The Cipher

As many of you know, The Cipher is going on an indefinite hiatus following this episode. For more information about why, visit us on Twitter or Facebook, or just listen to this episode. But in short, we have no plans to make any more new episodes after this one. Our archives, however, will still be available and free on our website, on iTunes and other podcast apps, and on SoundCloud. For this goodbye episode, we called up our friend and episode 201 guest Jay Smooth to interview The...

Every Christmas since 2013, we’ve sat down with Bill—who is the former head of PR at Def Jam, among numerous other accomplishments—to talk about his world-famous Xmas Jollies mix. Bill spends the whole year scouring record stores, flea markets, the internet, and everywhere in between to find the perfect batch of great holiday music, and then shares it with his select mailing list, and with us. Now, we talk to him about some of this year’s selections. You can hear Bill’s mix in its...

Masta Ace is a legendary rhymer whose career began with the Juice Crew and has continued through a series of beloved solo and group albums. Marco Polo is a Toronto-born producer who moved to New York City in the early 2000s, and took his adopted hometown’s traditional boom-bap aesthetic to heart. Marco has brought his rugged sound to Torae, Pharoahe Monch, Ruste Juxx, Sean Price, Vinnie Paz, Rah Digga, and many more. Now, Marco and Ace have joined up for a new album. A Breukelen Story...

Mike “Heron” Herard is a record exec, producer, manager, label owner, and all-around music business legend. He first came to the attention of underground hip-hop fans when he was the co-founder of Hydra Records, which released music by Screwball, Godfather Don, and many others. He then moved over to Rawkus Records, where he played a key role in Big L’s posthumous album The Big Picture. He has also managed Joell Ortiz, and is currently the Vice President of A&R at Shady Records. In...

Mid90s, which opened this past Friday, October 19th, is a film Hill wrote and directed about a group of skateboarding friends in—you guessed it—the mid-1990s. The incredibly authentic period piece features plenty of nods to the skateboarding scene and the music of the time period, including songs from the Pharcyde and the Gravediggaz, and a memorable cameo appearance by Del the Funkee Homosapien. This is Jonah’s first film as a writer/director. He has, of course, starred in tons of films,...

Jericho Jackson is a group made up of producer Khrysis and rapper Elzhi. Khrysis is best known for his work with the rap collective the Justus League, which counts among its members 9th Wonder. He is currently a member of 9th’s production team the Soul Council. In addition to his North Carolina crew, Khrysis has produced for Sean Price and Heltah Skeltah, Jean Grae, Evidence, Talib Kweli, Black Thought, and many others. Dedicated Cipher listeners will remember Elzhi from our talk with him...

K-Salaam is a producer and DJ who, both by himself and with his production partner Beatnick, has made beats for some of your favorite artists. A short, by no means complete list includes Nas, Freddie Gibbs, Talib Kweli, Trey Songz, Lil Wayne, Murs, Bun B, Sizzla, and Young Buck. K-Salaam got his start in Minneapolis, where he was an integral part of the early years of the Rhymesayers label. He DJ’d for many of the label’s acts, as well as for their signature radio show. In recent years,...

Nick, as you undoubtedly already know, is a musician, actor, comedian, TV executive, and all-around entertainer. He got his start doing stand-up comedy while still a teenager. He parlayed that into work at Nickelodeon, where he wrote for and starred in now-classic shows like All That, Kenan & Kel, and the appropriately-named Nick Cannon Show. He moved from that into starring in movies like Drumline and Love Don’t Cost a Thing, putting out several stand up specials, and even hosting...

Glen “Daddy-O” Bolton is a rapper, producer, executive, and all-around hip-hop Renaissance man. He formed the ground breaking Stetsasonic in 1981, and the group went on to release several classic albums and become the first great hip-hop band. As a producer and remixer, he worked with everyone from Audio Two to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to They Might Be Giants. He was an executive at MCA and Motown, and continues to consult with a number of companies. And he’s still releasing music to...

Joan is a writer who got her start in the 1990s, helping to create what came to be known as “hip-hop journalism” with her articles at places like Vibe and the Village Voice. Whether she was writing about the Mike Tyson trial, profiling TLC, or investigating the sex trade in Jamaica, Joan brought her keen, Bronx-raised sensibility to everything she touched. Joan pioneered hip-hop feminism—and came up with the phrase “black girl magic,” to boot—in her classic 1999 book When Chickenheads...

