An all hip-hop issue of Wax Poetics – with the late Notorious BIG living large on the front cover – alongside other great features on Blackalicious, Schoolly D, T Eric Monroe, Grandmaster Flowers, Sue Kwon, Yo Yo, and Super Cat – plus a look at the photography of B+, whose images have graced Wax Poetic pages for years – and a great feature on hip hop zines, and the way we communicated about the music in the years before bigger publications like this! As usual, the Wax Poetics presentation is more than worth the price – lavish full color heavy paper pages, 144 of them in all – presented book-style, with almost no ads either! Magazine

A really fantastic issue of this seminal jazz publication – one that has a great cover feature on our hometown hero, drummer Makaya McCraven! As usual with We Jazz, the whole package is as great as the cover – page after squarebound page of great photographs and images, almost more of a book than a magazine – with more features that include a rare interview with Sonny Rollins done by Ashley Khan, a new column by Mats Gustafsson, and more articles on Eric Dolphy, Adolphe Sax, Amina Claudine Myers, and Ronald Snijders – plus more on Bength Frippe Nordstrom, Rosanna & Zelia, the We Jazz Festival, and the Jazz Room Record label – all with great photos too. There's a nice section of record reviews too – and a photo essay on the new Puristamo record pressing plant in Helsinki at the end! Magazine