Podcast

This week we are breaking down Ill Communication as part of our miniseries entitled 3 Bad Brothers A Beastie Boys Breakdown. DBRP hosts Nate LeBlanc, David Ma and Demone Carter are joined by one of the very best producers in hip-hop, Kenny Segal, who knows a thing or two about blending disparate elements into a cohesive whole, as the Beasties did on one of their most successful records.

In the popular imagination, the Beasties' anthemic rock song Sabotage and its iconic video are probably the highlights from this record, but for us rap nerds, it also contains some of their very best alternative hip-hop songs. We get into some specifics about Sure Shot, Flute Loop and of course Get It Together, the mostly-freestyled jam they recorded with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest.

At the end of the episode we rank the album on our 5-point rubric, talking about the best beats, rhymes and magic moments, as well as the album's lasting cultural impact and replay-ability. We'd love to hear from all of you, what do you think of this album? Leave a comment with any thoughts.

Please make sure to listen to the very end to hear a snippet of Kenny's one and only Beasties remix, which may in an alternative timeline have been released on Grand Royal and changed the course of his life.

3 Bad Brothers A Beastie Boys Breakdown is a production of Dad Bod Rap Pod

Hosted By Demone Carter, David Ma, and Nate LeBlanc

Executive Produced by Nate LeBlanc

Produced by Demone Carter and Paolo “Cutso” Bello 

Edited by Demone Carter and Nate LeBlanc 

Engineering and Post-Production by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Artwork by Rory Simms

Photography by Stephanie Barajas 

Youtube version produced by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Theme song written and recorded by Defcee and Produced by Cutso

Dad Bod Rap Pod is distributed by Open Mike Eagle’s Stony Island Audio

All summer long, Dad Bod Rap Pod is breaking down the Beastie Boys' legendary career in an album-per-episode miniseries. This week things start to get really interesting as the Boys build their own studio in LA so they can jam with Mario C at the boards and Money Mark on keys, crafting their pivotal album, the eclectic and electric Check Your Head.

DBRP hosts Nate LeBlanc, David Ma and Demone Carter are joined by hip-hop trivia king and fellow podcaster Sean Kantrowitz to discuss the Beasties picking their instruments back up, karaoke mics, the Boys' Jewish heritage, and much more. After lots of context is provided and we discuss what we like and are less enthused about on the album, we score the art on a numeric rubric. Disagree with our takes? Please let us know in the comments. Tell us what number you would assign to the Beats, Rhymes, Cultural Impact, Replay-ability and Magic Moments out of 10.

Tune in next week as we examine the world-conquering Ill Communication with one of the very best producers of rap music in the world right now, Kenny Segal.

3 Bad Brothers, A Beastie Boys Breakdown is a production of Dad Bod Rap Pod

Hosted By Demone Carter, David Ma, and Nate LeBlanc

Executive Produced by Nate LeBlanc

Produced by Demone Carter and Paolo “Cutso” Bello 

Edited by Demone Carter and Nate LeBlanc 

Engineering and Post-Production by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Artwork by Rory Simms

Photography by Stephanie Barajas 

Youtube version produced by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Theme song written and recorded by Defcee and Produced by Cutso

Dad Bod Rap Pod is distributed by Open Mike Eagle’s Stony Island Audio

The finest in men's opinions, this is Paul's Boutique. In many ways, we created this entire miniseries so that we could talk about Paul's Boutique. For Dad Bod Rap Pod hosts Nate LeBlanc, David Ma, and Producer Cutso, this is a foundational document, one of the keys that unlocked our love of music and hip-hop in general. Host Demone Carter feels slightly differently, as you will hear.

The Beastie Boys' second album is many things: A pinnacle of the art of sampling, an experiment in song structures, a step away from their first album and many of its casual fans, a reflection of their first time on the west coast, a deepening of the bond between all three group members as displayed in their intertwining vocal arrangements.

We will break all of that down on this episode, the 2nd in our 8-part series tracking the development of one of the great American bands and a group that both set trends and broke precedents in the hip-hop world.

