So why does Plug One exist?

Good question. It’s one I’ve obsessed over for months, especially during the past few days. It haunts me as I write this, causing me to neglect my (slightly overdue) paid writing assignments.

It wasn’t meant to turn out this way. Plug One started back in September 2006. I intended it as a magazine-style website, with friends who would contribute features, reviews and the like. I wanted to celebrate progressive hip-hop — hence, the name Plug One (props to Posdnous). But the site was crippled by several early mistakes, including using Joomla as a CMS platform (even though I didn’t have any programming or design experience), relying too heavily on my friends for content (even though they weren’t being paid) and, yes, wasting too much time on “news” posts.

Ah, the news posts. It seems quaint now, but back in 2006 there was little news available online for indie-rap artists. It was during a time when “indie” was used as an epithet designating “backpack” rappers as less than. However, by early 2008, the blog scene rapidly changed. No longer dominated by super-opinionated types like Byron Crawford and OhWord.com obsessing over Lupe Fiasco’s Christ-like pose on Food & Liquor, the new kings were mega-post sites like NahRight.com and 2dopeboyz.com that chucked up news, MP3s, videos, and anything else they can get their hands on. They proved to be very good at it, sometimes generating up to 50 posts a day. And with fresh jolts of energy brought by the Cool Kids, Blu, Kid Cudi and Tanya Morgan, to name a few, fan fervor was finally returning to the indie-rap scene.

So you could say that Plug One missed its moment. The problem is, I never intended the site to be a commons area, a Drudge-like collection of search engine-baiting links. It was supposed to be a magazine, with the news posts serving as front-of-the-book style content. So why was I writing so many goddamn news posts?

It’s the reason why I woke up this morning and wanted to delete the whole damn thing. Rip it up and start over again.

If you have visited Plug One since, oh, its WordPress incarnation (I moved it here from Joomla in July 2008), then you’d find little proof that I’m actually a music journalist who has held several editorial positions, contributed to Spin magazine since 2007 and won a few awards (okay, only one). I’ve voted in Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll since 1999, and though that poll doesn’t mean what it used to (hell, nothing does anymore), it’s a sign that I’m generally respected by my rock-crit peers. But I don’t even use my real name on this site. No wonder that when I introduced myself to other bloggers, they’d be, like, “Who the fuck are you?” I’m not saying that I’m a famous writer, but my real name carries more weight than “Plug One Boss.”

Instead of utilizing my strengths, the Plug One project seems to exploit my biggest weaknesses. I can be extremely lazy. Yes, I’ve gotten much better since the days when I used to turn in an URB story three weeks late (sorry, Kathryn), but it’s still a pernicious habit of mine. Reviews are very hard to write. Essays are very hard to write. Interviews are fun to do, but transcribing them can be a chore. Perhaps that’s why I’ve collected several unpublished interviews — apologies to Jeff Chang, Jeff Kuglich at Galapagos4, Chikara at Tres Records and too many others to mention. I rarely post reviews anymore, and have made  more lists of ideas for essays than actual essays. (However, I finally posted a review earlier this month.) In contrast, posting tour dates and album release information is easy. I get tons of press release emails, can always check MySpace and Twitter for new announcements, and even swipe the stuff from others sites like Okayplayer.com and HipHopDX.com. It can take a half-hour or more to format, but it’s mindless work.

I mean, why bother writing an essay, review or interview when no one’s going to read it anyway? Most of the traffic that Plug One gets is from people who are looking for free downloads of albums, period. When I posted items for RJD2’s The Colossus and Ill Bill’s The Hour of Reprisal, I got crazy hits, at least for a crummy site like mine. And the only reason my Flying Lotus interview continues to attract visitors is because I asked him a question about the Internet bootleg Raw Cartoons, which makes the story pop up in search engines when people are, again, looking for a free download of it.

