It’s romantic but heartbreaking that the only thing left of my conversations with the trombonist Ryan Porter is a feature in the departed but essential LAnd magazine. In that story about L.A.’s then-burgeoning jazz scene, we spoke about the pivotal role he played as the glue of the West Coast Get Down. The hard drives are lost, the Macbooks that once hosted the MP3 recordings of our chats are long sent to the hardware graveyard. And now, Porter, too, is gone. Tragically, cruelly. The news was shared on Sunday by his WCGD bandmate Tony Austin, who revealed that Porter died in a car accident. This is the sort of news that can easily get chewed and swallowed by the 24-hour news cycle, but Porter meant more to me, to L.A., and to the jazz world writ large to let that be the case.

Growing up in Westchester—the same neighborhood in which we spoke about his career seven years ago—Porter saw his prodigious jazz talent as an opportunity, a way out. His relationship as a young adult with Kamasi Washington signaled a way up. The trombonist was the heartbeat of the West Coast Get Down, the modern ensemble that reinvigorated the city’s jazz scene thanks to a furious barrage of essential releases from Washington, Porter, Brandon Coleman, Cameron Graves, Miles Mosley, and the brothers Bruner. They were integral performers on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and ran with that momentum, creating a mini Blue Note in Inglewood, offering each bandmate a chance to record an album. Porter’s integral work from that era, 2018’s The Optimist, brims with the joy and voraciousness I remember from our conversations. He was an otherworldly talent and a music obsessive. He spoke about dressing as a jazz player for Halloween as a kid, thrilled that his childhood machinations became reality. He laughed while remembering the fedora and trench coat.

Taken from the L.A. jazz community ripped from the world too soon, we decided to take the section of my LAnd story featuring Porter and run it as a standalone piece. It’s not the tribute he deserves, but it’s a conversation I’ll never forget.

“When I was seven years old I would dress as a jazz player for Halloween,” the trombonist Ryan Porter explains over coffee in Westchester. His eyes are buried beneath a black flat-brimmed Dodgers hat and blackout stunna shades that would be intimidating if he wasn’t cracking a miles-wide smile.

“I’d have a little fedora and a trench coat,” the member of the West Coast Get Down continues. “I always knew I wanted to play jazz. But we could never sit in my neighborhood like this when I was a little kid on the corner, you know what I mean? We couldn’t play outside. I needed to get out.”

Thirty years ago, when Porter was growing up, the community just north of LAX was inundated with crime and violence. From a young age, Porter saw jazz music as a physical and spiritual refuge from a gang-heavy world. Although Porter still considers the neighborhood home, he spends half of his time in Cleveland, Ohio where he has better access to treat an undisclosed medical condition.

“Jazz was a chance for me to get into a different world and all my heroes were these musicians that my peers knew nothing about,” Porter, 39, says. “I was ten years old talking about Elvin Jones. My friends would be like, ‘Who exactly is Elvin Jones, he play for the Lakers?’ Once I met [the members of West Coast Get Down], it was cool to bond with people who loved playing as much as I did.”

A fixture in Los Angeles’s music scene for two decades, Porter’s first years as a professional found him working as a go-to session musician. Gigs backing Quincy Jones, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Leon Russell, and Anthony Hamilton supported random creative endeavors and late nights at Piano Bar. A jazz original forced into a session player’s discography, his credits hinted at his polymath gifts, but Porter still needed a stage from which his music could be heard.

It took nearly a decade for that to happen. Porter’s excellent 2018 release, The Optimist, was initially recorded between 2008 and 2009 with the West Coast Get Down—at Kamasi Washington’s parents’ house, a spot lovingly dubbed “The Shack.”

“We still hadn’t made a name for ourselves yet as the West Coast Get Down. No one would take a chance on us,” Porter explains of the delay. “Around the same time, we did a record called Live at 5th Street Dick’s that Kamasi put out personally. And when I say personally I mean he custom-made every CD at his house using his own computer and printer. To me, Dick’s is better than The Epic, but at the time, without help from stars like Kendrick Lamar, no one would take a chance and sign Kamasi. It was all about timing.”

The band had been playing together for 15 years by the time they recorded The Optimist, and they exhibit a telekinetic chemistry—the same evinced on Washington’s album and Uprising, the 2017 record from the Get Down’s bassist Miles Mosley. On his masterful debut, Porter’s trombone serves as the bedrock that allows his bandmates to shine atop his melodies. It’s replete with Monk-style piano solos and spiritual experiments that recall a young Charles Mingus (“Obamanomics”).

Even a decade ago, Porter was hinting at the style the West Coast Get Down members now regularly display at international festivals — a style of jazz that reveals a loose and improvisational genius defined by decades of deep practice and study. It’s both fun and scholarly, with vibrant tones exuded in each horn solo and piano vamp. “Night Court In Compton” is led by a drum groove that blends A Tribe Called Quest with James Brown. The rhythm initially seems almost alien to jazz, but fits perfectly when stacked below the contrasting horn solos of Washington and Porter—each player navigates between staccatoed short notes and extended melodic phrases like climbing a ladder to space.

The Optimist offers a rare timestamp, a retrospective look through the lens of Porter and the West Coast Get Down’s evolution.

“It’s all so surreal. When you see it from the ground up, it’s hard to take a step back,” Porter says. “There were times that we’d do all this for free. We just wanted to play our own music. I just wanted to learn all of the music. You have to know all your friends’ songs.”

