Pop the Trunk

In Loving Memory of Kristine Barlam aka “Krissy”.

Before diving into the main event, Billy has some explaining to do after coming back from a three-day meditation retreat. Then, the guys jump into Jay-Z's record-breaking Yankee Stadium residency, the surprise guests, an old beef finally squashed, and what it means for hip-hop's legacy artists getting their touring moment. Plus: Michael Bay movies, crying at Armageddon, a...

Episode 22 is a summer heat wave of hip-hop history. The crew runs down the classic albums that dropped between May and September across the decades — the records that defined car windows down, block parties, and the last day of school. Expect deep cuts on why summer releases hit different, some contested "greatest ever" arguments.

Pop the Trunk with Vinnie Paz streaming on all DSPs and your favorite podcast app. @popthetrunk....

The boys are back and the crew opens up talking hoops, the World Cup, and why American sports broadcasts hit different. From there it's straight into a milestone: Vinnie's debut solo album, Season of the Assassin, just passed its 16th anniversary, and the guys sit down to break down how it actually came together.

Vinnie gets into why he waited as long as he did to go solo, the uncertainty of stepping out from Stoupe and the JMT soun...

Vinnie flies solo this week to break down Jaron "Boots" Ennis's dominant, multi-knockdown stoppage of Xander Zayas that unified the 154-pound titles at the DAZN’s Barclays Center PPV.

He also covers the rest of that card (Jahi Tucker's win, a controversial Ben Whitaker stoppage loss), runs through news and notes — Usyk vacating his heavyweight belts, Floyd Mayweather's exhibition falling through amid his financial troub...

Vinnie and Billy hold things down two-man-band style with Brendan out this week, and crack open the mailbag for a round of listener mail and recommendations — including no shortage of opinions on the top 50 list they've got cooking. They also bring back a beloved segment from Broad Street Breakdown and things get weird from there: a debate over psychics and mediums, an unexpected detour into a heavier real-world topic, and th...

Boots Ennis and Xander Zayas finally collide for two junior middleweight titles, and the boys can't wait any longer to break it all down. From the questionable promotion (thanks, Knicks playoff run and World Cup chaos) to the undercard sleepers worth watching, no angle gets left on the table — including a few overdue predictions on exactly how this one ends.

Plus: news on Joshua-Fury's bizarre venue problem, Tank Davis' next m...

The boys are back, and this week there's an elephant in the room the size of Madison Square Garden. Vinnie and Billy are doing their best to ignore it, but Brendan isn't making it easy. The Knicks just won the championship and someone in the studio is way too happy about it — and it isn't the Philly guys. The debate over whether Wu-Tang's halftime performance had anything to do with the outcome is very real, and very heated.

F...

The crew weighs in on the NBA Finals and what it really costs to be a New York Knicks fan these days. From there, the conversation shifts into hip hop beef culture and where the line is between sport and disrespect.

Then Vinnie tells the story of a journalist interview that spiraled into something far more serious — and why federal agents ended up at his show because of it. That leads to a discussion on cancel culture and why ...

The crew kicks things off with a tale of restaurant frustration that snowballs into a broader conversation about bad service, false promises, and the unwritten code between businesses and their customers. From there, the episode digs into Complex's viral Top 50 New York Rappers of All Time list — and the crew has plenty to say.

They debate whether the list is a legitimate ranking, deliberate rage bait, or a mix of both, unpac...

Vinnie holds it down solo while his co-hosts sit this one out in lieu of other shenanigans. He runs through a loaded boxing news cycle — Lomachenko's retirement reversal, Canelo's next move, the Wardley-Dubois rematch situation, and more — before breaking down the main event everyone's been arguing about: Usyk vs. Verhoeven at the Pyramids in Giza. Was Rico closer than anyone expected, or did the crowd and the rounds fo...

After the slept-on rappers episode sparked a wave of responses from the audience, Vinnie and Brendan discuss names that didn't make the original list, artists whose careers took hard left turns, and a few who quietly reinvented themselves in ways nobody saw coming. From Philly legends to Long Island crews to a Queens MC who ended up writing for Beyoncé, the conversation covers artists who deserved far more than they got, and tries ...

The crew kicks off Episode 13 fired up, sleep-deprived, and somehow already arguing before the intro wraps. They draw battle lines on AI and Brendan drops a Mother’s Day story of a dinner gone sideways. Vinnie and Billy express their Philly sports rage and a full indictment of New York franchises enters the picture.

Somewhere between an argument nobody wins, a holiday that went completely off the rails, and a rant that earns ...

Pop the Trunk went live for the first time ever, and there was no safety net. What you heard was what it was. The crew wasted no time getting into it, from a big boxing weekend to the NBA playoffs, bad bets, and stories from the streets of South Philly that you genuinely had to be there for.

From there it turned into exactly what Pop the Trunk does best: wrestling history, hip hop history, and the kind of arguments that don't have a...

The boys are back. Vinnie and Brendan are back for a weekend of boxing you can't afford to sleep on. Before they get into the fights, there's no shortage of news — from a massive heavyweight announcement that's been a long time coming, to promotional shake-ups and signings that are quietly reshaping the landscape.

Then it's fight time. Two pound-for-pound monsters. Two cards that demand your attention. Inoue vs. Nakatani and B...

No guest, no filter. Vinnie, Brendan, and Billy go deep on one of hip hop's most unspoken rules — everybody got put on by somebody. From The Jaz (Jaz-O) opening doors for Jay, to Dre's Aftermath becoming a graveyard for careers that never were, the crew breaks down the co-sign, what it's worth, and what happens when it doesn't deliver. Junior Mafia, Wu-Tang affiliates, Two Chains betting on himself — it's a full autopsy...

Scott Vogel, frontman of Terror, joins the crew for Episode 10, before heading out on a six-and-a-half-week North American tour behind Terror's new record Still Suffer. What starts as a technical difficulty turns into an instant PTT classic moment. Once connected, Scott and Vinnie go deep on the parallels between hardcore and hip hop culture, tracing their origins from Black Sabbath and Run DMC to Agnostic Front and DITC. The conve...