Soundset is a festival in the Minneapolis area put on by the Rhymesayers label. It’s been running since 2008, and has grown from a show in a warehouse to a day-long outdoor event featuring some of music’s biggest acts. This past May, we went to the festival to hang out and talk to the performers, and and this is the second of two episodes where you can hear the results. This time, you’ll find conversations with Murs, Nikki Jean, OG Grip, and Evidence. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the...

Soundset is a festival in the Minneapolis area put on by the Rhymesayers label. It’s been running since 2008, and has grown from a show in a warehouse to a day-long outdoor event featuring some of music’s biggest acts. This past May, we went to the festival to hang out and talk to the performers, and on this episode and the next one, you’ll hear the results. This time, you’ll find conversations with Rapsody, Grieves, K-Salaam, Sa-Roc, and Prof. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the first half...

Kalyn is a rapper and the leader of the eclectic Denver-based group Wheelchair Sports Camp, who have garnered critical acclaim for their music and their energetic live performances almost since their founding in 2009. Wheelchair Sports Camp - named after a real camp that Kalyn, who has brittle bone disease and has been in a wheelchair her whole life - used to attend, is a group that pushes the boundaries in sound and subject matter. Most performances consist of Kalyn, drums, and trumpet,...

This week, we talk to a man who needs no introduction, Big Daddy Kane. Kane tells us about his legacy, dissing Erick Sermon, who really produced his first album, and tons more. This is a Cipher-ized, improved version of an episode that originally ran in 2013. See http://theciphershow.com/episode/239/ for full show notes and comments.

MC Paul Barman first started making songs in the late 1990s, during his time at Brown University. His wild rhymes about topics like a slacker college student who becomes half man, half goat in order to become a star quickly caught the ear of legendary producer Prince Paul, who produced Barman’s 2000 EP It’s Very Stimulating. That project introduced Paul Barman to the hip-hop masses as a guy as likely to drop a reference to a Polish filmmaker as LL Cool J, and to write lyrics that...

Phonte first visited us in early 2016, when we had a career-spanning interview. But now he’s back with No News Is Good News, an incredible new album that turns the rapper’s last several years of tragedies and triumphs into amazing art. Phonte first came to most rap fans’ notice as a member of the critically acclaimed group Little Brother, and has since released an array of solo, duo, and group projects - most notably with Foreign Exchange. No News Is Good News finds Phonte reflecting on the...

Jean Grae was our show’s first-ever guest back in 2012. She is one of the finest rappers out there, and a great producer as well. But in recent years, she’s expanded her horizons even further, pushing into comedy, sitcoms, instructional albums, audiobooks, talk shows, variety shows, and even her own church. Quelle Chris joined us in 2016. Since then, he’s released the acclaimed album Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often and the instrumental project Lullabies for the Broken...

The Arsonists were a crew formed in Bushwick in the early 1990s. D-Stroy, who began his rap career in his early teens alongside famed DJ Tony Touch in the duo Touch and D-Stroy, helped to solidify a group that would come to consist of, among others, Freestyle, Jise One, Swel Boogie, and Q-Unique. After putting out several early singles, the group was the first hip-hop act to sign to Matador Records, a label better known for indie rock. They released their debut album As the World Burns in...

Sage Francis and B. Dolan are both from Providence, are both rappers who have roots in spoken word, have toured and sporadically recorded together for years, and even share a label—the Sage-founded Strange Famous Records. But it has taken them until 2018 to release a full project as a duo: the Epic Beard Men. Sage is a beloved underground rap veteran who has been releasing albums of his smart, introspective, and emotional music consistently since 2002, and touring the universe maniacally to...

Erick Sermon got his start alongside Parrish Smith as a member of the iconic duo EPMD. Starting with their debut single in 1987 and their first album the following year, the group released four classic LPs in a row - a nearly unprecedented run in a still-new genre - before splitting (for the first time) in 1993. At the same time, Sermon was instrumental in finding and introducing hit acts like Das EFX, K-Solo, Keith Murray, and Redman for his Hit Squad collective. After the breakup, Erick...