You shouldn’t trust people who say they’ve invented something. In hip-hop, as in life, everyone is a transitional figure, a tenuous tie between the past and the future. The elevator pitch on Run-DMC is that they mutated rap from the primordial, neo-disco ooze of its early recorded days into something sparer, tighter, more sinister, and kinetic. And if you browsed Tower Records a couple times a year (or internalized the tidy narratives of countless books and documentaries) you would be forgiven for thinking so. It’s a nice story.

But try to tell it to the men themselves. From the time an obsessive party promoter named Russell Simmons was shown the high school diploma he demanded from his kid brother and finally leveraged his connections to help him make a record, Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell insisted that they were part of a sacred—and temporarily broken—lineage. A few years later, after they had become a local, then national, then global sensation, and laid the groundwork for hip-hop as a commercially viable venture, DMC would rap that he and his partners “took the beat from the street and put it on TV.” It’s easy to read that as a simple underground/mainstream split, but that ignores the dimension of time. The group was always reaching back past “Rapper’s Delight” to catch the spirit of the routines that enamored them but never made it onto wax.

Still, it was probably inevitable that Raising Hell would be received as a culmination. Released 40 years ago this month, Run-DMC’s third album was rap’s first true blockbuster: By July, it had been certified Platinum, a first for hip-hop. (Whodini’s Escape, LL Cool J’s Radio, and Raising Hell’s predecessor, King of Rock, all predate Hell but were not certified until later.) Their redux of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” was crucial in getting both rap and post-Michael Jackson Black music writ large into permanent rotation on MTV. The album was so monumental, in fact, that it codified stylistic quirks—the precise rhythms of the tradeoffs between two MCs, the sweatsuits—as core tenets of a genre, a culture.

Yet in the same way that histories of Run-DMC tend to ignore the rich tradition from which the group was drawing, histories of Raising Hell would be incomplete without mentioning how quickly the sea change it brought on left its creators in water up to their necks. The next year would see the studio debuts of MC Shan as a solo artist, Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and N.W.A; the animated style that made DMC and Run resurrected for the record-buying public was replaced, as the platonic ideal of New York cool, by Rakim deadpanning from his spot on Melle Mel’s couch. “Walk This Way” was quickly cordoned off as a museum piece rather than a record unto itself.

But its genesis was an act of recalibration. In the second half of 1985, in the wake of King of Rock and their screen debut in Michael Schultz’s superb real-time Russell hagiography, Krush Groove, Run-DMC was on a marathon domestic tour. Where their first two albums had been produced by Larry Smith—who had mentored the group early on, gotten them gigs at his beloved Disco Fever, and allowed them into the low end-heavy, delightfully synthetic world he also opened to Whodini—the MCs decided they wanted something even more stripped down. While on the road, they wrote nearly every lyric that would eventually make Raising Hell, and even began performing the new songs live. When, in early ‘86, they played a pair of homecoming shows at the Apollo, they leaned entirely on material that was not yet available for purchase.

The tracks themselves were recorded over three months of intensive sessions at Chung King Studios. The group had enlisted a then little-known young producer named Rick Rubin to oversee them; Rubin, perhaps in an effort to counteract the effects of ubiquitous cocaine, urged the rappers, especially DMC, to stay within themselves, to be poised and keep a little in reserve. This is borne out on the finished songs. Take, for instance, “Hit It Run”: DMC is still attacking the first syllable of every other word, but there is a sense of control that would not have been present in an otherwise identical take of his from 1984. Even the Slick Rick pilfering on “Perfection” is made palatable by a calm that took years to develop.

Dating back to the earliest days of their friendship, the three men had been puzzled at the gap between their favorite rappers’ abilities and what was captured on the radio, or on vinyl. “When a lot of the old guys, like Kool Moe Dee, Treacherous Three, and Grandmaster Flash, got in the studio, they never put their greatness on records,” DMC says in Brian Coleman’s 2009 book Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies. “Me and Run and Jay would listen to tapes in our basement and we’d say, ‘They didn’t do that shit last night in the Bronx! What the hell is this ‘Birthday Rap’ shit and ‘What’s your zodiac sign?’ So we said that we weren’t going to be fake.”

The group’s self-titled debut, from ‘84, is perhaps their best record, a Smith-led fugue where even the serrated “Sucker MCs” is unmistakably designed in a studio. On Raising Hell, even concepts that could be written off as commercial gimmicks (“Walk This Way,” the Toni Basil riff “It’s Tricky”) are executed as if Run and DMC are re-rapping them every time you hit play. This keeps the comic misadventures of “You Be Illin” from feeling forced or overdetermined; it makes closer “Proud to Be Black” scan as a natural extension of the group’s philosophy, rather than an attempt to add dimension to an LP right before the needle slides off.

Cool can be an elusive thing, redefined rapidly and without notice. But in ‘86, no one had this sort of gravity. When DMC raps, at the beginning of “My Adidas,” about the charitable success of Live Aid, it sounds like the sort of filthy boast one might make about sex, money, or violence. Few other MCs can do that—and many of those who can would stake the line on irony. Here, it’s a straightforward boast as slick as any about limos with tinted windows.

