Categories
Writing

My Best Writing of 2022

As both my personal and professional lives became not just busier, but also more complex, my writing output — and my readership and reach — has declined. 

However, I do feel like almost everything I do publish these days is worthy of being clicked on and read. I couldn’t always honestly say that. Still, some things are better than others so I’ve collected the best things I wrote this year — a tradition that dates all the way back to 2015. It’s like my own personal literary version of Spotify Wrapped.

So please take a look below and, if something strikes you as interesting, please give it a click. 

Categories
Books NBA Reviews

A Near-Perfect Primer on the Modern NBA — “Spaced Out” Reviewed

Three is more than two.

That simple mathematical fact, which had been largely overlooked for decades, has completely changed the National Basketball Association. Today’s game is nothing but guys shooting from deep. There’s no more to it than that.

Right?

Maybe not.

Categories
Books Rap Reviews

A Deep Analysis of Lyrics That Tries to Be More – “What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language” Reviewed

In the opening moments of the iconic track, “N.Y. State of Mind,” Nas almost mumbles, “I don’t know how to start this shit.”

It’s appropriate, almost poetic, that this line kept running through my head as I thought about how to approach this review because Daniel Levin Becker’s What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language is all about lines and lyrics – how they’re created, how deep they go, how they get stuck in our heads, and, awkwardly, what they mean within the larger societal context.

Categories
Books Longreads Rankings Reading Reviews

Chuck Klosterman’s Best Books

Photo by Christopher Pierznik

“I think anyone who’s not as good a writer as me is absolutely a hack, and I think anybody who’s a slightly better writer than me is brilliant.”

– Chuck Klosterman


I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Chuck Klosterman influenced a generation of writers and unconsciously blazed a path for how online critique and analysis would be presented in the first two decades of the 21st Century.

He came to the realization that “people want to think critically about the art that informs their life,” and has created a successful, impactful career as a result. 

Categories
Books NBA Reviews

The Science of the NBA — “The Midrange Theory” Reviewed

To sports columnists and talking heads of a certain age, the word “analytics” has become a pejorative, a shorthand for nerds that are so engrossed in their algorithms that they can’t see the actual game being played on the court.

The truth, as always, is far more complex.

Categories
Books

Drew Magary’s Books

Photo by Christopher Pierznik

I love Drew Magary’s writing. Virtually everyone else online does too.

Categories
Books Reviews

How I Review Books

Yesterday, I posted my review of Dilla Time Dan Charnas.

Today, I thought I’d explain how I review books.

Categories
Books Hip-Hop Rap Reviews

So Much More Than Just a Biography of a Man and a Movement — “Dilla Time” Reviewed

For the most part, whenever I heard a J Dilla (previously known as Jay Dee) beat, it sounded…off, wrong, maybe even sloppy. I couldn’t totally follow it. I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t fully appreciate it. It made me feel a bit discombobulated.

Only much later did I realize that was the intention. Dilla was not only reinventing what was known, he was inventing what was previously unknown.

As Dan Charnas writes, “What Dilla created was a third path of rhythm, juxtaposing those two time-feels [straight time and swing time], even and uneven simultaneously, creating a new, pleasurable, disorienting rhythmic friction and a new time-feel: Dilla Time.”

Categories
Writing

My Best Writing of 2021

This is the post where I lay out the best things I wrote this year. Maybe, in a year like this when my productivity was lower, it might include everything I wrote. We’ll never know (don’t check).

Categories
Books Reviews Wu-Tang Clan

The Reality Behind the Myth – “From Staircase to Stage” Reviewed

As the Wu-Tang Clan has transitioned into elder statemen of rap where a majority fans want to hear thirty year old classics instead of anything recorded lately, there has been a renewed interest into their superhero origin story. In recent years, the incredible and unprecedented story of the nine-(sometimes ten-)man crew’s ascension from the front of the project building to the top of the hip-hop world has been told multiple times in multiple formats, including a Showtime documentary, a Hulu scripted series, and a pile of books courtesy of both journalists (Chamber Music; From the Streets of Shaolin), and some the group’s members themselves (RZA’s The Wu-Tang Manual and The Tao of Wu; U-God’s Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang).