Deep Album Cuts Vol. 396: RZA

Tuesday, March 31, 2026



 











I've already done deep cut playlists of the Wu-Tang Clan, Raekwon, and Ghostface Killah, I'm not gonna do playlists for every member of the group but I'm gonna see how many I can manage. 

RZA deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Deadly Venoms (as Prince Rakeem)
2. Blood Brothers with Gravediggaz
3. Pit of Snakes with Gravediggaz
4. Unspoken Word
5. Kiss of a Black Widow f/ Ol' Dirty Bastard
6. N.Y.C. Everything f/ Method Man
7. Bobby Did It (Spanish Fly) f/ Ghostface Killah, Islord, Royal Fam, Jamie Sommers, and Ndira
8. Cakes with Kool G Rap
9. Bong Bong f/ Berretta 9 and Mad Cez
10. Black Widow Pt. 2 f/ Ol' Dirty Bastard
11. Seul Face a Lui f/ IAM
12. Fast Cars f/ Ghostface Killah and Erica Bryant
13. The Whistle f/ Masta Killa and Prodigal Sunn
14. Fatal
15. Elephant Chase with Howard Drossin
16. Money Don't Own Me f/ Monk and Stone Mecca
17. Whar with Ghostface Killah, Kool G Rap, and Tash Mahogany
18. The Brothel with Howard Drossin
19. Ana Electronic with Banks & Steelz
20. Thriller Main Theme B
21. Freedom of Movement with the Colorado Symphony and Christopher Dragon

Track 1 from Ooh I Love You Rakeem EP (as Prince Rakeem) (1991)
Track 2 from 6 Feet Deep with Gravediggaz (1994)
Track 3 from The Pick, the Sickle, and the Shovel with Gravediggaz (1997)
Tracks 4, 5, 6, and 7 from Bobby Digital In Stereo (1998)
Track 8 from Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - The Album (1999)
Tracks 9 and 10 from Digital Bullet (2001)
Track 11 from The World According to RZA (2003)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Birth of a Prince (2003)
Track 14 from Blade: Trinity (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2004)
Track 15 from The Protector (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2006)
Track 16 from Digi Snacks (2008)
Track 17 from The RZA Presents: Afro Samurai Resurrection The Soundtrack (2009)
Track 18 from The Man With The Iron Fists (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2012)
Track 19 from Anything But Words as Banks & Steelz (2016)
Track 20 from Thriller (Soundtrack) (2019)
Track 21 from A Ballet Through Mud with the Colorado Symphony and Christopher Dragon (2024)

RZA is the primary producer of the Wu-Tang's group albums and most of the earliest and best solo albums, and the mastermind of the whole group's sound and concept. His leadership and his beatmaking has been questioned at times, but there's no denying that he, more than any other individual, is responsible for the whole movement, regardless of who became a bigger name as a rapper. In the early '90s, Bobby Diggs signed to Tommy Boy as Prince Rakeem, and his goofy-lighthearted single "Ooh I Love You Rakeem" (De La Soul producer Prince Paul helped with) was never successful enough to lead to an album, although there was an EP with two additional songs, and several remixes. One of those tracks on that EP is titled "Sexcapades (Wu-Tang Mix)," so he was planting the seeds of the Wu-Tang Clan early. He used another kung fu movie, Five Deadly Venoms, as the inspiration for both the song "Deadly Venoms" and, later, the Wu-Tang-affiliated girl group Deadly Venoms. 

Before Wu-Tang blew up, RZA formed another group with a few Tommy Boy refugees, Prince Paul and his Stetsasonic bandmate Frukwan, and another guy named Poetic, taking morbid death-related aliases as Gravediggaz (RZA became 'The RZArector). By that point plenty of groups like Geto Boys and Three 6 Mafia dabbled in what would be come to be known as 'horrorcore,' but Gravediggaz rode a wave of industry hype that it could be the next big thing, an escalation of the violence and shock value of multiplatinum gangsta rap. That never quite happened, but the 1994 Gravediggaz debut 6 Feet Deep was still a pretty big deal, charting higher than the first Wu-Tang album had, spinning off three singles, and hitting stores before Method Man or anyone else from Wu-Tang had a solo album (GZA's pre-Wu debut aside). 

By the time RZA finally released a proper solo album, he's already produced the lion's share of 7 or 8 albums, and had been kind of a minor presence as a rapper on most of those albums. My older brother had a few Wu albums in the late '90s, including Wu-Tang Forever and Bobby Digital In Stereo, which I didn't think much of at the time, but it sounds alright now. I'm kind of surprised it actually went gold. Apparently RZA and GZA wrote most of Ol' Dirty Bastard's verses back in the day, and that makes sense in retrospect, RZA's mushmouth flow is kind of like a less electric version of how ODB rapped. "N.Y.C. Everything" might have the best RZA verse I've ever heard, a Ghostface-level barrage of surreal imagery. 

At the beginning of Bobby Digital In Stereo, RZA sneers about other producers overusing samples popularized by the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series: "Ultimate breakbeats and shit, right? N____s still making money off of those shits, looping the same shits for a thousand years and shit, right?" He was alluding to the new style he was pivoting to, with less of those dusty drums from '70s soul records and more dry programmed drum machine beats, often unquantized with snare drums and cymbals jutting out at odd, counterintuitive moments. There's a Guitar Center promotional video that's been going viral every few months for years, or RZA programming a drum machine on-camera and just making one of the most awkward beats you've ever heard. People laugh at that video partly because RZA produced so many classic songs and that video seems atypical or evidence of how far he's fallen off. But the beats on Bobby Digital In Stereo, and some of the albums he's made since then, don't sound too different from that. That kind of beat generally sounds better once someone's rapped on them, though, they don't make a lot of sense as instrumentals. That's a testament to how the other members of Wu-Tang saw his vision and rapped over those tracks and made them feel complete. 

RZA's only made four proper solo albums, three of them in the 'Bobby Digital' persona, and the other one, Birth of a Prince, is probably his best. It was pretty entertaining to find that Digital Bullet actually has a song called "Bong Bong" that I guess is the genesis of that becoming RZA's most famous catchphrase. But I also wanted to make room for some of the other stuff he's done, the Prince Rakeem era and the first two Gravediggaz albums he was on, and some of the film score soundtrack work that's become a bigger and bigger part of out his output, including his own directorial debut The Man With The Iron Fists. He made The World According to RZA, an album full of collaborations with European rappers, and he also made an album with Interpol frontman Paul Banks under the name 'Banks & Steelz,' which I either never heard of or completely forgot about. Apparently he also has a group with the bassist from System Of A Down but the record they made never got released. His reach exceeds his grasp sometimes, but imagine all the great music we would've missed out on if RZA didn't have the confidence to put his weird ideas out there. 