It was that ineffable cool that ferried the group through “Walk This Way.” Jay had planned to include the break from the song in a compendium somewhere on Raising Hell. (The group went out shopping for the rock album with the “toys on the cover,” a wrinkle from the time when DJs would scratch the names off of their record sleeves to ward off imitators.) It was Rubin’s suggestion that Run and DMC re-rap the band’s lyrics, but it was Jay who ultimately convinced them to, touting Steven Tyler’s “flow.” When the rappers showed up at Chung King to find Tyler and Joe Perry waiting to record the new version of the hit, they asked them: “Are you the Rolling Stones?”

DMC insists the greatest period of hip-hop was before “Rapper’s Delight,” and not—or not only—as a matter of principle. In a 2023 appearance on N.O.R.E.’s Drink Champs podcast, the 59-year-old recites verses, never laid in a studio but committed to memory, from his idols in the late 1970s. They are, almost without exception, as layered, sly, and complex as almost anything that would appear on a rap record until 1987. “Anything that is holy or sacred to a nation, a community, or a people will get diluted, polluted, or destroyed once it’s commercialized,” he says. “And a lot of that commercialization is very good. But if there was no music business, we’d still have hip-hop.”

If “Walk This Way” had never been released, or if “My Adidas” had not served as an unintentional test case for the way hip-hop could be used as a marketing vehicle, the line from New York subculture to global business might not have been drawn so straight. What makes Raising Hell one of the genre’s most fascinating, and most essential albums is that it is the precise point of convergence between that popular potential and the unmonetizable culture on which it’s based.

The cover of Iceman, the marquee album among the three Drake released last week, is a picture of a disembodied hand wearing a crystal-studded glove. In 2023, to celebrate matching Michael Jackson’s 14 No. 1 singles, Drake bought one of Jackson’s signature accessories for a reported $123,000, which is exactly the kind of gaudy, slightly obnoxious thing you should do when you have 14 No. 1 singles and $123,000 to spare. But the world that Iceman enters is at least superficially darker than the one we inhabited in 2023: more naked in its cynicism, more transparent in its evil. And while critics, and even many diehard fans, have complained for years about Drake’s circular writing and emotional stagnation, this new album (and its sister LPs, Habibti and Maid of Honour) finds Drake spiraling deeper into ruts that have defined his career going back nearly two decades.

This isn’t always for worse. At times, the neuroses reach the necessary escape velocity to break free from Drake’s preening self-awareness. There are stretches of inventive, intoxicating production, especially on the front half of the dancey Maid of Honour. And while his complete-sentence syntax can still be exhausting, there are stretches of accomplished rapping across Iceman. (Habibti, which strains to recapture the gravity of Drake’s early R&B records, is notable mostly for its smartly chosen collaborators.) The triple-album gambit is brilliant as a sort of airport-bookstore Sun Tzu maneuver, and for the first time since 2016’s Views, there seem to be actual narrative stakes to new Drake albums. Still, there is something remarkably deflating, or perhaps deflated, at the project’s very center.

And so: the glove. Just a few weeks ago, Universal released Michael, an Antoine Fuqua-directed biopic produced in cooperation with the Jackson estate. The movie comes at a time when the country is in the throes of a panic about pedophilia—and at a time when public figures, up to and including the president, have reached levels of posting through it never before thought possible. When people decide that shame causes too much wind resistance and can be jettisoned entirely, they can get away with almost anything, as long as they’re selling something that others want to buy. So you sit in AMC while people dance to one nephew or another.

It cannot be forgotten that this is the context in which the biggest rap song of the decade calls Drake a “certified pedophile.” America, like every society across human history, is rife with the sexual abuse of children; the subtext of Justin Bieber’s recent Coachella headlining set, which saw him sing along to videos he put online as an adolescent, was that even the act of making a child the object of allegedly chaste commercial adoration has grotesque undertones. In the last decade, culminating with the release of the so-called Epstein files, both major political parties have wielded the fear of pedophilia as a cudgel. Your kids’ teachers are going to molest them right before they make them transition genders; the walk-in freezer at the restaurant around the corner is actually where the Clintons keep the tiny bodies of their victims.

Some caveats in both directions. First, while it is an incredibly inflammatory thing to say about another person, that has always been central to rap beef, and “Not Like Us” did follow “Family Matters,” where Drake alleges that Kendrick beats his wife, and that one of his children is not biologically his. Second, just as there is no evidence of domestic abuse on Kendrick’s side, Drake has never been accused of having sexual contact with a minor, save for a much-publicized on-stage stunt from 2010 during which he hugged and made lewd comments about the figure of a 17-year-old girl. There are rumors; there are always rumors. There is Baka.

The wrinkle in “Not Like Us” is Kendrick’s obvious, yet never really explicated baggage around sex: He’s an (at least) small-c conservative on the subject, and despite the Toronto reference, it seems awfully odd to condemn a grown man for being “a 69 god.” Yet for some reason, rather than assailing Kendrick for claiming something so outlandish, or mocking Kendrick’s evident repression, Drake responded, smugly, that “This Epstein angle was the shit I expected.” Fair, maybe, but not exactly solid crisis comms advice.

From the time he debuted, the sexual politics of Drake’s music have been dissected, usually to uncharitable ends. In the 2010s, his lyrics were correctly cast as representative of the misogynistic nice guys who pervaded every social circle in that era. But in the 2020s, and starting especially with 2023’s For All the Dogs, his music has had a strangely bitter streak in the way it addresses women. There are still the moments of ostensible yearning, but those are mostly blotted out by a sense of women has scheming, contemptible, and interchangeable—a development that coincides with and is accentuated by Drake’s drift toward 40. Some have pointed out that this shift coincides with the rise of the so-called “manosphere,” an arena of online content by and for men that is openly sexist and reactionary; while Drake has palled around or references some of those figures in his music, he is hardly unique among rappers or other male celebrities. But while he may not be unique, there is an undeniable trajectory in his writing that as of now points in a pretty obvious direction.

