Hosted by Oliver Wang and Morgan Rhodes, every episode of Heat Rocks invites a special guest to talk about a heat rock - a hot album, a scorching record. These are in-depth conversations about the albums that shape our lives.
Our guests include musicians, writers, and scholars and though we don't exclusively focus on any one genre, expect to hear about albums from the worlds of soul, hip-hop, funk, jazz, Latin and more.
New episodes every Thursday on Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts.
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The album: Digable Planets: Reachin' (1993)
More on Reachin'
More on Jack Davey and J*Davey
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Reachin' unless indicated otherwise):
The album: A Tribe Called Quest: Low End Theory (1991)
Producer/MC Denaun Porter aka Mr. Porter has been in the hip-hop scene for over two decades. He has some impressive credits under his belt, producing songs that combined have sold almost 100 million records. He has worked with some of the industries top-talent including Eminem, 50 Cent, SnoopDog, Shakira, Bad Meets Evil, and many more. He is also one of the founding members of the chart-topping Detroit hip-hop group D12. It was none other than ATCQ's "Bonita Applebaum" that inspired Mr. Porter to get into hip-hop and not surprisingly, when we invited him to the show, he wanted to talk about one of the all-time great hip-hop albums: ATCQ's sophomore effort, Low End Theory.
During our convo, we discussed the production techniques and sample choices, how good the album's sequencing was, and why Q-Tip and the late Phife Dawg went together like peanut butter and jelly. We also got into the fight-provoking question of: Low End Theory or Midnight Marauders?
More on A Tribe Called Quest and Low End Theory
More on Denaun Porter
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Low End Theory unless indicated otherwise):
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The album: Freestyle Fellowship: To Whom It May Concern (1991)
Brian Cross, better known to most as B+, is one of the most important photographers of the hip-hop generation to ever emerge out of the West Coast. A transplant from Ireland to California, Cross began documenting the L.A. rap community throughout the late '80s and early '90s, producing one of the great books about the region's hip-hop scene, It's Not About a Salary. He's also a founding partner of the music/events organization Mochilla. Just this year, Cross finally published his first book reflecting on his career in photography, Ghost Notes: Music of the Unplayed. For his episode with Heat Rocks, Cross took us back to 1991 and the release of To Whom It May Concern, one of the greatest West Coast hip-hop albums of all time...and one that most people never got to hear back in the day because of its limited distribution at the time. Better late than never; don't keep sleeping.
More on Freestyle Fellowship and To Whom It May Concern
More on Brian "B+" Cross
Show Tracklisting (all songs from To Whom It May Concern unless indicated otherwise):
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The album: D'Angelo: Brown Sugar (1995)
DJ Monalisa Murray is an O.G. on the L.A. scene, having made the transition from working in marketing and promotion for record labels to working for herself as one of the Southland's premier selectors, down with everyone from Umoja Hi-Fi Soundsystem, to Footlong Development, to the KPL All-Stars. For her album choice, she wanted to spin us back to the emergence of D'Angelo and his debut album, Brown Sugar. We talked about how D'Angelo struck a different note than R&B in that era, how his style played to and against hip-hop, and just what exactly "brown sugar" refers to. Spicy.
More on D'Angelo and Brown Sugar
More on DJ Monalisa
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Brown Sugar unless indicated otherwise):
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428 S Hewitt St
Los Angeles, California 90013
Heat Rocks will be doing a live show as part of The Voyager Institute: a lecture series on movies and music. FREE-ADMISSION, RSVP here.
The show includes:
A live taping of Heat Rocks on the topic of Michael Jackson's HIStory, featuring special guest Justin Simien of "Dear White People.
The Search For "The Weirdest Band In The World" (presented by Andy Hermann and Rico Gagliano).
The Maysles Brothers' TV Commercials (presented by Sean Savage, Academy Film Archive)
The album: Lightnin' Rod: Hustlers Convention (1973)
Ishmael Butler aka Butterfly of Digable Planets aka one-half of Shabazz Palaces joined us to take us on a trip back to the blaxploitation era and one of the greatest soundtracks-in-search-of-a-movie: Hustlers Convention, the spoken word/funk album by Jalal Nuriddin of The Last Poets. Backed up musicians that included Kool and the Gang, Eric Gale and others, Hustlers Convention took listeners on a trip into the world of pimps, players, police and other street characters in a vivid, cinematic story that would go onto inspire rappers the world over.
More on Lightnin' Rod and Hustlers Convention
More on Ishmael Butler
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Hustler's Conventionunless indicated otherwise):
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The album: Main Source: Breaking Atoms (1991)
MC extraordinaire Pharoahe Monch was no stranger to the trio known as Main Source (Large Professor + DJs K-Cut and Sir Scratch) back in the early '90s: Monch and Large Professor came up under the tutelage of the same mentor: producer Paul C. Though C was tragically murdered in 1989, both his proteges would go onto have banner years in '91 as Large Professor saw Main Source's Breaking Atoms released to critical fanfare while Monch enjoyed the same just a couple of months later when he and Prince Po released their debut, self-titled LP as Organized Konfusion.
Monch sat down with us to talk about the experience of buying Breaking Atoms on tape from Hot Waxx in Queens and having it blow his mind on that first listen as well as what he's learned from the album in the 25+ years since. Listen to this episode live at your BBQ...
More on Main Source and Breaking Atoms
More on Pharoahe Monch
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Breaking Atoms unless indicated otherwise):
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The album: Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003)
The Grammy nominated ladies of King are Anita Bias alongside sisters Amber and Paris Strother and it seems only right to have a super-sized guest talk about a super-sized album: Outkast's massive double LP from 2003: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Amongst other topics, we talked about how each of the three women first crossed paths with Outkast, what the group meant for the rise of the South in the 1990s, and revisited the endless debate over whether this as an Outkast album or a pair of Big Boi/Andre 3000 solo albums packaged together.
More on Outkast and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
More on King
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below unless indicated otherwise):
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The album: Eugene McDaniels: Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse (1971)
When we approached Bardo Martinez of Chicano Batman, we figured he'd go with a left-field album choice and he did not disappoint. Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse was a cult LPs for years, one of the most overtly political albums of the entire '70s (least of all on Atlantic Records!) and might have been wholly forgotten if not for '90s hip-hop producers rediscovering it and using it as sample fodder. However, all groovy groove aside, Headless Heroes is also an astonishing album in regards to McDaniels' explicit politics regarding everything from the U.S. treatment of Native Americans to blue eyed minstrels to Watergate. It was supposedly blacklisted by no less than the Vice President of the U.S. (Spiro Agnew). As Chicano Batman are no strangers to merging message and music, it was the perfect LP for Bardo and us to dig into, least of all in this current political moment.
More on Eugene McDaniels and Headless Heroes
More on Bardo Martinez and Chicano Batman
Show Tracklisting (all songs from Headless Heroes unless indicated otherwise):
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The album: TLC's CrazySexyCool (1994)
Frannie Kelley, alongside Ali Shaheed Muhammed, hosts the Microphone Check podcast and when we invited her onto our show, she wanted to talk about one of her formative musical experiences as a teenager: TLC's sophomore album, CrazySexyCool. The three of us talked about how TLC shaped adolescent ideas about sexuality and femininity, how the group repped the hip-hop South at a time when that was just becoming to be recognized nationally, and how the group had one of the more underrated liner notes font game going on.
More on TLC's CrazySexyCool
More on Frannie Kelley
Show Tracklisting (all songs from CrazySexyCool unless indicated otherwise):
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