1:40 PM

The 2026 Remix Report Card, Vol. 1

Monday, March 30, 2026




























It's been quite a while since I wrapped up my 2025 Remix Report Cards, so I've got a whole lot to write about here, remixes of 38 different songs. Here's the Spotify playlist:

"As Alive As You Need Me To Be (Pixel Grip Remix)" by Nine Inch Nails featuring Pixel Grip
I was a big fan of NIN's TRON Ares soundtrack, and a few weeks ago they surprise released the remix album TRON Ares: Divergence, which has a couple new versions of the album's Grammy-winning rock radio hit. One is an Arca remix that just changes up the beat, and the other is by the Chicago electronic trio Pixel Grip, and uses a bit of the original Trent Reznor vocal but is mostly sung by Pixel Grip frontwoman Rita Lukea. Good shit, I checked out more Pixel Grip songs on the strength of this and I like them.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"ASAP (Remix)" by Mya featuring 21 Savage
There are a lot of videos of 21 Savage seeming like a genuine R&B head, singing along to songs in the car or at concerts, which is really one of the most charming things about him. But I almost never like his R&B collaborations, it just sounds painful hearing him rap on soft tracks deadpanning dumb shit like "that ass soft, she got her BBL in Heaven" and "she call me Batman, she know that all her exes Joker" (???). The "ASAP" hook riffs on T.I.'s 2005 hit of the same name and he would've been a better guest for the remix, shit even A$AP Rocky would've matched the vibe better. I adore Mya and am glad she's releasing new music, but I hope the other stuff she has coming out has better production, it's not a very good track.  
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C-

"B.B.B. (Remix)" by Juvenile featuring Megan Thee Stallion
I kind of feel bad for less established rappers who do a song with a big name rapper and then get replaced on the remix. Florida rapper Genesisthegawd's verse on the original "B.B.B." is pretty good, but once you hear Meg on the remix you really just totally forget about her, she can't compete on that level, the song didn't even chart until the remix dropped. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"Bedroom Posters (Remix)" by Yellowcard featuring Good Charlotte
When I interviewed Ryan and Sean from Yellowcard last year, I told them that I thought "Bedroom Posters" was a standout track from the album and they talked about how much they loved performing it and hoped it would do well at radio. A few months later, they released a new version with Good Charlotte (really just Joel Madden singing the second verse and some backing vocals on the bridge and last chorus, but it sounds good, he's a good addition to the song). "Bedroom Posters" is currently #6 on Alternative Airplay, making it the biggest hit of Good Charlotte's career on the chart (they were boosted a lot by MTV and pop radio at their commercial peak, "The Anthem" was their only previous top 10 hit on alternative radio). 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Boat (Remix)" by Trim featuring BunnaB and YK Niece
"Boat (Slimey Edition)" by Trim featuring Pooh Shiesty
"Boat" is the breakout hit by South Carolina rapper Trim, and even though Pooh Shiesty is objectively a bigger name, his remix doesn't have remotely as many streams as the original or the other remix. And that makes sense, BunnaB and YK Niece just sound more natural as guests on a track like this. Most rap remixes are longer than the original song but both "Boat" remixes are oddly shorter than the original. 
Best Verse: BunnaB
Overall Grade: B+

"Boots on the Ground (Remix)" by 803Fresh featuring Fantasia
Somehow I missed that Fantasia appeared on a remix of "Boots on the Ground" last summer and didn't cover it in any of my 2025 Remix Report Cards, so I'm just catching up and throwing it in here for sake of keeping the column a pretty comprehensive record of significant remixes. I love hearing her voice on a track like this, I wouldn't mind if she did more music in that southern soul style that's blowing up right now. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Celebration (Remix)" by Big Freedia featuring Queen Latifah and Dawn Richard
Dawn Richard is originally from New Orleans, so her appearance on Big Freedia's latest album was cool. Queen Latifah doesn't have any N.O. roots that I know of, but she still sounds surprisingly good on this with her old school flow. Latifah's got some classic songs that you can still play today, but her acting career so completely eclipsed her musical career that it's somewhat surprising to see her drop a verse on a song in 2026. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Cliche (Jonas Brothers Remix)" by MGK featuring the Jonas Brothers
"Cliche (Sad Version)" by MGK
I haven't particularly liked much of the hip-hop that MGK became famous with or the punk pop he became more famous with, but I do like "Cliche," the bouncy pop song he released last year with silly boy band choreography in the video, even if he still sings it in the same dour tough guy voice he uses in every genre. Jonas Brothers have been crossing genres off their checklist a lot lately, too, with collaborations with Russell Dickerson, Switchfoot, and Kenny G, so it feels like these two entities were inevitably going to run into each other at some point. And the Jonases' voices make this song sound even more conventionally pop, so I like it. MGK also recorded the song as a piano ballad and it sucks, but it's nice to hear him try slightly more to actually sing. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Crack (Remix)" by 3Dcam featuring Fredo Bang
Monroe, Louisiana rapper 3Dcam's biggest hit, "Crack," is one minute and 45 seconds long, has a bounce beat with a sped up sample of the Yung LA hit "Ain't I," and sounds like it was recorded in a laundry room with a Radio Shack microphone. Baton Rouge rapper Fredo Bang is a pretty minor national star but he sounds like a really polished pro by comparison on a track like this. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Da Fuxk (Remix)" by Rob49 featuring Lil Yachty, G Herbo, YTB Fatt, G Youngin, and BTY Beedo
Rob49, G Youngin, and BTY Beedo released "Dafxckk" in November, and the remix came out on Friday with a slightly different song title. It feels kind of like a deliberate sequel to Rob49's signature song "WTHelly" with everyone repeatedly saying "da fuck?" instead of "what the helly." A fun track, and I always respect when the original artist adds a new verse to the remix, but the track really gets too long with the last Rob49 verse after the beat switches, this did not need to be over 6 minutes. 
Best Verse: YTB Fatt
Overall Grade: B-

"Decisions (Remix)" by Big Ro6 featuring G Herbo
Indianapolis rapper Big Ro6's 2024 song "Decisions" went viral last year when people started making jokes about how he sounds like a pirate, and he's been leaning into it, recently releasing an album called Street Shanties, which has a song called "Blackbeard." I don't really get it, he mostly sounds to me like Kevin Gates or the late Snootie Wild (who was often compared to Gates), and "Decisions" is mostly a pretty grim gangsta rap song. So I'm glad he went with a straightforward remix with someone like G Herbo, even if I'm not really a fan of Herbo these days. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Dracula (Remix)" by Tame Impala featuring Jennie
There was a weird moment about a decade ago when Tame Impala's Kevin Parker leapfrogged out of indie rock cult artist status and worked on albums by Rihanna and Lady Gaga, but mostly he's just gotten bigger and bigger over the years by steadily making the same kind of chill psychedelic indie rock records. I'm not a big Tame Impala fan so I'm not a good judge of whether "Dracula" is a good Tame Impala song, but I find it kind of flimsy and annoying. But putting one of the Blackpink girls on the track kind of works, I like it more as a pop song than as an alt-rock song.  
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"DSRVE 2" by Jordan Webb featuring Mick Jenkins
Mick Jenkins is such an underrated rapper, he kinda takes a few bars to hit his stride on this track by Nashville rapper Jordan Webb but then he locks in and it's great. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Dumb Crasy (Remix)" by So Supa featuring Tre Loaded and Big Boogie
"Dumb Crasy (G-Mix)" by So Supa featuring Trippie Redd and Lil Yachty
"Dumb Crasy Too" by So Supa featuring Big Money Blitz and Tre Loaded 
Mississippi's So Supa, whose real name is Vontrel Pringle (a way better name than his stage name), is such a monotone rapper that he makes 21 Savage sound like Busta Rhymes. His breakout song was 2021's "Dumb Crasy," and he's regularly made sequel solo tracks ever since, with "Dumb Crasy 8" being the most recent (at the beginning of "Dumb Crasy 7" he says "I said 6 is gonna be the last one...I lied"). He's also done three posse cut remixes of the song between 2023 and 2026, so I decided to just review all of them here. It's not a good song and there's not really any particularly good versions of it, it's just a bunch of bars with no hook over a really minimal nondescript beat. 
Best Verse: Big Boogie
Overall Grade: C

"Feeling On My Body (Remix)" by Taffy featuring Pluto
A pair of unsigned rappers that I think are both from Atlanta, Taffy Babii and Miss Asia, made a song last year sampling the 2009 Party Boyz hit "Flex." And it was always called "Feeling On My Body" on streaming services, but they'd bill it as "Flex (Remix)" when appearing on those YouTube performance series where the microphone seems to be hanging from a cloud in the sky. Then Taffy did a remix with Pluto fame and it's taking off on rap radio, which is nice for Pluto since YK Niece has been getting way more features since "Whim Whamie" hit. As with Genesisthegawd from "B.B.B.," I feel kind of bad for Miss Asia for getting left off the biggest version of a song she was on, but Taffy still shouts her out on the remix.  
Best Verse: Taffy
Overall Grade: B+

