The Witzard

Black Rob - The Black Rob Report CD (CREDIT: Jonathan Mannion) Son Raw is a freelance music writer and producer. A few decades removed from their peak, there are two things we can say for certain about Sean Combs and Bad Boy Records. First, they dropped some of the greatest, commercially-minded Hip-Hop and R&B records of the turn of The Millennium. Rap purists will exalt Biggie's two classics alone, but [Ma$e's] Harlem World is the one Jiggy album you need, Faith [Evans] & 112 birthed a generation of Hip-Hop/Soul (and soundtracked the conception of another) and after their late 90's peak, Diddy doggedly kept searching for his next great emcee, never finding him, but releasing great records in the process. Second, Bad Boy is a deeply cursed label and Sean Combs has a terrible track record of caring for his artists. Biggie was murdered in cold blood during a completely avoidable trip to Los Angeles after an over-hyped label feud. Ma$e was run out [of] the busi...

Gabe 'Nandez is an extremely talented New York-based emcee who has been closely aligned with Passion of The Weiss founder Jeff Weiss' POW Recordings since before 2017. 'Nandez has been regarded as a child of DOOM & DMX, whose parents worked in diplomacy, so he grew up moving around often, temporarily living in Tanzania, Haiti, and Jerusalem, as well as New York City. Gabe 'Nandez's latest EP, simply titled Ox, is being framed as a tribute to the spirit of Ruff Ryders. POW initially released 'Nandez's 2017 cassette compilation album Plaques and soon after, released his proper full-length debut, Diplomacy , to widespread critical and fan acclaim over the summer of 2019. Since then, Gabe 'Nandez has quietly issued a number of singles, EP's, loosies, etc. sometimes, self-released, sometimes, with POW Recordings, and, sometimes, on a variety of other Indie labels, such as Stereoma and Epidemic Sound , namely, for his guitar-fueled 2020 EP, Grove. ...