Well, I can’t review my own record, so this isn’t a review. And, I’m Jewish, and thus eternally wracked with grief/shame, so this isn’t shameless self-promotion.

I put this record out in October. It started out as a mixtape, but my friend Chris who mixes and masters stuff for me was kind of busy, so I had the bright idea to just put out a series of EPs instead. I’ve been rapping and making beats for a really long time, but career-minded drives—which turned out to be ambitious at best (read no fruition)—had me keeping hip hop on the backburner while I studied Tabla, John Cage, Traps, American Minimalism, et al. I rap constantly, but the realization of recordings, the solidifying of my epehemeral genius, was not anything I’d put much thought into since 2002 or so.

In April of this year I got denied from every PhD program I had applied to (5 of them). This was the third year in a row, and it was the last straw for me. My proposed research project would have been an analysis of sampling’s relevance in hip hop, and the ways that producers listen. Unfortunately academia doesn’t have much of an interest in hip hop when the focus is taken away from issues of race, and placed on the music instead. So, I decided that instead of trying to find a way to make music work in a non-musical context I’m better off just making music.

In June I started making beats pretty heavily, and in July I started writing and recording. By September I had amassed a healthy amount of tracks, and thus the deluge begins. I have another EP that should be coming out in January, and I’m constantly throwing tracks up on the blog. It’s hip hop for people that love hip hop, and people that don’t know they love hip hop. It draws from lots of different schools of sound, but it stays true to the idea that hip hop music is ultimately about winning at life.

Whatever Works is absolutely free to download and/or stream. The title is a catch phrase/mantra I’ve been relying on for years to stay comfortable in the world, but it doesn’t hurt that Woody Allen and Larry David made a movie with the same title (google hits).

- Zachg