"Fine Shyt (EB Remix)" by Vedo featuring Eric Bellinger
"Fine Shyt (Remix)" by Vedo featuring Jacob Latimore
"Fine Shyt (Remix)" by Vedo featuring Trevor Jackson
Vedo hasn't done much of note since his one big hit, 2021's "You Got It," which had a pretty good remix with one of the last guest verses Young Dolph released before his death. I guess he's going all in on "Fine Shyt" being his catchphrase-driven comeback single, although none of the guests on the three remixes is really that big a star, I think he should've just put all of these out at once as a posse cut. Jacob Latimore is the only guy who leans into the slow jam vibe instead of sing-rapping in a faster cadence, I thought that was by far the best approach, and Trevor Jackson remains the most embarrassing man in R&B. 
Best Verse: Jacob Latimore
Overall Grade: C+

"Finsta (G-Mix)" by Lizzen featuring So Supa and Big Money Blitz, and Jacquees
The original "Finsta" was on Lizzen and Jacquees's 2025 collab project But First R&B, but Lizzen wasn't on it, it was a Jacquees song with verses by Kayla Nicole and Saint Lamaar. And then the remix bills Lizzen but not Jacquees, but the song is still Jacquees with guest verses, Lizzen doesn't even do DJ Khaled ad libs or anything, it's kind of bizarre. And the So Supa verse is absolutely horrible. Do better, Vontrel Pringle. 
Best Verse: Big Money Blitz
Overall Grade: D

"4 Raws (Remix)" by EsDeeKid featuring Timothee Chalamet
Liverpool rapper EsDeeKid's debut album Rebel was a big hit in the UK last summer, but he wears a balaclava and is secretive about his identity, leading to a rumor (or probably really more of a running joke) that he's actually Timothee Chalamet. So in December, Chalamet and the real EsDeeKid linked up for a remix of the album's opening track to have a little fun with the rumor and promote both the song and Marty Supreme, which gets mentioned gratuitously. I think it's pretty harmless and entertaining that Chalamet is a hypebeast hip-hop head who made novelty rap tracks as a teenager, so it feels silly to grade his verse, but it's a mix of clever punchlines and garbage bars like "I'm havin' fun, just sextin'/ my dick is young and restless." He also says "my life is an opera, look at the Oscars," which sounds funnier now that there's been a whole overcooked controversy about Timmy's remarks about ballet and opera. The remix was posted with a video on I think Instagram and YouTube without being released on streaming services, but it still got so much attention that the original "4 Raws" became a top 40 hit on the Hot 100.  
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Gas Station Love (Remix)" by EJ Jones featuring BigXthaPlug
I called the original "Gas Station Love" the worst R&B hit of 2025 and a "street harassment carol," the BigX verse is alright but it doesn't do anything to redeem the stupid song for me. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+ 

"Hoes Be Mad (2.0)" by Cash Cobain featuring YK Niece, Loe Shimmy, Zeddy Will, and BunnaB
Nobody on this track is a huge star (yet), but it feels like a pretty good summit of where danceable uptempo regional rap is right now, with a couple New Yorkers, a couple Atlanta rappers, and another from Florida. 
Best Verse: YK Niece
Overall Grade: B

"Hustlin Mf Pt 2" by Bally Baby featuring Belly Gang Kushington
A remix, the YK Niece version of "Friend Do," recently made Atlanta rapper Belly Gang Kushington a mainstream star, and now he's getting invited onto other people's remix. I like his verse on this, he sounds better than on "Friend Do," but he also kind of generally sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Little Miss (Misdemeanor)" by Girlset featuring Missy Elliott
Girlset is a girl group with American members that was assembled by the K-pop company JYP Entertainment on the reality show "A2K." And like lots of K-pop, their sound is very influenced by Y2K era American pop and rap, so it was a smart idea to get Missy on here, she doesn't light up the track like she often does but I'm always happy to hear her voice. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+ 

"Lullaby (Mega Remix)" by JayDon and Paradise featuring Usher
"Lullaby (Remix)" by JayDon and Paradise featuring Jay Park and LOUIS of LNGSHOT
Teen R&B star JayDon (the voice of young Simba in the 2019 Lion King) is signed to Usher and (deep sigh) L.A. Reid's new label Mega, so Usher jumped on a remix of JayDon's breakthrough radio hit. JayDon's first line on the song is "I confess just like I'm preachin'," so Usher cuts into the song right there with a Confessions reference, it's pretty slick. There's another remix with a couple of midlevel K-pop stars that I've never heard of and it's not bad. On the original "Lullaby," Paradise and JayDon each sing half of the third verse. They also do that on the remixes, but Paradise sings new lyrics while JayDon's half of the verse is the same as on the original. 
Best Verse: Usher
Overall Grade: B+

"Morocco (Remix)" by Joshua Baraka featuring Shenseea and Axon
A remix feature, on Moliy's "Shake It To The Max (Fly)," turned out to be a big moment for Shenseea last year, so I'm glad she's jumping on more remixes, she sounds good on this track from Ugandan singer Joshua Baraka. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Most Likely RMX" by Dess Dior featuring KenTheMan and Saucy Santana
Saucy Santana is kind of boring and one-note to me, but I feel like KenTheMan is getting better and better, she's a star. 
Best Verse: KenTheMan
Overall Grade: B

"Now Or Never II" by TKANDZ & Cxsper featuring Lil Baby
"Now Or Never" was Essex rapper's breakthrough single on the UK charts, and Lil Baby actually sounds like he's trying on this unlike a lot of his guest verses in recent years, I think this is a more effective little US/UK cultural exchange than that overplayed Central Cee/Lil Baby song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: A- 

"Pixelated Kisses (Remix)" by Joji featuring Yeat
When Joji released "Pixelated Kisses" it felt like a very deliberate attempt for him to add some edge to his sound with noisy 'rage' production, which I'm more or less fine with since his music was really bland to begin with, so doing a remix with Yeat makes sense. And I think one of the best tracks on Yeat's new album is the one featuring Joji, I don't really feel like the ideal audience for either of these guys but I think they work well together. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Pretty Girls Win (Remix)" by Boosie Badazz featuring B.G. 
Clubby uptempo songs were never really Boosie's thing -- a lot of people know him mainly for "Wipe Me Down" and "Independent" but those are other people's songs that he guested on. "Pretty Girls Win" is a rare example of Boosie setting out to make a fun accessible song and it's actually pretty good. B.G.'s kind of a counterintuitive choice for the remix, though, he's another great southern rapper who kind of became a star in spite of his lack of pop instinct, but Boosie and B.G. have made a bunch of other tracks in the last couple years that play to their strengths. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C- 

"Still Sincere" by MJ Cole featuring PinkPantheress
MJ Cole's 1998 single "Sincere" was an early chart breakthrough for the UK garage scene, and PinkPantheress's music has a heavy influence from that era, so it's really cool to hear her do a new version of the track with MJ Cole.  
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Triple It (Remix)" by Cailin Russo and Don't Scare Billy featuring BIA
I wasn't familiar with Cailin Russo but I guess she's one of those nepo babies who's semi-famous for several different reasons. She's the daughter of the lead singer of alt-rock radio footnotes Unwritten Law, she's modeled for several major brands and played Justin Bieber's love interest in two music videos, a song she released in 2018 recently blew up after playing at the end of the "Heated Rivalry" season finale, and she has a writing credit on the Kanye West hit "Hurricane." "Triple It" is kind of shitty Soundcloud rap pastiche, most of her stuff doesn't sound like that, but the BIA verse is good. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Trump The Bill (Trapa-Mix)" by Sunshine Benzi featuring Cleotrapa
"Trump The Bill (Trim Edition)" by Sunshine Benzi featuring Trim
People had a good laugh about an email in the Epstein files referring to "Trump blowing Bubba," and Chicago rapper Sunshine Benzi riffs on that on her viral hit ("I'm getting busy, no Trump and Bill/ no Trump and Bill, presidential coupe, gotta Trump the bill"). All three of these rappers are very audibly Nicki Minaj-influenced, so I breathed a sigh of relief that there were no pro-MAGA Barbz bars. 
Best Verse: Cleotrapa
Overall Grade: B