3 Bad Brothers, A Beasties Boys Breakdown is a production of Dad Bod Rap Pod

Hosted By Demone Carter, David Ma, and Nate LeBlanc

Executive Produced by Nate LeBlanc

Produced by Demone Carter and Paolo “Cutso” Bello 

Edited by Demone Carter and Nate LeBlanc 

Engineering and Post-Production by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Artwork by Rory Simms

Photography by Stephanie Barajas 

Youtube version produced by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Theme song written and recorded by Defcee and Produced by Cutso

Dad Bod Rap Pod is distributed by Open Mike Eagle’s Stony Island Audio

Welcome to 3 Bad Brothers, A Beastie Boys Breakdown. For the next 8 weeks, the Dad Bod Rap Pod crew and some special guests will be going album by album through the Beastie Boys' career.

This week we are focused on Ad Rock, MCA and Mike D's first album, the wildly successful Licensed To Ill with insight from Dante Ross, who ran in the same circles as the Boys at this formative time in their lives. We will track the band from punk shows to NYC nightclubs, to arena tours, examining their rhymes, beats, cultural impact and more through discussion, interviews, and then score each album on a system we affectionately call the Rick Rubric.

Licensed to Ill is thought of as one of rap music's early masterpieces, so we re-listen to the seminal album to see how it holds up nearly 40 years later as rap music, as the beginning of a vast and exploratory career, and as a product of early Def Jam Records, the so-called nerve center of the nascent hip-hop industry at the time.

Huge thanks to Dante Ross for joining us to provide cultural context and crack jokes. Please tune in next week when we step through the doors of the cult classic Paul's Boutique.

Credits: 

3 Bad Brothers, A Beasties Boys Breakdown is a production of Dad Bod Rap Pod

Hosted By Demone Carter, David Ma, and Nate LeBlanc

Executive Produced by Nate LeBlanc

Produced by Demone Carter and Paolo “Cutso” Bello 

Edited by Demone Carter and Nate LeBlanc 

Engineering and Post-Production by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Artwork by Rory Simms

Photography by Stephanie Barajas 

Youtube version produced by Paolo “Cutso” Bello

Theme song written and recorded by Defcee and Produced by Cutso

Dad Bod Rap Pod is distributed by Open Mike Eagle’s Stony Island Audio

We are so back. After a longer than expected hiatus to write, record, and produce our Beastie Boys miniseries (more on that in a moment) we are returning to the world of weekly indie rap podcasting with a special guest. We sometimes joke that DBRP started as a way for three old friends to share their love of classic rap music but at some point morphed into a show about how billy woods is really good at rapping. This week we are examining Golliwog, woods' latest album, including a long conversation with the Backwoodz label head himself. Topics include checking in on Vordul, the album's guest rappers especially Bruiser Wolf and Despot, how woods is dealing with his increasing notoriety, and some Bay Area restaurant recommendations not just for traveling hip-hop artists. woods also asks us to name our top 3 albums of his, after refusing to talk about his own catalog that way, but he does engage with us on some Backwoodz releases. Golliwog is a serious contender for Album of the Year, and it was a pleasure to break it down with one of our favorite MCs.

Toward the end of the show we explain a bit about what we have been doing on hiatus. Starting next week we will be dropping an 8-part miniseries examining the Beastie Boys' storied career, breaking down each of their albums in our own discursive, punny way. We hope you'll join us on the ride as we High Plains Drift through their extensive catalog and try to figure out of they are good rappers or not. It's a more complicated question than it might seem so we invited friends of the show Date Ross, Cutso, Sean Kantrowitz, and Open Mike Eagle to get into it with us.

Dad Bod Rap Pod is produced by Nate LeBlanc. Theme song by DEM ONE and Cutso. Guest booking by David Ma. Available on the internet by the good graces of Stony Island Audio.

Another rap year is in the books!

