TRAVIS BARKER Drumsticks & Tattoos (2013) CD

Before he was remixing everything that moved and collaborating with half the Billboard chart, Travis Barker was the reason a generation of suburban punk kids decided drums were the coolest instrument alive.

Released in 2013, Drumsticks and Tattoos is the Blink-182 stickman doing what he does when the band isn't watching, which is leaning hard into hip hop, West Coast production, and the kind of beat-driven collaborations that make more sense once you remember he's been crossing genre lines since before it was a press release strategy. This is the guy who turned a Transplants record into something genuinely unsettling, who made Tom DeLonge look cool by proximity for two decades, and who somehow became the drummer of choice for artists who had no business needing a punk drummer. The record is a snapshot of a specific moment in that alternative-meets-hip-hop crossover that the early 2010s were quietly obsessed with.

Full length album on jewel case CD, originally released 2012, this pressing 2013. Country of origin: USA. Genre: hip hop.

Fans of: Machine Gun Kelly, Transplants, Post Malone's earlier instincts.