Pop the Trunk

Vinnie holds it down solo while his co-hosts sit this one out in lieu of other shenanigans. He runs through a loaded boxing news cycle — Lomachenko's retirement reversal, Canelo's next move, the Wardley-Dubois rematch situation, and more — before breaking down the main event everyone's been arguing about: Usyk vs. Verhoeven at the Pyramids in Giza. Was Rico closer than anyone expected, or did the crowd and the rounds fool people? Vinnie's got a take.

He also weighs in on Frank Sanchez packing up Richard Torres (told you so), Hamza Shiraz's breakout belt win, and previews a deceptively busy weekend headlined by Bevo's return and O'Shay Foster vs. Raymond Ford for the WBC 130 title — a fight Vinnie's not exactly hyped for, but picks anyway.

The mailbag is back! The crew gets into the creative process behind writing rhymes, whether a perfect album is a perfect album regardless of genre, and what happens when ego convinces someone they're an expert in everything. Billy's history with Heelys comes out, fan art makes its way into the studio, and a listener writing in from Berlin has some catching up to do. Tune in for Episode 15 of Pop the Trunk, with Vinnie Paz!

After the slept-on rappers episode sparked a wave of responses from the audience, Vinnie and Brendan discuss names that didn't make the original list, artists whose careers took hard left turns, and a few who quietly reinvented themselves in ways nobody saw coming. From Philly legends to Long Island crews to a Queens MC who ended up writing for Beyoncé, the conversation covers artists who deserved far more than they got, and tries to make sense of why the music industry let them slip through the cracks.

Along the way, the crew gets into the Enhanced Games, a suspicious stat about NBA referees, the shiny suit era's collateral damage, and a firsthand account of one of the most chaotic nights in college basketball history. Tune in for Episode 14 of Pop the Trunk, with Vinnie Paz.

The crew kicks off Episode 13 fired up, sleep-deprived, and somehow already arguing before the intro wraps. They draw battle lines on AI and Brendan drops a Mother’s Day story of a dinner gone sideways. Vinnie and Billy express their Philly sports rage and a full indictment of New York franchises enters the picture.

Somewhere between an argument nobody wins, a holiday that went completely off the rails, and a rant that earns every second of airtime, Episode 13 reminds you why you showed up in the first place.|

Pop the Trunk went live for the first time ever, and there was no safety net. What you heard was what it was. The crew wasted no time getting into it, from a big boxing weekend to the NBA playoffs, bad bets, and stories from the streets of South Philly that you genuinely had to be there for.

From there it turned into exactly what Pop the Trunk does best: wrestling history, hip hop history, and the kind of arguments that don't have a clean ending. The main event was a deep discussion on underappreciated MCs — who got slept on, who got jammed by the machine, and who was simply too nice for the world to handle. The live crowd had opinions too, and they weren't wrong. Two hours of unfiltered conversation with nowhere to hide. The first live edition of Pop the Trunk. No rewind.

The boys are back. Vinnie and Brendan are back for a weekend of boxing you can't afford to sleep on. Before they get into the fights, there's no shortage of news — from a massive heavyweight announcement that's been a long time coming, to promotional shake-ups and signings that are quietly reshaping the landscape.

Then it's fight time. Two pound-for-pound monsters. Two cards that demand your attention. Inoue vs. Nakatani and Benavidez vs. Ramirez get the full breakdown — the styles, the stakes, the odds, and where each guy stands heading into the biggest weekend of the year. Predictions are locked in.

Pop the Trunk streaming on YouTube, all DSPs and your favorite podcast app. @popthetrunk.pod

No guest, no filter. Vinnie, Brendan, and Billy go deep on one of hip hop's most unspoken rules — everybody got put on by somebody. From The Jaz (Jaz-O) opening doors for Jay, to Dre's Aftermath becoming a graveyard for careers that never were, the crew breaks down the co-sign, what it's worth, and what happens when it doesn't deliver. Junior Mafia, Wu-Tang affiliates, Two Chains betting on himself — it's a full autopsy on who made it, who got left at the bus stop, and why.

Before all that, the guys catch up on shed suspicions, IKEA assembly nightmares, and Billy's kids accidentally dropping slurs at the Dollar Store.

Scott Vogel, frontman of Terror, joins the crew for Episode 10, before heading out on a six-and-a-half-week North American tour behind Terror's new record Still Suffer. What starts as a technical difficulty turns into an instant PTT classic moment. Once connected, Scott and Vinnie go deep on the parallels between hardcore and hip hop culture, tracing their origins from Black Sabbath and Run DMC to Agnostic Front and DITC. The conversation covers Scott's upbringing in Buffalo, his stepbrother Jay as the gateway to everything, the early days of Slugfest and Buried Alive, and how those scenes mirror each other more than most people realize.

After he signs off, the crew hits the mailbag — including pointed feedback about Brendan's background art choices — and gets into the unwritten rules of barbershop culture, the business of underground music, and why the "gift and the curse" of recognition hits differently at this level.

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Vinnie finally gets his studio engineer and longtime collaborator Scott Stallone out of the lab and in front of a mic to talk about it all — the Ruffhouse era, the flood that destroyed his studio the night they finished Legacy of Blood, and what he's been building behind the scenes ever since.

Twenty-one years in, they pull back the curtain on how their sessions actually work, why Scott barely takes outside clients anymore, and what he's been quietly building in the world of sync. One of the most private figures in Vinnie's world, and this is the first time he's talked about most of it.

Pop the Trunk Presents: Knock 'Em Out the Box — Bonus Episode (Ep. 206)

This is not a Pop the Trunk episode — this is the one the Knocker Nation has been asking for. After a long hiatus, Vinnie and Brendan are back in their corners for a bonus round of Knock 'Em Out the Box, the boxing podcast that started it all. No guests, no hip-hop detours — just straight boxing talk, picking up at Episode 206 right where they left off. On tap: Boots Ennis vs. Xander Zayas at Barclays Center, Bivol's mandatory defense, the sanctioning body circus, Vito Mielnicki Jr. at Boardwalk Hall, the state of UK heavyweight boxing, and a thorough breakdown of why Barclays Center needs this fight more than it lets on. These bonus episodes will live on the Pop the Trunk feed and will drop when the fight calendar demands it — this one was too good to skip.