Jeff Weiss is probably the best music writer we’ve got. We admire him not only for his radiant and voluminous prose – 8,000 words on the Grateful Dead, anyone? – but his willingness to put gumshoe to pavement in order to dig up the real story. That investigative instinct has placed him at the forefront of American rap scenes for the best part of two decades, from exposing the white devilry of Post Malone to reporting the killing of Drakeo The Ruler.

The LA native has many strings his to bow: running the peerless rap blog Passion of the Weiss, launching a magazine, campaigning against predatory media barons, and writing a forthcoming novel about Britney Spears.

We had a lot to talk about, so we invited him on the show to dissect a topic close to our hearts: the collapse of the music industry ecosystem. But fear not, we also have a laugh about the 2010s blog era, the hyper-regionalisation of rap, huffing the fumes of the ‘90s, Andre 3000’s surprising media illiteracy and a lot more.

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The Conspiracy Tapes | 2. Backslide