The women Drake raps and sings about, especially on Iceman and Habibti, are familiar to anyone who has listened to him: they accept the condos he pays for but keep their romantic options open; they should be commended for partying so longs as it’s with him; they were unquestionably adoring until they weren’t. When these girls are presented as foils to his happiness, as they generally are on Iceman, the whole project groans, seems rickety: how childish, how predictable. But when he taps into something seedier, as he frequently does on Maid of Honour, it seems that there’s still some new libidinal territory for Drake to tap into.

It is admittedly strange to make an album about how much you like to fuck—an album with an opening song called “Hoe Phase”—and put your mother on its cover. That’s between Drake and his therapist, who he admits he finds “very attractive.” But what’s most bizarre about Maid is that it is basically his circuit-party album: the answer to the question How can Drake inject life back into his music? was apparently a resounding Get gayer—and fast. The truly manic “Outside Tweaking” is the most interesting he’s sounded in a decade: harried, horny, barely there. It was not the shit I expected.

The cover of Iceman, the marquee album among the three Drake released last week, is a picture of a disembodied hand wearing a crystal-studded glove. In 2023, to celebrate matching Michael Jackson’s 14 No. 1 singles, Drake bought one of Jackson’s signature accessories for a reported $123,000, which is exactly the kind of gaudy, slightly obnoxious thing you should do when you have 14 No. 1 singles and $123,000 to spare. But the world that Iceman enters is at least superficially darker than the one we inhabited in 2023: more naked in its cynicism, more transparent in its evil. And while critics, and even many diehard fans, have complained for years about Drake’s circular writing and emotional stagnation, this new album (and its sister LPs, Habibti and Maid of Honour) finds Drake spiraling deeper into ruts that have defined his career going back nearly two decades.

This isn’t always for worse. At times, the neuroses reach the necessary escape velocity to break free from Drake’s preening self-awareness. There are stretches of inventive, intoxicating production, especially on the front half of the dancey Maid of Honour. And while his complete-sentence syntax can still be exhausting, there are stretches of accomplished rapping across Iceman. (Habibti, which strains to recapture the gravity of Drake’s early R&B records, is notable mostly for its smartly chosen collaborators.) The triple-album gambit is brilliant as a sort of airport-bookstore Sun Tzu maneuver, and for the first time since 2016’s Views, there seem to be actual narrative stakes to new Drake albums. Still, there is something remarkably deflating, or perhaps deflated, at the project’s very center.

And so: the glove. Early in 2024, on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That”—the song that made long-simmering animosity fully legible, the point of no return—Kendrick Lamar quipped that Prince outlived Michael Jackson. Both analogues are imperfect, but you imagine they would flatter each man: the genre-mutating visionary and the hitmaker so big he commands the same critical respect as the artistes. Across Iceman, and occasionally on Maid of Honour and Habibti, Drake seems positively consumed by his beef with Kendrick, which culminated in “Not Like Us” and is in many ways one of the most resounding losses in rap history.

What’s frustrating about the way this obsession plays out is that Drake is a prisoner of his own need to seem unbothered. When he confesses, on Iceman opener “Make Them Cry,” that a “big piece” of him died with the feud, it’s not really a confession at all—it’s what Drake prizes most, an engine for grievance. He goes out of his way a few times throughout that LP to stress the severity of the situation; save for the title of and a few asides in “Ran to Atlanta” he is pathologically non-specific about the substance of the beef. It becomes another amorphous cloud of victimization, a chance for him to whinge about those around him not being loyal or upstanding in the ways he seldom seems to be, even in his own retelling of things.

In places this fixation is, simply, embarrassing. How are you going to rap agitatedly about LeBron James betraying you when you have a LeBron James tattoo? That man is drinking red wine and eating salmon fillets and pretending to know the words to late-period 2 Chainz songs. The near-constant flitting between reminding listeners how down and out he was and feigning confusion as to why anyone cared about Kendrick’s disses would be compelling, albeit unintentionally, if the hurt or the indignance scanned as anything other than a get-out-of-jail-and-back-in-vogue pose.

But at least those more embarrassing moments feel human. The one true cardinal sin in art is not to be formally unstudied, or ideologically offensive, or even obviously derivative. It’s to be boring. And Drake’s incessant references to the inflation of streaming numbers and associated payola schemes he alleged in his now-dismissed lawsuit against Universal Music Group are absolutely numbing. First, attempting to recast the suit as sort of Robin Hood altruism (from “B’s On the Table”: “I’m fighting the man, not suing the rapper/You boys is not listening”) is preposterous; more importantly, it feels absolutely impossible to care about any of this. Jumping up and down and screaming that major labels and the DSPs they’re in bed with are fussing with the public-facing numbers to make their stars seem inevitable is like standing outside of a movie theater and explaining to everyone that the train on screen is not actually going to hit them.

While Drake has made a career vampiring up emergent regional sounds, trying to subsume any threats to his chart supremacy into buttresses that support it, he wisely avoids attempting that with contemporary Los Angeles. (He does offer an inferior retread of a Mac Dre classic, but goes no further south than Monterey.) Yet even when he calls Babe Ruth chart shots, Drake allows his records to sag with malformed attempts at retribution. Iceman features—at least—a pair of surefire hits in the glittering “Shabang” and “Janice STFU,” some post-Whole Lotta Red rage formatted for airplane screens. Both songs are obvious successes; both sputter when they get stuck on an enemy Drake claims never bothered him in the first place.

