When last we heard from our friends at music journalism co-op Hearing Things, they were announcing that they were going fully worker-owned. Dylan Green, who mostly covers indie hip hop for Hearing Things, calls the transition to having to be your own safety net "kind of terrifying."
"We're not exactly building it from the ground up, but we're doing a lot of legwork to make sure people know who we are and that our stuff is being read and taken in," Green told me. That includes their summer party a few weeks ago, where Green booked Baltimore experimental rap duo Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals ("They put out a great album called "A City Drowned in God's Black Tears," Green said).
On the other hand, Green says Hearing Things has afforded him and his fellow worker-owners the leeway to write articles he doesn't think he could write for any other music publication—he pointed to a recent one where he critiqued crusty hip hop stars like Timbaland and Snoop Dogg adopting generative AI tools.
"I was like, You know what? I've seen enough of this. I need to write something," Green told me. "It felt really good to just kind of have this spur of the moment brain blast and just be able to have it go up on this site that I own, that I co-own."
He also pointed to Hearing Things's series "The Producers," where producers and beatmakers catalog their favorite music productions and the influence they've had on their own sound. "We can kind of have the weird and crazy idea, and get off the path with it. People want that; it's really gratifying."
(My personal favorite edition of "The Producers" is the one Andy Cush did with Animal Collective's Panda Bear. I also love their series "Credit History," where they get musicians to explain line items on their credit card statement.)
In addition to his work at Hearing Things, Green, originally from New Jersey, also runs his own independent film podcast Reel Notes, where he blends the worlds of hip hop and film connoisseurship—if you've got a favorite indie rapper, he's interviewed them about their favorite movies.
I figured Dylan would be the person to ask about where to find great movies and independent hip hop in the city in the next several weeks.
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