"Walk That Walk (Remix)" by Anthony Q featuring 803Fresh, Tonio Armani, and Soulful Skonie
I have mixed feelings about the whole southern soul movement, I think the production lets the vocalists down pretty often, but 803Fresh really carries this remix and makes the song sound better. 
Best Verse: 803Fresh
Overall Grade: B+

"We On Go III" by BIA featuring TiaCorine
"We On Go (Rage Mix)" by BIA
In the last installment of this column I reviewed "We On Go II" featuring Denzel Curry and A$AP Ferg, and BIA recently released We On Go Pack with two more versions of the song. The original "We On Go" beat by Honorable C.N.O.T.E. and Tommy Brown already sounded like a Travis Scott-style 'rage' track, but the Rage Mix has a guitarist and drummer rocking out over the song, it's not produced very well and sounds a little cheesy, although the drummer gets off some good splashy fills. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D 

"wgft (Remix)" by Gunna featuring Chris Brown
The remix helped "wgft" jump up the charts and get Gunna his highest Hot 100 peak since "FukUMean," which I think is probably all that really matters when remixes like this drop. Breezy just does too much on the track, though, he has the wrong energy to replace Burna Boy on a pretty laid back song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D 

"Yaya (Remix)" by Compton Av featuring Snoop Dogg, 310babii, and Steelz
"Yaya (SheMix)" by Compton Av featuring Lola Brooke, Natalie Nunn, India Love, Blueface, and Steelz
"Yaya (Thailand Remix)" by Compton Av featuring Mixie Mixx, FIIXD, GUNNER, 4Bang, and Steelz
Compton Av has put together three different posse cut remixes for his biggest song, with the producer Steelz getting a feature credit on every version, and the remix with Snoop has gotten more streams than the original. It's pretty funny that Blueface is on the 'SheMix' that has guest verses from several women, but I feel bad that a very good Lola Brooke verse is stuck on a track with him and rap-adjacent reality TV/Instagram influencer types India Love and Natalie Nunn.  
Best Verse: Lola Brooke 
Overall Grade: C

"You (Remix)" by Soulful Skonie featuring Anthony Q
I just reviewed an Anthony Q remix featuring Soulful Skonie that came out in November, and Anthony Q returned the favor for this remix that dropped in February. A mellower slow jam kind of song that doesn't make as much sense as a collaboration, but Anthony Q's voice sounds good on it. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Yunnnn (Wemix)" by Stunna4Vegas featuring Monaleo
This is the first collaboration that Stunna4Vegas and Monaleo have released since they got married last year, so calling it a 'Wemix' is pretty cute, even if it's just the kind of punchline-heavy banger they both excel at. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Zombie (Remix)" by Yungblud featuring the Smashing Pumpkins
Yungblud seems to be on this mission to befriend as rock elders as he can, including the late Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, and now Smashing Pumpkins. A lot of times when a famous band is credited on a new version of a song, it's really just the lead singer adding some vocals (as with the 'Good Charlotte' version of the Yellowcard song I wrote about earlier in this post). But you can actually tell that Yungblud re-recorded "Zombie" with the Smashing Pumpkins and it sounds way better than the original. "Zombie" became Yungblud's first #1 song on alternative radio a few weeks after this was released, but I have no idea which version's getting radio airplay, because the only alternative station in my area plays so little new music that even #1 hits can pass them by. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

1:39 AM

Sunday, March 29, 2026

 





At 5:30 pm EST this Wednesday, April 1st, I'm going to appear on the Popular Music Books In Process series with Maren Hancock and Charity Marsh to talk about Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music and their forthcoming book We Can Dance if We Want To: Canadian DJ Culture Turns Up. Check the link to see how to watch the talk live on Zoom and participate in the Q&A, and I believe the video will be uploaded to YouTube after the fact as well. 

Here's the Zoom link: https://ua-edu.zoom.us/j/81233441077?pwd=kSq2xT3HGAJyZ9wksPbLCl0KeR0eCl.1 Meeting ID: 812 3344 1077, Passcode: 471149

1:38 PM

Friday, March 27, 2026

 




Motherfucking Jailbreak turned 50 this week so I ranked Thin Lizzy's albums for Spin. I also wrote about "Glass Onion" by The Beatles for the Deep Cut Friday column. 

1:37 PM

TV Diary

Thursday, March 26, 2026

 








a) "Bait" 
Riz Ahmed created the Amazon Prime series "Bait" and stars as a British-Pakistani actor not unlike himself named Shah Latif who starts to get buzz as possibly the next James Bond, and has to deal with all the positive and negative aftershocks of being a nonwhite actor who's considered for an iconic role historically played by white people. There's some pretty funny show business satire and social commentary, particularly the episode with Himesh Pitel, and the episode that focused on Ritu Arya's character was really compelling. but tonally it was kind of all over the place and I wish it ended a little stronger. Still, there's just 6 half hour episodes so it's basically the length of a movie and I watched it all in one day, pretty good. 

It feels like every other show on TV these days is a season-long murder mystery, which I'm starting to get really sick of. Obviously that's a very old genre of story and a lot of shows are very "Twin Peaks" about it, but "The White Lotus" feels like a more common template, where you should start with a death and then get all the backstory with lots of misdirection and stalling to keep the suspense up until the last episode, it all feels very hacky and cynical. Maybe that's unfair to bring up when talking about "DTF St. Louis" because so far it's a pretty engrossing story with great performances. But it's all painstakingly assembled so that each episode makes you believe a different explanation for the death of Floyd (David Harbour), which is kind of exhausting, like okay, fine you've got me guessing and second-guessing, let's get on with it. It's about a TV weather man (Jason Bateman) being accused of the murder and the theme song is "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," like it's just some obnoxious HBO dark comedy crap. Also, funny thing, I watched this week's entire episode on HBO Max with an ASL interpreter in the corner of the screen because I thought it was some deliberate thing that had to do with one of the main Floyd being an ASL interpreter. 

John Galworthy's novels about the Forsyte family were published over a century ago, won a Pulitzer prize, and have been adapted several other times as popular television and film projects. I don't really know anything about any of that, though, so I'm going into Channel 5/PBS series cold. And I liked the first episode, some moderately intriguing class conscious drama, tons of extremely beautiful British women. 

d) "Best Medicine"
"Best Medicine" is a Fox series about a doctor with the last name Best, so right off the bat, you know it's going to be a little corny. But Josh Charles, a Baltimore-born actor who's been consistently great in everything he's been in since Dead Poets Society and "Sports Night," is well suited for this light playful dramedy, with a slightly "Northern Exposure"-ish premise about an accomplished surgeon who becomes the town doctor for a Maine fishing village. Cree Cicchino is a particularly good foil for Charles as his assistant. The show's already been renewed for a second season, which I was happy to see. 

e) "CIA"
Now that Dick Wolf has three shows about the FBI that take up an entire night of CBS primetime, he's expanding to another federal agency, and just sampling the first episode confirmed that this shit is really not for me. 

I don't watch a lot of Taylor Sheridan's shows regularly, but I don't really dislike his stuff, and often at least the first episode is a strong pilot that establishes the story and the characters well. The first episode of "The Madison" is just incredibly bland, though, and seems to promise an even duller story to follow. Michelle Pfeiffer is married to David E. Kelley and they've vowed not to work together for the sake of their marriage, which I respect, but Kelley has made some great shows in recent years and she really deserves a TV vehicle better than this. 