The cover of Iceman, the marquee album among the three Drake released last week, is a picture of a disembodied hand wearing a crystal-studded glove. In 2023, to celebrate matching Michael Jackson’s 14 No. 1 singles, Drake bought one of Jackson’s signature accessories for a reported $123,000, which is exactly the kind of gaudy, slightly obnoxious thing you should do when you have 14 No. 1 singles and $123,000 to spare. But the world that Iceman enters is at least superficially darker than the one we inhabited in 2023: more naked in its cynicism, more transparent in its evil. And while critics, and even many diehard fans, have complained for years about Drake’s circular writing and emotional stagnation, this new album (and its sister LPs, Habibti and Maid of Honour) finds Drake spiraling deeper into ruts that have defined his career going back nearly two decades.

This isn’t always for worse. At times, the neuroses reach the necessary escape velocity to break free from Drake’s preening self-awareness. There are stretches of inventive, intoxicating production, especially on the front half of the dancey Maid of Honour. And while his complete-sentence syntax can still be exhausting, there are stretches of accomplished rapping across Iceman. (Habibti, which strains to recapture the gravity of Drake’s early R&B records, is notable mostly for its smartly chosen collaborators.) The triple-album gambit is brilliant as a sort of airport-bookstore Sun Tzu maneuver, and for the first time since 2016’s Views, there seem to be actual narrative stakes to new Drake albums. Still, there is something remarkably deflating, or perhaps deflated, at the project’s very center.

And so: the glove. Ah, there’s the referent—something on which we can all agree (good) or something about which the public is starkly divided (even better). The “Macarena” interpolation; there are the Easter eggs for songs I knew in high school; there’s Lykke Li and Mac Dre and the “Cha Cha Slide.” Finally, I can breathe again.

Thirteen years ago, when Drake was getting ready to release his third album, Nothing Was the Same, he sat for an interview with Billboard during which he talked about sitting with 40 and his other collaborators and sanding down the edges of each line, hoping that it could be repurposed the world over as an Instagram caption, a slogan for a t-shirt, something to be scribbled on whiteboards before high school hockey games. The idea was to retain the aw-shucks persona, but to mete it out in perfect little morsels that were specific enough to remember yet general enough to invite projection. These three latest albums, and especially Iceman, are the culmination of a related, but meaningfully divergent strategy: to make social media feeds light up with bars that people post in delighted disbelief that Drake could be so goofy, so obvious, so Big Sean-in-2012. The beef is so pressed it’s panini, and so on.

I’ve seen this cited by critics as evidence of atrophying skill or creative limitations. I think that’s both (creatively) uncharitable and (commercially) naive; this is a core part of Drake’s style—one he’s very good at executing—and thoroughly calculated, in the same way PETA knows you’re going to see an ad urging you to imagine yourself as a turkey being stuffed on Thanksgiving and tweet “omg i wish.” All press is not necessarily good press, but clicks are agnostic, and Stake.us is owned and operated by Sweepsteaks Limited, registration number HE436222, registered address 7 Patrikiou Loumoumba, Block A, Office A13, 7560 Perivolia, Larnaka, Cyprus. Contact us at support@stake.us. For press inquiries, please contact press@stake.us.

Where Drake was once notorious for, well, biting everything and everyone in sight, the calculus seems to have shifted a bit. He’s not osmosing nearly as many contemporary flows into his own work; he’s no longer issuing singles that sounds like xeroxes of others by smaller artists. That plan has been replaced by one intended to trigger little jolts of recognition, and to flood his verses with gossip. He’s not the worst offender on the latter point—plenty of A-list rappers today rely on quasi-TMZ crypticism to generate buzz about their records, and at least Drake is trying to back that up with honest-to-God hits. But it can be hard to listen to even the most formally loose songs on Maid of Honour and not imagine them being engineered for engagement time, trained on our lizard brains rather than our heads or our asses.

It’s cynical, but that’s worked for him before. In an effort to put 2024 behind him, Drake is aiming not for reinvention but for a return to ubiquity, and that’s likely what he’ll get; these records, taken as an unstructured whole, actually feel like his sturdiest album-level venture since 2016’s Views, and are markedly more successful on a song-by-song basis. The titles of the four songs that give Iceman its organizing structure—“Make Them Cry,” “Make Them Pay,” “Make Them Remember,” and “Make Them Know”—could live in PowerPoints forever, and they probably will.

Before their hiatus, the SOB X RBE crew carried the spirit of the soil into the next generation while drawing from outside influences in LA and Chicago. During his Truth Hurts interview, the rapper born Wayman Barrow broke down his solo career, how he, Slimmy B and Yhung T.O. came to an understanding for SOB X RBE’s recent reunion shows, and what he has planned for his own and his group’s future discography.

One of music’s most levelheaded, principled artists, DaBoii talked to us about resisting the industry and society’s constant pull to make artists sell out for clout. He also talked about changing the game like Steph Curry or Raphael from Ninja Turtles. Of course, there are stories about smoking with Snoop Dogg and being in the studio with Kendrick Lamar while making “Paramedic!” for the Black Panther soundtrack.

Don’t skip this one.

