Tupac Shakur performs at the Regal Theater in Chicago in March 1994. Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images. Back in May, rather than covering uplifting songs about how important mothers are, my Mother’s Day column consisted of songs that you should not play at your mom’s party. Since I am fair,…

Tupac Shakur performs at the Regal Theater in Chicago in March 1994. Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images. Back in May, rather than covering uplifting songs about how important mothers are, my Mother’s Day column consisted of songs that you should not play at your mom’s party. Since I am fair,…

Shock G (Gregory E. Jacobs) aka Humpty Hump of Digital Underground mugs for a photo at a party in the 1990s in New York City. Photo: Catherine McGann/Getty Images. On April 22 we lost one of the most underrated rappers in the history of hip-hop, Oakland’s own Shock G.…

Run The Jewels perform at the Oracle Arena in Oakland on March 13, 2018. Alessio Neri/STAFF. We’re in week… nine of RIFF Rewind’s Black History Month? I think this is the ninth. Wait here for a second and I’ll check. Yes, it appears we’re entering Month Three of Black…

Oakland Athletics. No juice required. Photo: Sacramento Bee. After so many long, dreary months without baseball, it has finally returned to the East Bay. And to a lesser extent, the rest of the country. In celebration of this momentous occasion, an occasion that should absolutely be a national holiday,…

Every week people get mad at me for my top five. Sometimes it’s songs in the honorable mentions list that they think should’ve been at the top, sometimes it’s songs that they think got snubbed entirely, but people haven’t been this mad at me over something I wrote since…

Radiohead. STAFF file photo. Usually this column is the top five songs of each year. Sometimes, in an especially good year, I bend that and make it the top 10. This week has nine. The reasons for this are threefold: First, the longlist has 23 songs on it and…