"Jury Duty" was my #1 show of 2023, but it felt like one of those lightning-in-a-bottle ideas that easily could've not worked at all, and I didn't even think about whether they'd try to repeat it. But by simply tweaking the premise and having a different setting, a corporate company retreat instead of a jury trial, they found a way to do it again. The way the first season ended was what really impressed me, how they turned a social experiment that could have been mean into something kind of heartwarming, and so with only three episodes out now, I don't know if "Company Retreat" will end the same way. But the unwitting star of the show, Anthony, is rolling with everything pretty well, and the cast is really funny and only a couple of the characters feel like they're pushing the plausibility of the ruse with their performances. 

Being a day one fan doesn't really mean anything with TV, but it has been a little surreal watching "The Pitt" going from a promising little show to a cultural phenomenon. And while it's still a procedural where the interpersonal relationships of the characters are subtly teased out in little fleeting moments and just a couple of offscreen hookups have been acknowledged in the storyline, the shippers have turned every episode into a referendum on their weird romantic endgame theories for every possible pairing of characters. Great show, though, lot of really compelling moments in the second season and the Roxie storyline was especially heartbreaking. I can handle the gore, but a job where the computer system can go down and instead of going home you just have to figure out how to keep doing your job without it, now that's scary. 

Julia Roberts was originally attached to star in "The Last Thing He Told Me" before she pulled out and was replaced by Jennifer Garner, and it's really hard to watch this show without thinking about how much better it'd be with Roberts. Garner is good in comedy and lighter stuff, but I don't think she really has the range for a dark drama, she's just blandly frowning all the time. Angourie Rice, who plays her stepdaughter, is great, though, I think she could have a serious career ahead of her. 

I only finished the first season of "Paradise" recently and that 7th episode was crazy, really upped the ante and made the entire thing more interesting. So it was fun to go straight from that into the second season, where the story expands with that great standalone episode introducing a new character played by Shailene Woodley. 

I hear a lot about lead poisoning in this part of the country from a lot of houses having lead paint for years and years before people learned how harmful it was. But "Lead Children" is about a whole thing that happened in Poland with kids being lead poisoned by a nearby smelting plant and the government trying to cover it up, pretty bleak stuff, this is one of the best imported Netflix shows I've seen this year. 

This Korean show, a live action adaptation of a cartoon, is about a guy whose superpowers are tied to how much cash is on him, which is a hilarious premise, kind of like a more literal Bruce Wayne. 

This Korean show is one of those season-long mysteries that opens with a death and then fills in the backstory, so obviously it's not just an American TV thing. It's pretty good, though, and Shin Hye-sun is gorgeous. 

A Japanese murder mystery show, but a more conventional one, a hard-boiled detective story, and I'm always a fan of those. 

Another murder mystery where a detective has to deal with their own complicated past, this one in Spain, I love this kind of shit. 

Nordic noir is another popular modern variety of murder mystery, and this Swedish show on Netflix is one of the best I've seen in a while. 

This Thai show is a more of a stylish thriller murder mystery, which feels like kind of a '90s thing in America that I almost miss now, good show. 

A Chinese period piece about power struggles and revenge in the 7th century, cool shit. 

An Indian sitcom about a divorced guy adopting a baby, I'm sure I would hate this show if it was made in America and it's only slightly more likeable here. 

I rolled my eyes when this Netflix docuseries immediately opened talking about "Succession." But it quickly becomes a hilarious of the Murdoch family watching the show, and not realizing until they saw the chaos after Logan Roy died that they actually did need to put a succession plan in place before Rupert died. It also has some details about that fascinating story of James Murdoch financially backing the creation of Rawkus Records, and Newscorp buying it so that Rupert could keep James in the family business. 

"Neighbors" is an A24-produced docuseries on HBO, each episode details two disputes between neighbors property boundaries or pets or sanitary conditions or noise or whatever. They really lean into the kind of anthropological aspect of it all, and also kind of cleverly dole out bits of character detail, so you start to take sides in the argument before you know which side of the dispute is MAGA or has a weird hobby. It ends up being a pretty fascinating snapshot of what Americans are like right now. Many of the disputes escalate to physical fights or lawsuits, but they're mostly ongoing current conflicts, so you just kind of jump into the story and then leave without getting much of any resolution, which can be a little frustrating but I guess that's beside the point. 

"Born To Bowl" is another A24-produced docuseries on HBO but it just feels really corny and condescending, lots of ironically dramatic music and Liev Schreiber voiceover to constantly wink about bowling's working class low culture place in American sports. Not really the tone I'd like to see for a show about professional bowlers. 

This Apple TV+ docuseries is about women being drawn into a cult via a yoga studio and eventually being exploited for sex work, and they do weird shit with urine too, really horrible, stomach-turning story. 

x) "Age of Attraction"
Age gaps in romantic relationships is probably a more divisive topic than ever these days, and this Netflix dating show seems constructed specifically to throw more gasoline on that fire. I don't have particularly strong opinions about the subject, though, and tried to go into it with an open mind that some of the pairings do seem well matched, but these kinds of shows generally bore me and this one is no exception. 

This Nate Bargatze-hosted ABC game show is a little like "Family Feud" in that the contestants are trying to predict how most people would answer a question in a survey rather than knowing trivia. But they kind of build the whole show around that concept in an entertaining way, including prize money that is based on the average American's yearly salary. 

Chef competition shows are always fun and Guy Fieri takes a lot of shit for being an over-the-top character but I generally like his shows, he seems like good people. 

1:36 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 395: Ghostface Killah

Tuesday, March 24, 2026




 












I've already done Wu-Tang Clan and Raekwon deep cuts playlists, now it's time for Ghost. 

Ghostface Killah deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Fish f/ Raekwon and Cappadonna
2. Poisonous Darts
3. 260 f/ Raekwon
4. Nutmeg f/ RZA
5. One
6. Mighty Healthy
7. Flowers f/ Raekwon, Method Man, and Superb
8. The Hilton f/ Raekwon
9. Love f/ Musiq Soulchild and K. Fox
10. Metal Lungies f/ Sheek Louch and Styles P
11. Shakey Dog
12. R.A.G.U. f/ Raekwon
13. Guns N' Razors f/ Trife Da God, Cappadonna, and Killa Sin
14. Yolanda's House f/ Raekwon and Method Man 
15. Paragraphs of Love f/ Estelle and Vaughn Anthony
16. Youngstown Heist f/ Trife Da God, Sheek Louch, and Bully
17. Starkology
18. Beware of the Stare with Adrian Younge
19. Blood In The Streets f/ AZ
20. Nuggets of Wisdom with BADBADNOTGOOD
21. Death's Invitation with Adrian Younge, Scarub, Lyrics Born, and Chino XL
22. Face Off with Czarface
23. Waffles & Ice Cream f/ Cappadonna
24. YUPP! f/ Remy Ma
25. Love Me Anymore f/ Nas

Tracks 1, 2, and 3 from Ironman (1996)
Tracks 4, 5, and 6 from Supreme Clientele (2000)
Tracks 7 and 8 from Bulletproof Wallets (2001)
Tracks 9 and 10 from The Pretty Toney Album (2004)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Fishscale (2006)
Track 13  from More Fish (2006)
Track 14 from The Big Doe Rehab (2007)
Track 15 from Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City (2009)
Track 16 from Wu-Massacre with Method Man and Raekwon (2010)
Track 17 from Apollo Kids (2010)
Track 18 from Twelve Reasons To Die with Adrian Younge (2013)
Track 19 from 36 Seasons (2014)
Track 20 from Sour Soul with BadBadNotGood (2015)
Track 21 from Twelve Reasons To Die II with Adrian Younge (2015)
Track 22 from Czarface Meets Ghostface with Czarface (2019)
Track 23 from Ghostface Killahs (2019)
Track 24 from Set The Tone (Guns & Roses) (2024)
Track 25 from Supreme Clientele 2 (2025)

Ghostface Killah wasn't as immediately a solo star to the degree of other Wu-Tang guys like Method Man and ODB, but his standout performances on Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... set up Ironman to do well. I remember liking the "Daytona 500" video because it was all cut together from scenes from "Speed Racer," but because of that and Ghost not having the first verse on that song, I don't think I really knew him by his face or his voice until the "Triumph" video. But Ghost was the only Wu-Tang guy whose sophomore album generated more excitement than his debut, and Supreme Clientele still really holds up as one of the greatest rap albums from the whole crew, from the era, whatever. 

