We're sorting through Lady Gaga's seventh studio pop album Mayhem with Gaga superfan and iHeartRadio personality Nick Gomez. 

Nick is an almost lifelong Little Monster, who credits Gaga with inspiring the love of pop music that steered him towards a career in radio, where he can be heard at night on Hot 99.5FM, Washington D.C.'s #1 Hit Music Station, and in the afternoon on Pride Radio. 

Andrew and Dominique prod Nick about Mayhem's place in Gaga's catalog and he provides all the answers!

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(Episode 30.)

UCBLK's Justin Catchens joins us to celebrate one of his favorite albums of the '00s, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, the debut album by the Chicago-based rapper-turned-MIT-and-Johns Hopkins University professor!

Food & Liquor is as dense with prose as a classic work of literature, and we do our best to wrap our heads around the storytelling and social/political messages in Lupe's lyrics. We also discuss Lupe's connection to the 'conscious rap' genre, why this album was his commercial peak and how hip hop never fully embraced him. 

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(Episode 29.)

In the second episode our new cohosts recorded together, Andrew gauges Dominique's taste for the hard stuff with one of his favorite metal albums from last decade, Deftones' 2010 mid-career masterpiece Diamond Eyes — by far the most extreme-sounding record we've discussed on the show.

We explore why this album was a turning point for the Deftones, why it was the record that converted Andrew to a fan, its place in the "metal" genre and how excited we are to see Deftones on their first arena headlining tour this spring!

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(Episode 28.)

New York metal singer and rapper Mizzie from the X introduces us to Doja Cat's debut album, Amala. 

We explore Doja's complicated persona and reckless online presence. Mizzie explains how Doja's freewheeling art continually inspires her in hip hop, heavy metal and beyond.

Mizzie has released two albums with her metal band Dishonest Escape and last year she launched her rap career with the debut single, "Ivy."

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(Episode 27.)

Talkin’ ‘Tok - For the second in our bonus series about viral songs on social media, we get into the newfound popularity of “Lockjaw,” an album cut from Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 Mack Daddy album.
 
The song has become a favorite in social media’s ‘makeover’/‘glowup’ genre of videos, so naturally, the conversation turns to mewing, mogging, maxing out, and other Internet sad boy terms that Andrew has never heard.

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We're taking a special look at one of the greatest singer-songwriters America ever produced: Bill Withers.

With ubiquitous hits like "Lean on Me," "Ain't No Sunshine," "Just the Two of Us" and "Lovely Day," so many of Bill's songs are taken for granted because of how ingrained they are in American culture. We take a special look at Bill's second studio album, Still Bill, explore his late start in music and his early retirement from it.

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(Episode 26.)

Talkin’ ‘Tok - Introducing our new series looking a social media’s latest viral songs.
 
In this first edition, we discuss the power of short form user-created social media content and then take a look at the song “Peggy” by viral lesbian financial dominatrix Ceechynaa. 

Dominique interprets some of the most perplexing British slang in Ceechynaa's lyrics and explains how users are appropriating "Peggy" in their own content, and why they might be relating to the song. Andrew thinks of something nice to say before politely considering Ceechynaa's economic stances: is "Peggy" a metaphor for socialism?

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From how he swept through the GRAMMYs to his historic performance at the Super Bowl halftime show, everything is coming up Kendrick Lamar.

We dig into our favorite moments of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show and review how wrong we were about the GRAMMYs!

We also answer important questions like, did the Super Bowl have to be so black? And, is Beyoncé ranked higher in the Illuminati than Sabrina Carpenter?

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(Episode 25.)

Charli xcx's carefree 2024 breakthrough album, BRAT, was one of the defining cultural moments of last year and likely changed Charli's career forever.

But was BRAT's GRAMMY-winning success ironic or the result of a genious marketing masterplan?

Dominique embraced BRAT over the summer, while Andrew only heard it for the first time in preparation of this episode. We discuss the beginning and end of Brat Summer, how the gay community elevated Charli to bonafide popstar status and attempt to nail down what makes this album so compelling. 

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(Episode 24)

Each year the GRAMMYs sparks a wave of bewilderment when nominees are announced for the 'Album of the Year,' 'Song of the Year' and 'Record of the Year' categories.

While the former two categories are self-explanatory, what does the Recording Academy mean by record and who gets that award anyway?!

On this episode, Andrew and Dominique explore all eight nominees for 'Record of the Year,' predict who will win and argue about who should win the award.

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(Episode 23.)