#Drink champs series

He senses discomfort and defuses it the show’s tone is somewhere between “Fresh Air” and “ SMACK,” the two-thousands DVD series that featured uncensored artist interviews.

He naturally speaks in an off-kilter purr but grows more animated as an episode progresses. is well suited to the meandering rhythms of a podcast. Today, in the era of Instagram Live and YouTube, the tendency is to go long, share secrets, and let one’s guard down-things that artists such as N.O.R.E. At its best, the show recalls the nineties and early-two-thousands heyday of radio, when hip-hop stars would head to the nearest station to air grievances or set the record straight, in the few minutes available. EFN, a longtime Miami promoter, producer, and mixtape d.j., balances N.O.R.E.’s tipsy zeal with a calming energy and basic, context-setting questions. and his co-host, DJ EFN, did a program on Sirius XM. The show began in 2016, several years after N.O.R.E. After DMX’s death, in 2021, fans turned to his buoyantly happy “Drink Champs” appearance, where he cracks jokes and reminisces about his childhood dog.

has been releasing records since the nineties, and his guests tend to shed their personae in his presence. pressed him on politics-his relationship with Donald Trump-but also gave him room to riff on dinosaurs, the beauty of humans (“We are God’s ultimate iPhone,” West said), and which of his twenty-four Grammys he’s peed on. In November, Kanye West, amid intensifying rumors about his mental health, appeared on the show for more than three hours, talking about creativity, the paparazzi, his family, and criminal-justice reform. Its success flows partly from its A-list guests, who are drawn from hip-hop history: Grandmaster Caz, Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg. “Drink Champs” is one of the most popular music podcasts around, despite the episodes’ exorbitant length. And his guests, who are often known for their steely, impassive façades, will break into an appreciative, almost goofy laugh. He’ll tell his interviewees, most of them rappers and producers, how much he appreciates them-that he’s a fan as well as a peer-as he probes them about the minutiae of their careers. N.O.R.E., the bawdy Queens rapper turned podcaster, will slowly get drunk. In the course of a typical episode of “Drink Champs,” which can run two or three hours, a few things will happen.

Drink champs