Much as Ghostface's name and face were on the covers of Cuban Linx and Cuban Linx... Pt. II, Raekwon is on the cover of Ironman and Bulletproof Wallets, really an unusual arrangement in the history of rap that totally works, two guys who never made a record as a 50/50 duo but co-piloted each other's albums several times. I didn't even plan it out this way, but this playlist has 6 songs featuring Raekwon, just like my Raekwon playlist had 6 songs featuring Ghostface. 

Bulletproof Wallets is one of those albums that was hamstrung by sample clearances and red tape, and was actually released with the wrong tracklist on the back cover, and some great leaked songs were missing or changed on the final release. So everyone always laments that it could've been a better album, but it's still got great stuff on it, it was fun to cherrypick standout tracks. Then Ghostface signed to Def Jam and really became a workhorse of their roster with 6 albums in 7 years. His consistency dropped a little in that time, but he still made a lot more great music outside the group than any other member of Wu-Tang. The storytelling tracks especially became his strong suit, "The Hilton," "Shakey Dog," and "Yolanda's House" are some of my favorites. 

"One" features Ghostface sort of talking back to the vocal sample in the beat, something that was kind of new at the time that was done more famously on Jay-Z's The Blueprint a year later. In fact, Kanye West and Just Blaze have said that a lot of their beats for The Blueprint were made with Ghostface in mind, which makes a lot of sense in retrospect. And of course Kanye later sampled "Mighty Healthy" on "New God Flow." 

Ghostface has done some cool collaborative projects later in his career, and the records with Adrian Younge and BADBADNOTGOOD are some of his most popular post-Def Jam albums. Younge does some interesting stuff with time signatures and "Beware of the Stare" and "Death's Invitation" are both very rare examples of hip-hop beats in 5/4. Inspectah Deck, as I mentioned before, is probably my favorite Wu-Tang rapper who never made a classic as a solo artist, and more recently he's done good work with the group Czarface, including a collab album with Ghost. Last year's Supreme Clientele 2 isn't nearly as close to the original in quality as Cuban Linx... Pt. II was, and Ghostface's voice is finally starting to really age, but it has its moments. 

4:05 AM

Friday, March 20, 2026

 




I wrote about Sly & The Family Stone's "Africa Talks to You" for Spin's Deep Cut Friday column this week. 

12:00 PM

Movie Diary

Thursday, March 19, 2026


 

























a) Hamnet
I was disappointed that Jessie Buckley wasn't nominated for an Oscar for Wild Rose, I thought she really deserved one. I did not think Hamnet was nearly as good a movie, but her performance was absolutely the best thing about it, so I'm still pretty glad she won for it. I've never seen Shakespeare in Love because the premise just didn't seem like something I wanted to see, and as I watched Hamnet I felt like I'd been lulled into seeing basically what I'd been pointedly avoiding for 25+ years. The talented cast and crew did a lot to make it a relatively subtle and affecting version of that idea, I still just didn't think it was a very good idea, especially that awful "to be or not to be" scene. 

Now this is a Best Picture nom that I thought was deserving, definitely up there with Sinners and One Battle as the best Oscar flicks this year. It was also the rare '70s period piece that actually had the pacing and texture of great '70s movies, Wagner Moura was great but there were a lot of really wonderful ensemble moments, particularly Kaiony Vinancio and the late Udo Kier. 

c) Oh, Hi!
I felt like this could've been better if they'd committed to it being a light battle-of-the-sexes movie, or if they'd gone further in the direction of making it a horror movie, but it just landed somewhere in the middle with a shrug. Geraldine Viswanathan is in it, though, so I have no regrets about watching it, I adore her, every scene she was in was funnier than the scenes without her. 

d) The Naked Gun
I grew up on Naked Gun movies and "Police Squad!" and I think Akiva Schaffer is a genius for Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. So I was reasonably sure I'd enjoy this, but I was laughing at loud through the entire thing, it was really fantastic. The only thing I was a little skeptical about was Pamela Anderson, who's more 'not a serious actress' than a comedic actress per se, but her big musical number was the peak of the whole movie, just ridiculous. 

e) 10x10
A pretty good minimalist thriller, I never really kept up with "Yellowstone," but sometimes I wish I had because of Kelly Reilly, she's great. 

f) The Beast Within
I really don't think Kit Harington has the juice to lead somemthing like this werewolf movie, he just feels like a lightweight to me. 

g) Nuremberg
I don't think Russell Crowe was necessarily bad in this movie but I wish someone else was the lead, I just look at him and seen an over-the-hill hack now. It definitely felt like it had the potential to be an Oppenheimer-level movie with a better director and better star. 

h) Lion
I barely have any memory of this movie from when it came out 10 years ago, but apparently it had 6 Oscar nominations. Pretty good but I kind of just put it on as background noise one day, maybe I didn't give it the attention it deserved. 

i) I'm Chevy Chase And You're Not
I went into this kind of expecting a depressing recap of all the reasons Chevy Chase is not particularly beloved in show business, but it ended up being a pretty entertaining and often charming look back at why he became a star in the first place that put his personal flaws and failures in context without letting him off the hook. And it was nice that Garrett Morris had some positive things to say about him. My jaw did drop when Chevy referred to his second wife as his first wife and someone else had to remind him about a woman he was married to for four years. I don't know if that's senility, narcissism, or a combination of both. 

j) Come See Me In The Good Light
I wasn't familiar with the poet Andrea Gibson, who died of ovarian cancer last year, but this documentary about their marriage and final years is pretty touching, it's kind of hard to watch something this intimate and share in someone else's grief and tragedy, but I appreciate that they let the filmmakers capture these moments. 

11:57 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 394: Raekwon

Tuesday, March 17, 2026
















Last week I made a Wu-Tang Clan playlist, and I wanted to follow that with some playlists from Wu-Tang solo careers, starting with Raekwon The Chef. 

Raekwon deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Knowledge God
2. Verbal Intercourse f/ Ghostface Killah and Nas
3. Spot Rusherz
4. Rainy Dayz f/ Ghostface Killah and Blue Raspberry
5. Ice Water f/ Ghostface Killah and Cappadonna
6. Sneakers
7. Casablanca
8. Missing Watch f/ Ghostface Killah and Polite
9. Smith Bros.
10. 10 Bricks f/ Ghostface Killah and Cappadonna
11. Broken Safety f/ Jadakiss and Styles P
12. Have Mercy f/ Beanie Sigel
13. Kiss The Ring f/ Inspectah Deck and Masta Killa
14. Criminology 2.5 with Ghostface Killah and Method Man
15. Masters of Our Fate f/ Black Thought
16. Last Trip To Scotland f/ Lloyd Banks
17. Double Dragon f/ Mean Doe Green
18. 1,2 1,2 f/ Snoop Dogg
19. Live To Die
20. Nothing
21. M&N f/ P.U.R.E.
22. Wild Corsicans f/ Conway The Machine, Benny The Butcher, and Westside Gunn
23. Pomogranite f/ Inspectah Deck and Carlton Fisk

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... (1995)
Tracks 6 and 7 from Immobilarity (1999)
Tracks 8 and 9 from The Lex Diamond Story (2003)
Tracks 10, 11, 12, and 13 from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II (2009)
Track 14 from Wu-Tang Presents...Wu-Massacre with Method Man and Ghostface Killah (2010)
Track 15 and 16 from Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang (2011)
Track 17 from The Tonite Show EP (2013)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Fly International Luxurious Art (2015)
Tracks 20 and 21 from The Wild (2017)
Tracks 22 and 23 from The Emperor's New Clothes (2025)

