Founded in 2005 by writer Jeff Weiss (The Ringer, Washington Post, GQ), POW is the last rap blog — one of the the first nationally to write about Kendrick Lamar, Danny Brown, Drakeo, 03 Greedo, and many others. In 2016, it birthed the label, POW Recordings, releasing albums from Chester Watson, Kent Loon, Fatboi Sharif, Rhys Langston, Gabe ‘Nandez, Ness Nite, Pioneer 11, The Outfit TX, Vince Ash, and Zilla Rocca.

The radio show is an extension of this far-flung sound, boasting guest mixes from the rotating cast of POW contributors that span Latin boogaloo to Soviet Jazz to West Coast street rap.

For their debut project, “To Operate This System,” the polymath ‘poet laureate of your living room’ Rhys Langston has joined forces with the psychedelic cosmonauts Pioneer 11 to chart new terrain grounded in extraterrestrial R&B, hip-hop, acid house, deep space dance music, and cosmic soul. The innovative new work from the L.A. artists conjures images of Massive Attack dub remixes of Freestyle Fellowship and dystopian hallucinations of crumbling RAM chips and old video game consoles played in a ghost note afterlife. It drops July 26 on POW Recordings.