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Cloudhopping with Oakland’s Main Attrakionz Photography by Ryan Young [Published in the Nov/Dec Issue of Wonderland Magazine] We’re at Sizzlers, sitting in a corner booth with a deteriorating linoleum table and sinking bench cushions. MondreM.A.N. and Squadda B, the blunted masterminds behind rapidly rising North Oakland act Main Attrakionz, are each expecting the neverending shrimp plate. We’re not quite in Oakland proper -- we’re in San Leandro, CA, at the edge of Oakland’s southern border, a modestly populated industrial suburb framed by a trio of interstate freeways. Mondre is puffing on a slim vaporizer, brimming with hash oil, in cavalier disregard to what I’m assuming is Sizzler corporate policy. The management doesn’t seem to mind, or at least they’re pretending not to notice. It’s a delightfully absurd scene made weirder by a conversation that runs the gamut from Celine Dion to professional wrestling. Squadda and Mondre have been good friends for a very long time (“since forever” they tell me), made readily apparent by a seemingly extrasensory chemistry. The pair often finishes one another’s sentences, casually volleying from conversation point to conversation point, usually without eye contact. There is an undeniable musicality to the discussion, a conversational rhythm and flow, all suggesting an unspoken -- but nonetheless obvious -- mutual reverence. They have a special relationship afforded by time and collaboration.  It’s easy to imagine them in Squadda’s house, 13 years old and rapping through a buzzing karaoke machine. This chemistry is part of what makes their music so listenable. The rest, one might say, can be owed to the Cloud. Characterized by an aesthetic that marries the reverb-drenched gauze of ambient music to the recognizable slap of an 808 (with a liberal helping of hyphy spooned in for good measure), “Cloud Rap” was contrived by music journalists attempting to put a neat, fashionable bow on output from artists like A$AP Rocky and MAz. The terminology is fair enough (there is a definitely what could be considered a “hazy” thread running through the majority of MAz’s work) but trying to sum the duo up with a buzzword seems to kind of miss the point. Mondre and Squadda center on a sensibility, sure, but they orbit spastically from that center in dazzling arcs, pumping out whatever music the moment inspires. “‘09 ‘10, ‘11, ‘12, we started with something there, we start over and over,” Squadda tells me over as the server sets down a refill of shrimp, “‘13 comes, we’re going to start a new thing again.” The past couple of years have been extraordinarily busy for MAz. “No time to sleep,” Mondre says, “we have to keep moving.” Releasing more than half a dozen mixtapes since the beginning of 2011, MAz pride themselves on their ability to collaborate with anyone who’s interested, illustrated by a diverse array of artistic confederates. On the rapper front, they’ve worked with a star-studded cast of contemporaries, from Danny Brown to A$AP Rocky to Gucci Mane. They also maintain working relationships with a number of rising producers, like Detroit’s SKYWLKER, the Bay Area’s Friendzone, and New Jersey’s Clams Casino. After a few plates of shrimp, we head to Mondre’s house, and Squadda talks me through several of his favorite projects and collaborations. July 2009 - “Zombies on the Turf” http://www.datpiff.com/Main-Attrakionz-SMC-V1-Zombies-On-Tha-Turf-mixtape.53846.html “We had a mixtape, dropped in 2010, called Zombies on the Turf Featured a bunch of people. We had Monsta, Lil B, Lolo, Velocity, lots of the Green Ova crew, some outside features. It was our first mixtape to be released online. We released it on a Myspace, trying to do things right. “ May 2009 - “Shining Everytime” Music Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twVAlvBTnZ8 Clams [Casino] did the beat, we actually shot the video on my 18th birthday. We were just fooling around, people liked the song, one of Clams more upbeat beats, he doesn’t make beats like that anymore, so we were glad to get that motherfucker. “ March 2010 - “Back on Deck” Music Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLdjwVf-qaU “With that video, it was kind of like our first one to get picked up by websites, before ‘Legion of Doom’ and ‘Shining Everytime’. Websites started fucking with us, they liked that shit. “ May 2010 - “Legion of Doom” Music Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGio8soejMQ “We had fun with the song and the video. We never took that shit serious. We were making beats at my house and I sent it to DigitalDripped.com, and the dude there, he hit me back, told me ‘hey this shit is hard.’ It was a different response than I usually get, so we ended up doing a video for it and it took the fuck off.” July 2011 - “Perfect Skies” Music Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoKjrfi-s30 We did that at the producer’s house, they’d never shot a video before, so they had a lady come and help out. It actually turned out real, real good which was a huge surprise. I didn’t know how that was going to turn out but I’m really happy with what we got. October 2011 - “Swaggin’ Hard” performance at Fader Fort http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OdNJij4p0I “We did hell of performances the whole week, we were tired as fuck, but we had fun with that shit. We met hell of rappers. Really cool seeing that shit get up on Vevo. Coolest thing about that performance in particular was that Gangsta Boo from Three 6 Mafia was watching in from the side.” August 2011 - “Take 1” feat. A$AP Rocky, from 808s & Dark Grapes II http://mishkanyc.bandcamp.com/track/take-1-feat-a-ap-rocky-prod-by-clams-casino “A$AP and us had shit to do with each other, he was hitting me up through email and shit. Wanted to know if we wanted to get down with him, and we were like ‘hell yeah.’ We did that shit quick, a couple months later he got the huge record deal. We ended up meeting him right about when he was releasing a mixtape and shit. He sent the beat and we rapped over it -- at that point he was just anybody, someone we were working with on the internet and shit. That’s how it all works these days, big things happen over the internet.” August 2011 - “Bossalinis & Fooliyones Pt. 2”, from 808s & Dark Grapes II http://mishkanyc.bandcamp.com/track/bossalinis-fooliyones-pt-2-prod-by-ahyve “I think [ambient folk musician] Glasser reached out and asked us to remix her. I gave the mission to our man AHYVE and he did a hell of a job. He’s the guy who directs most of our videos. Gave him the sample and he went crazy with it. [Glasser and MA] went through our people and shit. I wasn’t sure at the beginning, I was like man I don’t know about this, but I’m really happy with what happened. They wanted us to remix the song, but we’ve got a method you know, don’t really remix, so we ended up using the sample and everyone ended up really happy with it.” Feb 2012 - “Chandelier” SKYWLKR remix http://executiveseries.bandcamp.com/track/chandelier-skywlkr-remix “SKYWLKR is Danny Brown’s producer from Detroit. Whole project was about getting producers who worked with us to remix songs they liked. I like this track just as much if not more than the original -- people at Green Ova were really liking that shit. It’s got a whole new sound, a whole new thing.” October 2012 - “Do it For the Bay” Music Video, track off Bossalinis & Fooliyones http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnjXwqB3mG8 10) The video was crazy. We did it on a boat and it was cold as shit. Took the entire day The video was cool, on some major label shit. We always had “Do it For the Bay”, we always had that song on lock. Still though, it was one of the last songs we recorded for the project and it ended up real cool. Artistically, MAz float from approach to approach, drawing from a variety of potent sources: the music they enjoyed growing up, the Bay Area's unique rap history, the ever-shifting rhythm of their contemporaries. “As far as the present time and day, we’re inspired by all the rappers we meet. That shit will motivate you. I met the Mob Figaz, I hooked up with Lil B and shit, that feel like motivation,” Squadda says, smiling as he shakes his head in disbelief, “These niggas giving me pointers and shit, that shit is inspiring, you know what I mean?” This is not an act that has settled on a sound. MAz precipitates genre-defining material that is refreshingly one step ahead, music that’s the byproduct of raw intuition -- not preconceived methodology or artistic dogma. "I'll choose a sample if its beautiful," Squadda tells me in Mondre's living room, "beautiful like a lady." Main Attrakionz’s debut album, Bossalinis and Fooliyones, is slated to drop on October 22nd. It’s a significant milestone, but the duo remains astutely levelheaded about their place in the notoriously fickle rap game. “In life, there are no absolutes,” Squadda says, Mondre nodding in agreement, “we’re just happy to be where we’re at.”