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...has always been one of the most revered Wu-Tang solo albums, and if anything its reputation has only grown over the years, at this point it might be giving Enter the Wu-Tang competition as the greatest album to come out of the whole crew. Obviously it was only nominally a solo album, though, Ghostface's name and face are on the cover and he raps on over half the songs. Rae's absolutely one of the best MCs in the crew but it never felt like he's a hitmaker, Cuban Linx's biggest hit "Ice Cream" is carried by Method Man and Ghost and might have felt more at home on one of their albums, 

While most Wu-Tang rappers besides Ghost had trouble following up their debuts, Raekwon really struggled with the sophomore slump with Immobilarity. I didn't even listen to the entire thing until recently, I just remember seeing the videos on "Rap City" back in the day and it did not feel like anybody cared about that record. RZA is credited with producing 2 skits on the album but he doesn't have any beats on it, and really other than a Meth feature and a Masta Killa feature, Wu-Tang's not really involved in the album, "Sneakers," a catchy little sneaker head anthem produced Pete Rock, is really the kind of thing Rae could have released as a single if you ask me. All the other tracks on Immobilarity are by no-names or second string Bad Boy and Terror Squad producers, though, some of the tracks are nice and some are awful. 

By The Lex Diamond Story, Raekwon might have gotten a bit defensive about the reverence for his debut. "Smith Bros." opens with Raekwon arguing with a nerdy journalist who suggests his best days are behind him ("Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... was your classic album, are you gonna match that again?" "Listen, you fucking asshole, you's a fucking dick, man, talk about something that means something, man, we're talking about me, we're talking about the movements that I'm making right now"). And then the next solo album Rae released was Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II, which I kind of complained was overrated because of '90s nostalgia at the time, but it's pretty great, easily his second best solo album. "10 Bricks" is killer, and "Have Mercy" is probably the last classic Beanie Sigel verse. 

Rae started talking an eventual Cuban Linx ... Pt. III on his next album, Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang. That has yet to happen, but his latest album The Emperor's New Clothes, part of Mass Appeal's Legend Has It... series, was purposefully released just before the 30th anniversary of Cuban Linx. It's fun to hear Rae on a song with the Griselda guys, who probably wouldn't exist if not for Cuban Linx, on "Wild Corsicans." 

11:12 AM

Monthly Report: March 2026 Singles

Monday, March 16, 2026


















1. Greylan James - "Water At A Wedding"
Greylan James has been had some success in Nashville as a songwriter (Jordan Davis's hit "Next Thing You Know" and album tracks for Morgan Wallen, Blake Shelton, Kenny Chesney, Cole Swindell). But "Water At A Wedding" is his first song on the charts as an artist and it blew me away the first time I heard it, the kind of good old fashioned country lyric that tells a story so well that it feels like there's a whole screenplay there. James said it was actually inspired by his experience of going to an ex's wedding, although I imagine the dramatic reveal in the bridge was probably not part of the real story. I mean if it was, though, holy shit. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

2. Noah Kahan - "The Great Divide" 
I never felt too strongly about the hits from Noah Kahan's massive 2022 album Stick Season, which is now quadruple platinum. But the first time I heard the lead single and title track from his forthcoming follow-up The Great Divide, it sounded fucking incredible on my car radio. For some reason it didn't hit the same when I streamed the song on my headphones, but that lyric, about an estranged friend and the unspoken trauma they were dealing with, is pretty compelling stuff that kept me coming back to the song over and over. 

3. Bruce Springsteen - "Streets of Minneapolis"
I've done about 200 of these monthly singles lists over the years, and I'm reasonably sure this is the first time the top 3 songs were all by white men. But I don't feel too weird about it since one of those songs is pointedly anti-Trump. Not to lib out, but it does make me happy to see someone like Springsteen, who has historically tried to make his political songs feel as broad and universal as possible, get hyper-specific and name names in a song like this. It almost feels like he doesn't even really know how to do that as Bruce Springsteen and instead makes "Streets of Minneapolis" as a '60s Dylan song, which I think works pretty well. 

4. Wolf Alice - "White Horses"
Ellie Roswell has always been the frontwoman in the spotlight in Wolf Alice, especially on The Clearing's lead single "Bloom Baby Bloom," which rebooted the band's sound with a piano-heavy groove. So I was a little surprised when one of the album's advance promo singles, "White Horses," was a guitar-driven track with verses sung by drummer Joel Amey. Amey sings the clunky phrase "my choice to choose" three times in the space of ten seconds, so I don't think I'd want him writing lyrics on a lot of Wolf Alice songs, but "White Horses" became a radio hit and really grow on me, really one of their catchiest songs. 

5. Pinkpantheress f/ Zara Larsson - "Stateside (Remix)" 
I put this on my year-end Remix Report Card for 2025 but I didn't know it was going to go on to bigger things in 2026. It was already spearheading a big streaming moment for Larsson at the top of the year, with the return of her decade-old hit "Lush Life" and Midnight Sun's brilliant title track. And then Alysa Liu skated to the "Stateside" remix in an Olympics exhibition, and it went supernova and just became Larsson's first top 10 hit in America, love to see the stars align like this. 

6. T.I. - "Let Em Know" 
I was a little surprised about just how immediately "Let Em Know" got a bigger reaction than than any T.I. song in a long time (over a decade since "About The Money," and even longer since he had a solo hit that wasn't boosted significantly by a feature). Maybe people are just a little more excited about Pharrell-produced rappity rap after the Clipse album, but "I'm Serious" is still by far the best T.I./Pharrell track. "Let Em Know" is good, though, I'm glad Tip stopped the weird standup comedy side quest and got some new momentum with music. 

7. Meghan Patrick - "Golden Child" 
I often talk about how slowly country radio moves, and what drives me crazy about that is that sometimes songs will kick around forever and still not get that big. The title track from Bowmanville, Ontario singer Meghan Patrick's 2024 album Golden Child was on Billboard's Country Airplay chart for 61 weeks, and finally dropped off recently after peaking at only #17, which was really disappointing, this was one of my most listened songs of 2025 and I thought it might finally go top 10 this year. But it was still Patrick's breakthrough on American country radio after 14 hits on the Canadian charts, so I hope to hear more from her. 

8. Carly Pearce - "Dream Come True"
"Dream Come True" is kind of similar to "Golden Child" in that it's about how success in show business isn't all it's cracked up to be, but it's a much darker song, I was almost taken aback by how much of a bummer the ending is. But country music used to be a lot more about sad songs than it is now, and Carly Pearce is good at those, 29: Written in Stone was the best of the surge of divorce albums by country stars in the last few years. 

9. Deftones - "Infinite Source"
My 16-year-old son is one of those kids who mostly listens to rap but wears t-shirts of hard rock and metal bands he doesn't listen to, so he has a Deftones shirt but I don't know if he's ever heard a Deftones song. Maybe I'll make him a playlist at some point. "Infinite Source" is my favorite single they've put out in a long time, love the guitar tone. 

10. Mt. Joy - "Lucy"  
Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay (Triple A) chart features a lot of the same stuff from the main Alternative Airplay chart, along with some slightly mellower college rock fare like late period Wilco singles, so I kind of think of it as the place where bands like Counting Crows and Snow Patrol get put out to pasture after their peak commercial years. Mt. Joy, however, are a rare example of an AAA staple band crossing over, "Lucy" is their eighth AAA top 10 hit, but it has some cursing and has a bittersweet lyric about a friend who died young, so I guess it was just edgy enough to become their first Alternative Airplay hit. 

The Worst Single of the Month: DaBaby - "Pop That Thang" 
I know we say everything is a recession indicator now, but DaBaby having his first Hot 100 entry in like three years feels like a recession indicator. 

11:11 AM

Friday, March 13, 2026

 




I wrote about R.E.M.'s "7 Chinese Bros." for Spin's Deep Cut Friday column this week. 