Watch/Listen

YouTube:

Spotify:

Apple:

I came across a tweet from Los Angeles media personality Dejon Paul arguing that every L.A. rapper today is either riffing on or extending two dominant lineages: the gang-centric, danceable G-funk revival popularized by YG, or the woozy, paranoid, code-heavy minimalism pioneered by the late Drakeo the Ruler. It’s a take that feels hard to shake. For the better part of the last five years, L.A. street rap has largely flowed downstream from those two poles. Even the city’s modern standard bearer, Kendrick Lamar, dipped into both wells on 2024’s gnx—tapping DJ Mustard’s kinetic, club-ready bounce (so crucial to YG’s rise) with “TV Off,” while experimenting with the slippery, off-kilter flows Drakeo made his signature on tracks like “Hey Now,” and “Not Like Us,” which technically wasn’t on gnx, but came out around the same time.

Still, there’s a deep bench of L.A. rappers pushing these templates forward rather than simply tracing them. R3 Da Chilliman sits comfortably in that lineage. Raised in the Inland Empire, he draws heavily from Drakeo’s playbook with a cool-headed delivery, elliptical phrasing, and that ever-present sense of controlled unease, but bends it into something distinctly his own. On “Fat Joe,” R3 flips the idea of “leaning back” from a celebratory dance into something darker and more literal: the slumped, off-balance aftershock of getting hit with a .40 caliber. It’s a grim punchline that fits neatly into his world.

R3 glides over hazy, skeletal production packed with the snapping drums, rubbery basslines, and eerie, half-lit melodies that should be familiar hallmarks to anyone following L.A. street rap in the past five years. He drifts between topics like lean habits, designer fits, and romantic friction. The real standout, though, is his pacing. R3 starts his verses in a near-drowsy crawl, spacing his bars like he’s still waking up, then gradually accelerates until he’s skating across the beat, words stacking on top of each other. By the end, it’s almost dizzying to keep up, “I can’t even hang with you unless you’re armed and dangerous, parking lot filled with spaceships,” he says in a brief, quicktime flow, a subtle flex of technical ability in a track otherwise built for late-night cruising, somewhere between paranoia and calm, riding back to the Inland Empire from L.A. proper.

Mike Sherm & G-Bo Lean, “CEO”

This is the hardest Mike Sherm song in what feels like years. The beat is built around a looped vocal sample of a woman saying “it’s never,” and with Mike Sherm, it’s all in the delivery. The way he says “I scored and then I re-scored” carries the type of swag that could only come from being raised in the hustlers’ capital of America: The Bay Area. G-Bo Lean comes in after Mike with a completely different vibe, vocals sounding almost like they were recorded through a jail phone. It adds a gritty, unmastered feel to what was already a trunk-rattler.

Mike Sherm is what Tyga would be if Tyga weren’t a loser. He’s mastered a phoned-in redundancy that should’ve pushed him out of the conversation years ago, yet somehow he remains ever-present. Mike Sherm makes the type of street turn-up anthems Tyga was able to pull off before we all got to know him. He never pretends to be much more, though he sometimes reaches highs Tyga seldom could, like with the meditative “Ballin.” I’m hoping “CEO” is the beginning of a real album rollout from Mike, something he’s been allergic to thus far in his career.

Pz, “First Date #rds”

P’z is an Atlanta-born, Senegalese-Gambian rapper and model who’s been quietly building momentum in ATL’s underground and beyond. Born Payusu Njie, he reps ØWay—a collective whose name translates to “against oppression”—and seems to split time between the booth and the runway. He’s caught co-signs from Playboi Carti and is part of a new wave of Atlanta artists weaving West African heritage into the city’s street rap DNA. P’z has no official project to speak of, instead choosing to lace his YouTube with nonstop single drops seemingly out of nowhere. It’s helped build his underground mystique, and the music itself has stood out as the Atlanta scene continues to fragment and diversify beyond its trap roots.

P’z opens “First Date” on the run. “They said I’m a flight risk, I done’ missed my court date/Spent like two months in France, and it feel like this my birthplace,” he raps, a line that’ll resonate with anyone who’s ever overstayed a European summer. The production is classic trap DNA (think Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane) but dialed back, stripped of its edge, and stretched out into something dreamier. It’s a perfect backdrop for P’z’s delivery, which channels Playboi Carti’s cadence with more clarity and less chaos. No mosh pits, no demonic ad-libs. Just something smooth enough to soundtrack a sunny afternoon in Biarritz, court date be damned.

Trim, “Coconut Water”

It was “Coconut Water” by South Carolina rapper Trim that got me. I found it last Sunday, and within minutes, I had Google Docs open, fingers already moving. That doesn’t happen often as a Rap Up writer. It’s a gut thing, the kind that makes the hair on your arms stand up. “This is the song of the summer,” I muttered to myself as the chorus kicked in, all bouncy and carefree, transporting me straight back to 2014. A simpler time. West Coast production everywhere, early college days. And by college, I mean rehab. Like London on da Track’s beat for Tyga and Youth Thug’s “Hookah,” or any number of DJ Mustard and Tyga collabs.

So naturally, Monday morning rolls around, and I see Mano from Pitchfork already beat me to it with an excellent track review at the top of the week. But I’m undaunted. There’s enough Trim to go around for everyone, am I right twin!? (immediately jumps off bridge after saying this).