It was easy to get trapped into a cycle of scraping for tiny traffic bumps with such a defeatist attitude, instead of addressing the tougher issue of why Plug One isn’t working. I could have gone on like this forever, except I finally got a job after two years of looking. It’s a modest part-time gig editing content for Rhapsody.com, but it will require a lot of my creative energy. Posts that I would have written for Plug One — if I actually wrote posts instead of news charticles! — will now go to Rhapsody.com.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t have a website anymore. These days, it’s important for writers to have an independent, self-owned outlet for their work. I am still deciding what my digital strategy will be, and whether that strategy will include a better, reconfigured Plug One, or a new site that doesn’t have a legacy of failure on its shoulders. The one thing that Plug One boasts is an deep analytics history. The blogosphere, specifically the hip-hop blogosphere, is much more crowded today than in 2006, and it would be very difficult to gather several thousand visitors without a lot of time and promotional work. I care about that history. But is it enough to save the site?

I don’t know.

Apologies for not posting for so long. Yes, an actual human writes and posts this information.

Here’s an item that should have went up two weeks ago — another run by Anticon co-founder Sole & the Skyrider Band. They’ll be accompanied by Fake Four Inc. owner Ceschi Ramos and Oldominion side project Dark Time Sunshine.

• 3/11: The Terrace, Pasadena, CA
• 3/12: The Bunk House, Las Vegas, NV
• 3/13: Chasers, Scottsdale, AZ
• 3/14: Silver Skate Shop, Albuquerque, NM
• 3/15: Hodi’s Half Note, Ft. Collins, CO
• 3/18: Iron Gate, Austin, TX
• 3/18: Momo’s, Austin, TX
• 3/19: Karma Lounge, Austin, TX
• 3/22: The Green Elephant, Dallas, TX
• 3/23: Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines, IA (1)
• 3/25: Firebird, St. Louis, MO (1)
• 3/26: Triple Rock, Minneapolis, MN (2)
• 3/27: Redno Five, Chicago, IL (3)
• 3/28: The Division Gallery, Detroit, MI
• 3/29: The Knitting Factory, New York, NY
• 3/31: Cafe 9, New Haven, CT
• 4/01: The Western Front, Boston, MA
• 4/02: The Space, Portland, ME

(all dates) w/Dark Time Sunshine, Ceschi Ramos
(1) w/Astronautalis
(2) w/Ecid
(3) w/Miles Maeda, Konichiwa Motherfucker

B. Dolan, Fallen House, Sunken City
Strange Famous Records

“I braced against the railing and looked into the sun like I was waiting for someone to burn a picture in my mind,” B. Dolan intones on “Leaving New York.” Having spent years as an understudy to Sage Francis, you’d think that Dolan would sound like that left-wing iconoclast, but on this track he sounds more like Sole, minus the lyrical jump-cuts and torrential run-on sentences. Dolan can’t match either’s technique, but he has a growling fortitude that borders on anger, and a poet’s knack for witty lines. “I’m cashing checks against the national debt/I can’t afford to live fraudulent,” he complains on “Economy of Words (Bail It Out).” Much like Francis, Dolan came to hip-hop via the spoken-word medium, albeit without the freestyle battle scars that made him a natural rap artist. There’s still some stiffness in Dolan’s delivery, and seems to be trying out other MCs styles, from the aforementioned Sole to Rob Sonic (on “Earthmovers”). Overall, however, Fallen House, Sunken City is a more successful attempt at agit-hop than the undigested spoken-word routines of Dolan’s debut, 2007’s The Failure. Considerable credit should be given to producer Alias, who flips some inspired fusion funk beats. The veteran beat maker sometimes outshines Dolan, but when the two blend seamlessly on the brutish and tragic Marvin Gaye tribute “Marvin,” their sparks burst into glorious flames.

Canadian rappers unite! Pioneering iconoclast K-os (pictured above) and Weezy-approved superstar-in-training Drake are heading out together for a tour of universities and, uh, “private locations.” I assume these “private locations” are RSVP-only affairs and frat-house parties booked by trust-fund idiots. You should be alright if you’ve got the hookup.

• 3/02: Le Poisson Rouge, New York, NY
• 3/04: The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA
• 4/06: Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL
• 4/07: Private Location, Columbus, OH
• 4/09: Penn State University, State College, PA
• 4/11: Private Location, Lock Haven, PA
• 4/14: Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
• 4/15: Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI
• 4/16: West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV
• 4/21: University Central Florida, Orlando, FL
• 4/22: Furman University, Greenville, SC
• 4/26: University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO
• 4/27: University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
• 4/29: University Mass Lowell, Lowell, MA
• 4/30: Private Location, Syracuse, NY
• 5/01: Private Location, Boston, MA
• 5/04: Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
• 5/05: Towson University, Towson, MD
• 5/06: Cheyney University, Cheyney, PA
• 5/07: Private Location, Ithaca, NY
• 5/08: Private Location, Plymouth, NH

Sage Francis has scheduled a series of tour dates in support of his forthcoming album, Li(f)e, which drops May 11. B. Dolan, who just released Fallen House, Sunken City; and Free Moral Agents will join him.

