Podcast

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.

It's a good idea to check in with your favorite works of art as you get older. You may find that you have outgrown certain albums, or that they haven't aged well. Maybe the meaning will deepen over time, as certain aspects of a record mean something different as you move through life with a different perspective. That is the goal with our occasional retrospective episodes... we take a look back at records after 30 years and see what we make of them as adults. This week we are apply9ng that lens to Gravediggaz masterpiece, the misunderstood 6 Feet Deep.

DBRP hosts Demone Carter, David Ma and Nate LeBlanc are joined by collaborator Cutso to dissect the album that kicked off the horrorcore movement accidentally. 6 Feet Deep (known by a title we're not at liberty to type in Europe) is one of Prince Paul's masterworks, a theme album about resurrecting rappers who suffered from mismanagement by adopting horror film atmospherics, wild sing song flows, and razor sharp lyrics from his collaborators. Of course, we all know that RZA would go on to change the sound and business environment of hip-hop with Wu-Tang, but fellow Diggaz Frukwan and Too Poetic were perhaps the group members most committed to the bit. The resulting album is one of the most unique in the genre and we're happy to detail why we feel that way.

For further discussion on this topic please check out DBRP 77 which contains an interview with Frukwan and any of our previous episodes with Prince Paul interviews as well.

This episode was produced by Paolo "Cutso" Bello and we deeply appreciate his involvement.

Theme song by DEM ONE and Cutso. Episode art by David Ma.

Brought to you by Stony Island Audio, the only podcast network with shows that have featured interviews with both Jerry Seinfeld and Boom Bap Project.

This week, we are recapping our experience attending History Of The Bay, an event organized by fellow Bay Area hip-hop podcaster Dregs One. While it did not result in any usable interviews, DBRP co-hosts David Ma and Nate LeBlanc were glad to spend an afternoon immersed in the Bay Area's unique musical culture and to see performances from rappers such as Rappin' 4-Tay, B-Legit, and Kamaiyah.

For this week's interview, DBRP host Demone Carter caught up with recurring guest and brilliant rapper Nappy Nina. Getting to know Nina and watching her level up her career has been one of the highlights of creating our show. We have been checking in with her in person and online for the past few years, and we are excited about her new collaborative project with producer Swarvy Nothing Is My Favorite Thing, out now.

Dad Bod Rap Pod is produced by Demone Carter. Theme song by DEM ONE and Cutso. Brought to you by the good homies at Stony Island Audio

We must begin this week by paying tribute to Ka, a truly great rapper and producer who made uncompromising music for the real heads. May he rest in peace. The first segment of the show this week acts as a real-time processing of the incredibly sad news of Ka's passing. DBRP hosts Demone Carter, David Ma and Nate LeBlanc share some thoughts on Ka's music, his legacy, and the distinct unfairness that he released his art at a time when it will only be appreciated by a niche audience.

After that we are joined for a second time by rapper Kurious. We are discussing his new record Majician, which drops October 18th on MF DOOM's Metal Face Records via Rhymesayers. Kurious really opens up here, detailing his previous struggles with overthinking, his decades-long friendship with DOOM, and even at one point has to pause the interview to resume parenting duties, something Demone can relate to!

Majician finds Kurious, who has always had a refined flow, in a deeply creative space, playing off of sample based beats from producer Mono En Stereo with a freewheeling nature not heard since his earliest work in the 90s. DOOM's presence looms large, on the record and in this conversation, which gives the entire affair a distinctly bittersweet edge.

If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a 5-star review on the podcast app of your choice, we would really appreciate it! We also have a Patreon www.patreon.com/dadbodrappod where we post exclusive segments, review records, make playlists, and interact with our audience in a more direct way than other social media platforms.

DBRP is produced by Demone Carter. Theme song by DEM ONE and Cutso. Our show is one of the many great podcasts on the Stony Island Audio network.

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