I’ll admit, I was skeptical at first. The chorus has major annoying TikTok challenge energy, and if it’s already blown up there, forgive me for not checking. But as the track unfolds, Trim slides through different flows with surprising ease, pulling from the zaniness of Missy Elliott, the club-ready swagger of Tinashe, and the dexterous wordplay of early Nicki Minaj. The way she tosses off rapid-fire asides like, “Used to rock Polo, but now I got on that Gucci, shit/If you keep talking I’ma act like I’m moody/He said I act like a bad hoe, I was like hold up/I just got me a tan, whoa, I hit up Florida,” shows she’s anything but one-dimensional.

Black Fortune, Babyfxce E, and Baby Kia, “Grandma Boy”

This AI video is anything but impressive. I’m sure it’s fun for some, but to me it’s a soulless mess, macho bullshit brought to life with thoughtless prompts and whatever else it takes to shit out something this effortless-looking. The verses build from weakest to hardest, with Baby Kia closing out with the most fire. His flow is unorthodox and sharp, full of contradicting boasts like “selling that white, that Hillary Clinton/Rob a man, but I got good intentions.” His delivery here channels Atlanta’s Ola Runt, that same alien-sounding vocal texture, all high-pitched strain and unexpected melody. Black Fortune and Babyfxce E hold their own, but it’s Baby Kia who steals the show and slams the curtain shut. On the other side of Mother’s Day, I’m sure his grandma is proud.

FrostydaSnowmann & Flashy B, “No Patience” f/ FMG Lil Flashy

FrostydaSnowmann’s YouTube comments have been some of my favorite scrolls ever since the rapper went viral in August 2025 for allegedly stealing over $5,000 worth of Pokémon cards from multiple card shops in Oxnard, California. No matter what he drops, his comment section is flooded with posts like “Frosty spreading his Pokémon card money” and “I got $200 for a holographic Jigglypuff get at Frosty!!!”—just a small sampling.

His latest single, “No Patience,” continues to showcase Frosty’s toxically clever delivery and subject matter. He’s a true L.A. character who never quite leaves my radar, because the moment he does is the moment he’s back with a song undeniable enough to get even Tyler, the Creator on board. “No Patience” isn’t the most fun Frosty song, but it retains that certain quality that keeps me coming back: a genuinely unique flow and extremely L.A. visuals that feel like hood vlogs in their grainy authenticity.

Emptying the Chamber

Toward the end of Midwestern Death Trip, her richly detailed history of a region and war-report from its bars and supper clubs, Meaghan Garvey raises an existential fear. “What did it mean that every writer I admired had drank themselves to at least temporary ruin? And was I crazy to believe that 20 years of drinking had given me more than it had taken away?” she asks. As it so happens, that question comes at the bottom of a page. At the top of the next one, a hand-wave slyly loaded with an actual philosophy: “Anyway, never take life advice from people who hate life.”

I’ve often described Meaghan as the best writer on the internet, which is both literally true—for my money, her Substack, SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE, is the most evocative and idiosyncratic thing on this, or any, website—and a reflection of how her career, which began as a music critic, is refracted through the way our early adulthoods have been warped by the experience of being online. Death Trip rips her away from her computer and into the 1993 Cadillac Coupe DeVille she bought off of Craigslist. From a series of reports from around the region emerges a portrait of not only a distinct society, but one of the most singular protagonists in contemporary literature.

Meaghan called me from her home in Rogers Park, on the North side of Chicago, which overlooks Lake Michigan and some tennis courts that have been overtaken by itinerant men with pickleball paddles. We spoke about the book, her roots in criticism, and the wave of attention brought on by a truly bizarre interview with her ex-fiance, a brilliant grime musician who may or may not be dead. The songs embedded throughout are MG essentials, provided by the artist herself.

What’s the actual genesis of this book, was it simply an extension of SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE?

SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE was definitely the foundation for it. But the honest answer? I kind of am not that ambitious unless I’m prompted to be, so I probably would’ve never done this had my editor not sat me down at some fancy party a year and a half ago and been like, “I want you to write a book. I want it to be called Midwestern Death Trip. And in it, I want you to figure out what the fuck is your problem.”

If I asked Meaghan at 17 or 18 how she would describe the Midwest and how she felt about it, what would she have said?

I would’ve said, “It’s fucking boring as shit, and I can’t wait to leave it and go to some coastal city and become a great artiste. Where I grew up, Oak Park, is the birthplace of Hemingway. So ever since I can remember, everywhere I looked, his face was fucking plastered all over everything. But he was embarrassed to be from Oak Park. He latched on to Michigan in a way that is almost what I am probably doing right now, too. But yeah, he just thought being from the suburbs was lame, which: touché. My childhood was pretty dull. I was very shy. I wasn’t a loser, but I didn’t really have my people, so I just always thought the action of my life would start after I left. And that basically turned out to be true.

What actually enabled you to move to New York, and how did you feel when you got there?

Oh, man. OK. My ex-boyfriend drive me there and I brought my cat in a fucking cardboard box. Why didn’t I buy a cat carrier? He was literally in a cardboard box pissing all over my lap. But I went there because I got an internship at The Fader, which I went to for one day. I showed up two hours late, I left early, and I never went back. So immediately it was like, “What the fuck am I doing here?” Then three months later I get married [laughs]. This is a disaster. What the fuck?

That was the era—right before and right after you moved to New York—when you started getting noticed as a music critic. I know how much you think and feel about music, but did you care about the criticism per se?