Check out the above video — it’s pretty amusing.

Here are the dates:

• 3/18: The Independent, Austin, TX (1)
• 5/12: Middle East, Cambridge, MA
• 5/13: Higher Ground, S. Burlington, VT
• 5/14: Port City Music Hall, Portland, ME
• 5/15: Ritual Nightclub, Ottawa, ON
• 5/16: The Opera House, Toronto ON
• 5/18: Alvin’s, Detroit, MI
• 5/19: The Bottom Lounge, Detroit, MI
• 5/20: Turner Hall, Milwaukee, WI
• 5/21: First Avenue, Minneapolis MN
• 5/22: The Blue Note, Columbia, MO
• 5/24: Gothic Theatre, Englewood, CO
• 5/25: Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, UT
• 5/26: Badlander, Missoula, MT
• 5/28: The Starlite Room, Edmonton, AB
• 5/29: Distillery, Calgary, AB
• 5/31: The Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver, BC
• 6/01: Showbox SoDo, Seattle, WA
• 6/02: Berbati’s Pan, Portland, OR
• 6/04: The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
• 6/05: The Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA
• 6/06: Henry Fonda Theater, Los Angeles, CA
• 6/07: Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, CA
• 6/09: The Glass House, Pomona, CA
• 6/10: The Clubhouse, Tempe, AZ
• 6/11: Club Congress, Tucson, AZ
• 6/12: Sunshine Theater, Albuquerque, NM
• 6/14: Granada Theatre, Dallas, TX
• 6/15: Mohawk, Austin, TX
• 6/16: House of Blues, Houston, TX
• 6/18: Firestone, Orlando, FL
• 6/19: The Loft, Atlanta, GA
• 6/21: Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
• 6/22: Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington, DC
• 6/23: The Ottobar, Baltimore, MD
• 6/24: Trocadero, Philadelphia, PA
• 6/25: Webster Hall, New York, NY

(all dates) w/B. Dolan, Free Moral Agents
(1) SXSW

2Mex (pictured right) is on the road again. This time, he’s not doing one of his stealth “house” tours, but playing small and mid-size clubs throughout the country. Now all we need is that Strange Famous album…maybe this year?

Here are the dates:

• 3/02: The Glass House, Pomona, CA
• 3/03: Red Owl, Tempe, AZ
• 3/04: Boomers, Las Vegas, NV
• 3/05: Warehouse 508, Albuquerque, NM
• 3/06: Hideaway Lounge, El Paso, TX
• 3/07: Flamingo Cantina, Austin, TX
• 3/08: Triple Crown, San Marcos, TX
• 3/09: The Reggae Bar, San Antonio, TX
• 3/10: Ridglea Theatre, Fort Worth, TX
• 3/11: The Gramophone, St. Louis, MO
• 3/13: Nomad World Pub, Minneapolis, MN
• 3/15: Rapture, Charlottesville, VA
• 3/16: Bohemian Caverns, Washington, DC
• 3/17: The Big Easy, Portland, ME
• 3/18: KC’s Tap, Pawtucket, RI
• 3/19: Southpaw, Brooklyn, NYC
• 3/20: TBA, Fairfax, VA
• 3/22: Shadow Lounge, Pittsburgh, PA
• 3/23: Peabody’s Concert Club, Cleveland, OH
• 3/24: Abbey Pub, Chicago, IL
• 3/25: Record Bar, Kansas City, MO
• 3/26: The Walnut Room, Denver, CO
• 3/27: Smitty’s Greenlight Tavern, Pueblo, CO
• 3/28: Black Sheep, Colorado Springs, CO
• 3/30: The Royal Lounge, Olympia, WA
• 3/31: Club Motor, Seattle, WA
• 4/01: Ash Street Saloon, Portland, OR
• 4/02: Old Princeton Landing, Half Moon Bay, CA
• 4/03: Paid Dues Festival, San Bernardino, CA
• 4/04: Se7ens West Street Market, Reno, NV
• 4/05: Cypress Lounge, Santa Cruz, CA
• 4/06: Blue Lamp, Sacramento, CA
• 4/07: Club 6ix, San Francisco, CA
• 4/08: Empire Theatre, Stockton, CA
• 4/09: Self Help Graphics, East Los Angeles, CA
• 4/10: Portugalia, San Diego, CA

