black label 12" featuring The Juan Maclean/Shit Robot (500 numbered). " Shit Robot brings in famed stand-up comedian (and closet Soul vocalist) Reggie Watts , whose incredible voice glides from falsetto to baritone in a single verse. The combination of the deep bass lines, wild voice, and piano stabs weaving in and out make this one of the strongest and unique singles in the Shit Robot catalog," as a fairly well-written label-crafted press release puts it. Premiered over at PitchforkTV Wednesday afternoon, "We Got a Love"' s companion Tom Keneny -directed video ingeniously stars some sort of intergalactic-faced spaceman doing pretty average things; shootin' hoops, getting a haircut, taking public transit, a little gambling, drinking coffee, playing piano, and just walking around the city. Keneny really makes quite the awesome and inventive use of cutting-edge CGI specia...

"Bound 2" is quite easily the most Kanye West -sounding track on Yeezus , an album which on-again Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is indeed a fan (and obvious influence): " Yeezus , I really love it. I think the sound of it is cool. I can't endorse what he's saying lyrically, but I will say that in terms of the role of the dangerous entertainer in 2013, nobody is beating him at that game. It feels like he might implode. Even if it is calculated to some degree, it feels rough on the edges in a way that I can appreciate. I'm glad he's out there. Consistently he's put out ahead-of-the-curve shit. He's definitely a talented guy." The Roots drummer and de facto bandleader ?uestlove expressed his admiration for Track #10 pretty early on in 140 characters or less: "ok this #Bound2 on repeat all day is a problem. don't wanna hear anything else, but #Bound2 (including the 9 songs before it) #Yeezus." Meticulously construct...

Following June's fairly long-awaited return to form and more or less, an artistic re-birth, Kismet , Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire randomly unveiled 2 new tracks late Wednesday-Thursday night; "Butt Naked Baby Cupid" and "A Sun's Calypso" are supposedly from eXquire 's forthcoming project, King Cozmic's Ethereal Playground . So far, it sounds like his mixtape'll be a stylistic hybrid of Mr. MFN eXquire 's new-found Psych-Rap sound and those 90's Hardcore reminiscent rhymes... almost effortlessly rocking over a beat swiped from Brainfeeder Jazzman Thundercat and frequent collaborator, Bowery Beats . Accented by a brief buttery-smooth Thundercat intro, eXquire ferociously raps, "I suck at love songs, but still write some / Just last night we Skyped all night long / Took a screenshot of your dummy-ass smile / Set it as my wallpaper... in love. I'm in denial. Lost in your Ora . We got it figured out. But nigga, baby cupid...

Following the recent conclusion of his 3-part Cassette series, Jonwayne can now concentrate 100% of his focus on his long-awaited Stones Throw full-length; Formerly titled "Bohemian Rap CD," it's now called Rap Album 1 and cleverly sports a saltine cracker strewn across it's cover (likely a nod to how far "white boys" have come in Hip-Hop ha). While he was actually born Jon[athan] Wayne , the budding emcee kinda swagger-jacked the other, more infamous John Wayne 's birth-right for his latest mixtape, Marion Morrison (Cassette 3). "Reflection" is just one of 11 largely self-produced tracks culled from Rap Album 1 , which drops October 29th and is currently available for pre-order. Stones Throw liberated what Jonwayne later effectively dubbed a non-single mid-Wednesday afternoon; as Wayne perfectly put it, "If you don't like "Reflection," give yourself some time to adjust to new ideas in Hip-Hop and then listen a...

It's pretty safe to say that Chance The Rapper is quite easily the best thing to come out of Chicago since Kanye was a virtually unknown producer, making Soulful beats for Blueprin t-era Jay-Z . His latest mixtape, Acid Rap is 13 tracks-worth of sheer drug-fueled Psych-Rap weirdness; at just 19, Chance has already worked with now defunct Kids These Days , Hannibal Buress, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League , Nosaj Thing, Action Bronson , Twista, Jake-One , Childish Gambino, Ab-Soul , Blended Babies, etc. After the nearly insta-success of Acid Rap , Lil' Wayne 's people recently came a'calling for Chance The Rapper and co-producers Nate Fox, Peter Cottontale & Cam to conjure up a collaborative track. Nate Fox recounted the almost unbelievable scenario to Complex just the other day: " Chance texted me saying, "Come to the studio at 11." I get there at 11, and it's me and Peter, Cam, Chance , and Pat , and everybody's there. And he pulls us ...

More of less a self-proclaimed "1984 punk, 1990 comics, 1993 writing, 1994 publishing, 2004 videos, 2008 production, 2012 commercials, 2013 movies"-affiliated Renaissance Man , Gavin McInnes surprisingly has one of the most interesting and family/kid-friendly Instagram accounts [sans boobs]. Granted, it's a little more tame and less in-your face than DO's & DON'Ts or say, uh... Street Boners or How to Piss In Public AKA The Death of Cool; McInnes started doing #pancakemorning(s) almost every Sunday roughly 42 weeks ago. I'm an amateur baker by day and I'd guess he's either pumping pancake batter out of icing bags of skillfully cutting breakfast art into pre-made pancakes. What kinda seems like a made-to-order kitchen service has included golden brown renderings of everything from Jon Cena to a "walking butt," as well as countless Ninja Turtles and TMNT super-villains. When he's not playing with his food, Gavin McInnes ru...