Listen: Hip-Hop Supergroup Hail Mary Mallon's Debut Single, 'Smock'

Click to listen to Hail Mary Mallon's "Smock"

Underground hip-hop stars Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz have joined forces as Hail Mary Mallon. The group – named after the notorious early-twentieth-century disease-spreading cook known as Typhoid Mary – finds the longtime collaborators embracing their artistic chemistry in dense, funky tracks showcasing the scratching skills of Big Wiz. Their debut album, Are You Gonna Eat That?, won't be in shops until June 7th, but you can stream "Smock," a cut from the disc featuring ambient synthesizer hums and jazzy bass, right now. You can also watch the video for the song, in which Aesop Rock and Rob Sonic deliver their verses live in a moving car, below.

You can pre-order Are You Gonna Eat That? from iTunes and Fifth Element. The digital single "Smock" is available now on iTunes.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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