(all dates) w/Liferexall

If you still haven’t seen Nosaj Thing live yet (*raises hand*), you can catch him opening for overrated British band the xx this month. If that tour isn’t coming through your town (*raises hand*), then you’ll just have to wait a little longer to see him.

• 3/22: Spanish Moon, Baton Rouge, LA
• 3/23: Bottletree, Birmingham, AL
• 3/24: Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
• 3/25: Cat’s Cradle, Chapel Hill, NC
• 3/26: Bijou Theatre, Knoxville, TN (1)
• 3/28: Sixth and I, Washington, DC
• 3/29: First Unitarian Church Sanctuary, Philadelphia, PA
• 3/31: Webster Hall, New York, NY
• 4/02: Paradise Lounge, Boston, MA
• 4/03: Le National, Montreal, QC
• 4/04: Phoenix Theater, Toronto, ON
• 4/05: Wexner Center, Columbus, OH
• 4/06: Buskirk Chumley, Bloomington, IN
• 4/08: The Lincoln, Chicago, IL
• 4/09: Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN
• 4/12: Nightlight Lounge, Bellingham, WA
• 4/13: Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC
• 4/14: Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR

(all dates) w/the xx, jj
(1) Big Ears Festival

I think this is the fourth video from A Strange Arrangement. This isn’t my favorite track on the album, and I think I liked the “Green Eyed Love” clip better. But check it out for yourself.

Directed by Henry DeMaio.

Here’s hoping Guru gets better:

• Walmart in trouble for promoting Ice Cube’s The Players Club as Black History (allhiphop.com)

• Jneiro Jarel announces Android Love Mayhem EP for April 13 (jneirojarel.blogspot.com)

• RIP Chilly B of Newcleus (pitchfork.com)

• Guru goes into cardiac arrest, currently in a coma (hiphopdx.com)

• Justus League members Big Pooh, Jozeemo, Joe Scudda, Chaundon and manager Big Dho injured in car accident (hiphopdx.com)

• KRS-One and DJ Premier working on Return of the Boom Bip, a sequel to 1993’s Return of the Boom Bap (hiphopdx.com)

• Arsonists raze Gamble & Huff’s Sound of Philadelphia studios (thedailyswarm.com)

You’ve read about it on your favorite blogs and websites. You watched the crazy teaser videos that ripped off the Brad Pitt flick Seven. You downloaded the free MP3s. Now it’s time to wipe away the drool, because the Meth, Ghost & Rae collabo album is coming out.

Set for release via Def Jam on March 30, Wu Massacre is mostly a Wu affair, with production from RZA and Allah Mathematics and guest spots from Inspectah Deck, Streetlife (Remember “PLO Style?”) and Trife. Interestingly, the Rhythm Roots Allstars, who were the backing band on many of those Scion Live mini-tours from a few years ago, and even showed up on Ghost’s The Big Doe Rehab, contribute to a few tracks.

Here’s what the label is calling the “tentative” track listing. I will update it if there are any changes.

• 1. “Criminology 2.5″
• 2. “Mef vs. Chef” (feat. Rhythm Roots Allstars)
• 3. “Ya Moms (Skit)”
• 4. “Smooth Sailing Remix” (feat. Solomon Childs & Streetlife)
• 5. “Our Dreams”
• 6. “Gunshowers” (feat. Inspectah Deck & Sun God)
• 7. “Dangerous” (feat. Rhythm Roots Allstars)
• 8. “Pimpin’ Chipp” (feat. Rhythm Roots Allstars)
• 9. “How To Pay Rent (Skit)” (feat. Tracy Morgan)
• 10. “Miranda”
• 11. “Youngstown Heist” (feat. Trife, Sheek & Bully)
• 12. “It’s That Wu Sh*t”