The Unsystematic Dichotomy of Girls The HBO show Girls and its showrunner Lena Dunham have been the subject of quite a bit of debate since its premiere last year. Supporters find the show sharp and relevant, an intelligent exploration of 20-something psychology and the absurdity of of privilege, while its detractors find it annoying and indulgent, a byproduct of exactly what it's supposedly a satire of. I personally find it strange and irresistible, something important and worth watching, and -- as long as I make a deliberate effort to separate my watching of the show from any of the commentary I've read (a difficult feat) -- relatively easy to watch. Supporters are quick to label Lena Dunham as something of a genius, which I can only understand after hearing her defend her work in interviews. That said, despite her astute observations during these interviews (and boy do they sound astute!), nothing contained within in the show itself has thus far suggested that Lena is capable of writing about anything but herself or that she's arrived at any enlightened state about what it means to be an aspiring-fill-in-the-blank during young adulthood.   In fact, the show might be enjoyable because Lena Dunham's writing is so impressionistic and bombastic, lacking in a morality, because it's not really trying to say -- or capable of saying -- much of anything. In interviews, Ms. Dunham has always appeared confident in her understanding of what her work is supposedly reaching for, though it's not a stretch to assume that this is something she's arrived at, rather than deliberately set out to achieve in the first place. Which makes more sense to me. By merely airing, for one reason or another, Girls has managed to alter the critical context in which it's considered. Something about the reflexivity of criticism, I guess. Girls may not be the deliberately intelligent show many purport it to be, but I think it's very funny all the same. In this YouTube video, British humorist Stephen Fry succinctly illuminates what he believes to be the cardinal difference between British and American comedy. American comedy tends to center on the the hipper-than-thou wise-ass, who resides either above or to the side of the context, providing commentary via subtle winks and eye-rolls. British comedy focuses on the shit out of luck nobody, who, wide-eyed and hopeful, makes embarrassing, awkward grasps at happiness and success in spite of it all. Girls, somehow, ends up being two things at once: a show about people in the latter camp who -- due almost entirely to their sense of privilege -- have convinced themselves that they're of the former, and, paradoxically, a show about people in the former camp who -- again due to their privilege -- convince themselves that they're of the latter. It's bi-polar, it's ambling, and it's worth watching, if only to find out on which end of the aforementioned dichotomy Ms. Dunham, the writer, finds herself at series' end. 

"I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival. " - Kurt Vonnegut 

<a href="http://antwon.bandcamp.com/album/end-of-earth" data-mce-href="http://antwon.bandcamp.com/album/end-of-earth">END OF EARTH by ANTWON</a>

His most recent special is available for DRM-free download and streaming at his website. If you sign up for his mailing list, he'll very apologetically send you emails every six months where he details a new project he thinks you might be interested in. Blah blah blah.  This is a terrible first post. But whatever, I don't really have anything interesting to say tonight.