In part 2 of Quibble Jam 2024, the three bad brothers you know so well hand out more fictional awards and share big, sincere laughs. This is the last Dad Bod Rap Episode of 2024. On behalf of the squad, I would like to thank everyone for their time, attention, and support this year. We will return in early 2025 with new episodes and a new format!

We are proud members of Open Mike Eagle's terror cell, also known as Stony Island Audio. Dave does the booking. Nate's the cute one. I be producing. That's me and DJ Cutso on the theme song with some help from Don Newkirk (R.I.P)

-DEM

2024 was an amazing year for this podcast and rap as an art form. After a brief hiatus, the best fake awards show in Hip Hop is back. It's Quibble Jam 2024, and the bros have created a gang of hilarious categories and figurative trophies to hand out. Did your favorite albums from this year get mentioned? Tune in and find out. It's the first episode of a two-parter!

Dad Bod Rap Pod is a proud member of the podcast crime family known as Stony Island Audio. The theme song is by DEM and Cutso, with help from the late great Don Newkirk

We begin this week's episode paying tribute to the recently passed Saafir. The Saucee Nomad is a Bay Area legend, an actor, and an MC with a unique sense of rhythm. DBRP hosts Demone Carter, David Ma and Nate LeBlanc share memories from Saafir's career, a few personal run-ins, and discuss his legacy as an undeniably interesting rhymer.

Our interview is a one-on-one conversation between Nate and Dutch journalist and author Jaap Van Der Doelen about the soon-to-be-released book Kill Your Masters: Run The Jewels and the World That Made Them from University of Georgia Press. We delve into El-P and Killer Mike as MCs, musicians and cultural figures. The book is dropping December 1st, make sure to grab a copy.

This episode of Dad Bod Rap Pod was produced by Nate LeBlanc. Theme song by DEM ONE and Cutso. Image by David Ma. Part of the Stony Island Audio network. If you like what you hear please visit us at www.patreon.com/dadbodrappod

For many hip-hop heads of a certain vintage, the first Wu-Tang record and the subsequent solo albums represent the pinnacle of musical grittiness, lyrical density, and impressive business acumen. Watching RZA and the supremely talented Clan members take over the world with an uncompromising sound and vision was extremely impressive and brought some undeniable classic records into being. During this period, RZA's basement studio was flooded, and that event impacted a few of the albums' final versions. Tical is one of those records, and this week Dad Bod Rap Pod hosts Demone Carter, David Ma, Nate LeBlanc guest Cutso gather to share their thoughts on Method Man's debut.

Method Man was poised to be the breakout star from the Wu, and Tical is perhaps not the album that the market expected from this undeniably charismatic and dynamic rhymer. We discuss the lyrics, the beats, the tone, and the circumstances surrounding this release 30 years ago. As you will hear, our opinions on this record are somewhat divided, which always makes for a more interesting discussion.

This episode was produced by Paolo "Cutso" Bello. Theme song by DEM ONE and Cutso.

Brought to you by Stony Island Audio.

Dad Bod Rap Pod is back with a double dose of interviews. We kick off this week's show with some thoughts on the passing of the legendary music producer and raconteur Quincy Jones. Then we have an interview with Prince Po, one half of the almighty Organized Konfusion. We had a chance to interview Pharoahe Monch a few years back, and we have been looking forward to completing the cypher on this legendary group for some time. Po was kind enough to join us for a conversation, and we discussed his influences, the changes between albums that led to the making of the legendary Stress: The Extinction Agenda, as well as his ties to our hometown of San Jose.

On the back half of the program we have a chat with friends of the program Fat Tony and Fatboi Sharif, who recently released a project with Steel Tipped Dove called Brain Candy. We get into how these underground stalwarts originally connected, the importance of in-person recording, and more.

Please note that this episode was recorded before we knew the results of the election. Like many of you, we are trying to make sense of the dark reality of this political moment. Hopefully our show can help provide a moment of solace in these trying times.

DBRP is hosted by Demone Carter, David Ma, and Nate LeBlanc. Theme song produced by Cutso and DEM ONE. Brought to you by Stony Island Audio.