THE PLUG W/ JUSTIN JAY

Fab 5 Freddy is a founding figure of hip-hop culture and the original host of Yo! MTV Raps. This episode we sit down with Fab 5 Freddy, artist and filmmaker, for a conversation about the exact moment graffiti, breaking, rap, and downtown punk culture stopped being separate scenes and became one culture: hip-hop. Fab was there for all of it. In his new memoir, Everybody's Fly, he traces the whole arc, from a Brooklyn childhood spent skipping school for the museums to the making of Wild Style, t

Dave Taylor is the owner of Waco Surf, the 500-acre surf park that brought wave culture to the middle of Texas. We sit down for a wide-ranging conversation about building something from scratch, the culture of surfing, and what it means to bring a coastal lifestyle to the heart of the Lone Star State. A Southern California native who spent years in entertainment and the restaurant industry, Taylor stumbled into wave pool ownership almost by accident. A three-day visit to Waco Surf in 2019 — wh

Nikolai Fraiture is the bassist and a founding member of The Strokes. ENCORE EPISODE — To celebrate the landmark performance The Strokes delivered at Coachella 2026, we're revisiting this conversation. We sit down to talk about what it actually looked like from the inside of one of the most hyped band launches in rock history, and what's happened in the two decades since. We get into the Grammy win for The New Abnormal and the making of Reality Awaits with Rick Rubin in Costa Rica — and what

Andrew McCarthy is the star of Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo's Fire, and a New York Times bestselling author. We sit down for a candid conversation about friendship, identity, and reinvention. Over the last decade, McCarthy has carved out a second act as a deeply introspective writer. His latest book, Who Needs Friends, documents a 10,000-mile solo road trip across America, where he spoke with strangers—from cowboys to cops—to explore the often unspoken realities of male friendship. The convers

Posdnuos, AKA Plug One, is a founding member of De La Soul, one of the most influential groups in hip-hop history. For years, De La Soul's music was caught in a complicated web of licensing issues and corporate politics, leaving their catalog unavailable on streaming platforms and out of reach for an entire generation of listeners. Now, nearly three decades after their groundbreaking debut Three Feet High and Rising, their full body of work is finally accessible again—sparking a long-overdue re

Michael "Kaves" McLeer is a Brooklyn-born graffiti writer, painter, and founder of the rap/punk group Lordz of Brooklyn. He's also the creator of Brooklyn Pop, an immersive installation celebrating the borough of Brooklyn with hip-hop memorabilia, graffiti, movie collectibles, historical artifacts, and personal items from the neighborhood that shaped him. In this episode we discuss his path from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in Bay Ridge to becoming a renowned graffiti writer and mus

Arto Saari is a Finnish professional skateboarder and photographer. He is one of only two Europeans to ever win Thrasher Magazine's prestigious Skater of the Year award, and he's one of the most respected and influential skaters of his generation. Arto built his legacy through groundbreaking video parts and endured numerous brutal injuries along the way. Eventually, he transitioned from professional skating to pursue his passion for photography. His recently released book, Bike Path, intimately

Naz Kawakami is the editor-in-chief of Monster Children, the independent Australian art and media platform. This episode kicks off a collaboration between The Plug w/ Justin Jay and Monster Children, which has been shaping taste for over two decades. For the next several weeks, Monster Children will be presenting a curated series of encore episodes of The Plug across their website and social channels. To kick things off, we sit down with Naz to discuss how a scrappy Australian print title buil

Jay Glennie is the author of The Making of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, the film has cemented itself as one of Tarantino's most personal and meticulously constructed works—every prop, location, costume, and needle drop carefully chosen to reconstruct a disappearing version of Los Angeles. Glennie was granted rare access to document how that world came together. Drawing from more than sixty interviews with Quentin

In this encore episode, we revisit our conversation with Luxxury—music producer and co-host of the hit podcast One Song. Each week on their podcast One Song, Luxxury and his co-host Diallo Riddle take a deep dive into a single classic song, and explore the inspirations and specific production techniques that make the track unique. By playing rare, isolated vocal and instrumental stems, they give listeners the chance to rediscover familiar songs, revealing details and textures often hidden in th