10:00 PM

TV Diary

Thursday, March 12, 2026

 







a) "Vladimir" 
Netflix's "Vladimir" is just okay, which feels like a ridiculous thing to say about a show where Rachel Weisz is having, fantasizing about, or talking about sex for a significant portion of the screentime. But she also talks to the camera in the middle of scenes without ever saying anything funny so it just feels like an unfocused "Fleabag" knockoff. And she's playing in American, which just isn't as delightful as hearing her real accent. It probably would've been better as a movie, you could just staple together the first and last episodes and one or two in the middle where there was actually some story or character development. I did like the last episode, though, other than the worst possible needle drop I've ever seen a season of a show end with. 

b) "American Classic"
The Canadian 2003-2006 series "Slings & Arrows" is a classic in my personal canon, and I was immediately reminded of it while watching the first episode of "American Classic," a tonally similar show that's also about Shakespearean dramatists -- and quickly confirmed my hunch that the same person, Bob Martin, co-created both shows. This one stars Kevin Kline, in the first live action role I've seen where he sounds pretty much exactly like his "Bob's Burgers" character, Mr. Fischoeder. MGM+ (formerly Epix) has always been the one pay channel/streamer I never felt tempted to subscribe to, but I might have to sign up at least temporarily for "American Classic" based on the one free episode I got on my cable package. 

c) "Sunny Nights" 
I like this show where Will Forte plays an American entrepreneur going through a divorce in Australia, maybe not as much as the show a couple years ago where Forte was an American podcaster going through a divorce in Ireland, but it's pretty good. If he and Tina Fey split up on "The Four Seasons" he could be the most divorced guy on television. D'Arcy Carden is really funny in "Sunny Nights," definitely deserves to be thought of as possibly one of the best comedic actresses we have right now. 

d) "The Gray House" 
"The Gray House" is one of Kevin Costner's history buff passion projects that he started doing again after his "Yellowstone" comeback, the entire miniseries was filmed in 2023 and screened at a festival in 2024 but I guess it took a while to find a buyer and is just now finally streaming on Amazon Prime. "The Gray House" is a fascinating true story about women who worked as spies for the Union side during the Civil War, and Mary-Louise Parker leads a strong cast. But it just kind of looks shoddy, doesn't have the kind of costuming and hair and makeup and production values that a period piece of this size should have, and is just kind of mediocre and corny in a number of other ways, one episode ends with a song by Scott Stapp.

e) "Scarpetta" 
Nicole Kidman is the hardest working Oscar-winning icon in show business and "Scarpetta" is the 6th series she's starred in so far in the 2020s (the 7th premieres in April). Kidman plays the titular forensic pathologist from a series of Patricia Cromwell novels, and the first episode was pretty good, it's fun to see Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis play sisters who hate each other. 

f) "Young Sherlock" 
I don't like to reduce television to being an inherently lower artform than film, but certainly there are some filmmakers that seem to find their level a little bit when they start working in television and Guy Ritchie is one of them. I don't mean that as an insult, he just makes fun stuff and I think his strengths come off better in a series format, "Young Sherlock" being a good case in point. 

I rolled my eyes pretty hard at Ryan Murphy producing a show about JFK Jr., it's such a predictable combination of fame and romance and tragedy for him. And we're living in a time when America's unhealthy fascination with the Kennedy family has put a dangerous moron in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. But I will give Murphy and his team credit, they made an engrossing little show of celebrity fan fiction with lots of nostalgic '90s fashion and a well curated soundtrack of '90s music. Even the casting feels pretty spot-on. But I definitely enjoy the show more than I respect it, and at one point someone says "beast mode" in 1995, which is definitely not something people said back then. 

Patrick Dempsey plays a contract killer with Alzheimer's in this Fox adaptation of a German series called "De Zaak Alzheimer." Dempsey doesn't really have the right vibe for this kind of role, and Michael Imperioli is too good for a show like this. Odeya Rush is beautiful, though. 

i) "Scrubs" 
I liked "Scrubs," it was a dependable cable rerun staple, the cartoony fantasy cutaway gags can be embarrassing but they had a very funny cast and some sharp writing and navigated some tricky swings between silly and serious. I was fine leaving "Scrubs" in the past but I am enjoying seeing most of the cast back in a revival for a 10th season, I'd prefer if there was more John C. McGinley but tonally they fell right back into the old show without much different. It feels like they've really just taken all the comedy out of Sarah Chalke's performance and made her character mainly a source of conflict, though, which is a bummer, and this week's episode had Matt Rife in it. Gross.  

As much as I do still enjoy "Scrubs," I think a lot of Bill Lawrence's post-"Scrubs" shows have been better, and I love "Shrinking," absolutely one of my favorite shows on TV right now. It didn't occur to me until watching it right after the "Scrubs" revival that the Jimmy/Paul dynamic is basically J.D./Dr. Cox. It also didn't occur to me that Paul's Parkinson's storyline might have been inspired by Bill Lawrence's friendship with Michael J. Fox until Fox started guesting on "Shrinking." I wish he was on there a little more often because it's so nice to see him again, but it probably makes sense that he just does fairly brief appearances. And the whole cast is so strong, by the third season they've already started to develop a bench of entertaining recurring players (Rachel Stubington, Kimberly Condict). I watched a few episodes in a row when I was up until like 3am unable to sleep recently, so take it with a grain of salt but this show makes me literally laugh out loud and cry in just about every episode. 

A Turkish show on Netflix, the kind of sexy soap opera about feuding wealthy people that transcends cultures, pretty good. 

"Scandal Eve" is about a Japanese talent agency that has 72 hours to try to stop a magazine article that could end a client's career, which is a great premise, 

A sexy Colombian show on Netflix about a love triangle, quickly became one of those background noise shows I put on while I'm writing. 

This Netflix series is about the great true story of 'the Hugh Hefner of Italy,' a Catholic mother who started running her husband's erotic magazine after he disappeared. 

This Korean show is one of those romcoms where one character is misrepresenting who they are for a job, and then they fall in love while living a lie, so you just kind of roll your eyes at watching them keep up this doomed cliched deception. Kind of a cute show, though, the leads have chemistry. 

Pretty good Japanese show on Netflix, impressive action scenes. 

A Korean show about a middle-aged corporate guy who doesn't get the promotion he was hoping for and his career kind of implodes and he starts to rethink what life and success are about, pretty good. 

In a weird way this Korean show is like the inverse of "The Dream Life of Mr. Kim," about a young CEO working to save the family business. 

A Japanese show that's also about rising and falling career fortunes, in this case an accountant who loses his job and then falls in love while getting involved in the world of horse racing. 

An animated series about a mythical war in ancient India, don't really love the visual style but it was at least different than what I've seen before. 

This is is about a group of friends in Denmark who realize that a series of killings in their small town were committed by someone in their social circle, just a chilling story to think about. 

A docuseries about this TikTok influencer guy who people found out was a convicted killer after a woman disappeared shortly after meeting him. Crazy shit, I'm surprised I didn't hear about this when it happened a couple years ago. 

More extremely depressing true crime, this time about a West Virginia teen who was murdered in 2012. 

A Steven Spielberg-produced Netflix miniseries narrated by Morgan Freeman that presents animated dinosaurs as accurately to current scientific consensus as possible. Neat idea but I didn't really find it interesting at all, I put it on when my kid was around and he didn't care either, he never got obsessed with dinosaurs like I was as a kid. 

I guess this was a hit on YouTube before it became a Netflix series, it's basically just couples therapy. Feels a little weird and voyeuristic, even by reality TV standards, to delve into other people's marriages like this. 

This show is still just as good as it's ever been, I thought the recent body cameras episode was particularly good at breaking down the nuance in an issue. I'm just trying to enjoy the show while it's here because I don't know what's gonna happen to it under the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger. 

11:56 AM