I mean, the funny thing about that is that before I even conceived of the idea of being a writer, I was doing illustrations for Vice and Noisey. I was doing pencil drawings of Waka Flocka Flame for $75, and that’s what I was: I considered myself an artist, a visual artist. And so I hope this doesn’t sound douchey or glib, but I really wasn’t trying to be a music writer—or a writer whatsoever. But I think I just was so annoying on Twitter that finally someone was like, “Here’s $150, please shut the fuck up.”

You and [Fake Shore Drive founder Andrew] Barber always talk about 2012 in Chicago as this really electric time. That’s, what, the Two Way [Lounge] era?

Definitely. Me and Barber would go out and DJ Kenn would be smoking blunts outside of the venue. This was when my main job was still selling weed. So I was just on my bicycle delivering eighths of mid to art school students. Obviously regional rap didn’t come to being then, but it really felt so fresh to see all of these regional scenes take their first sprouts on the internet specifically. Did Spotify exist in 2012? If it did, I wasn’t on it. So it was also a pure pleasure to spend into your day on the internet and go to sleep thinking, “day well spent.” It wasn’t as nihilistic and scammy and culture war-ish and mean-spirited and Elon. It was fun to spend your time online.

And still, looking back on the time where you made a big percentage of your living as a critic, what did you like about that least?

Well, it’s hard to untwine simply getting older from what music criticism did to my relationship with music. But… I know everyone hates having a job, but I really fucking hate having a job. I hate having a boss. I couldn’t be a full-time music critic now even if I wanted to because being expected to focus on something just sort of kills it for me. And what I liked about it least at that time was, I mean, not to get all woe-is-me feminist, but guys would fucking print out my picture and jizz on it and send me a photo of that. This happened more than once. That was always really annoying. But when I think back on it, what I dislike is—again, this all has to do with growing older—I feel like my identity was so entwined with music and culture and criticism that it almost stunted my ability to figure out who I was outside of my taste and preferences. I feel like when a lot of your relationships are premised by my opinions and taste, it’s like a proxy for a relationship, not a real relationship. And for that reason, I just feel like it took me until my 30s to be like, “Who the fuck am I? And what do I believe, and what do I want out of my life?”

So as you move away from using taste as a proxy for that, what replaces it?

I mean, I don’t want to sound like a raging alcoholic, even though I think that ship has fucking sailed for me. But it’s definitely tied to becoming a regular at The Lighthouse, becoming a regular at local bars. And through that, getting to know my neighbors, getting to know better the very granular place where I lived, and being able to walk down the street and it’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. And I’m like, “What’s up, Debbie? What’s up, Mike?” It might be foolish to say that my bar friends are a deeper relationship than my music friends because that has a shaky foundation of its own. But I think it was tied to owning the place where I lived and just leaning all the way into it.

We didn’t become friends until you were in your 30s, and in the time I’ve known you, I’ve always considered you uniquely good at meeting people.

And I wonder why that is because I consider myself kind of shy. I still have to psych myself up to make a phone call. When I was a kid, I was shy as fuck. But I love shooting the shit more than anything in the fucking world.

Some of that is what the utility of drinking is and always has been, right?

Completely. Completely. I mean, I don’t know. I think about this all the time, because you go on Twitter or wherever and there are these creepy little Gen Z people who are so nihilistic and yet so risk averse. I’m stereotyping obviously, but you’ve seen these people—they’re not just Gen Z, they’re my age now, too, and older. The Silicon Valley body optimization, Bryan Johnson or whatevers. And I almost want to counter them with hedonism, even though that’s so reactionary and stupid and only harms me in the end.

Well, I know you mean that, but you’re also being a little bit glib calling it hedonism because both through knowing you and reading the book, you get what is interesting and romantic and even deep about those… non-optimized parts of life.

I don’t want to speak for anyone other than myself, but for me, I sort of reject the modern need to pathologize everything to the nth degree. And I don’t want to say that alcoholism and addiction doesn’t ruin lives on the fucking daily. And maybe it’s even ruining mine. But the thing is, you have to very confidently decide what you want out of life and accept the consequences. And if you could do that, then I don’t think that the life I live is bad for me.

If you were forced to reduce it, how would you define what you do want out of life?

I don’t know. This is what I think about this so much, because I think part of the reason that I’ve been a little… I had a month out of sorts after I turned the book in. I thought I would be so euphoric with accomplishment but I was just sort of bereft and weird. And I think part of that is it’s become very clear to me that you cannot have it all. Whatever they say, you can’t have it all. You can’t devote yourself to your craft and have a happy family and be a stable loving partner and have a snatched hot rockin’ bod and have emotional stability. You can’t have all of those things. And trust me, I’m fucking trying to! But it’s just become clear to me that you got to sacrifice some of that shit, and I know which ones I’m keeping.

But you’ve been chipping away at these creative projects forever, living through the slow death of our industry, so on. Why did actually turning in the book put you in that space?

You know what the honest answer is? I’m just going to say it: Writing the book, I was so sedentary and I came off feeling like a fat slob. This is my answer. And I was just like, “Fuck, dude. How can I be the master of my craft and also be hot as shit?” I can’t do it and drink like a fucking maniac when I want to. I just can’t do all those things. I have all these extremes and I’m just meeting square in the middle, mid. So annoying. I know that sounds vain.

No, I completely understand that. But on a master-of-the-craft level, I’m going to force you to do something you’re going to hate. Tell me what you think you got uniquely good at as a critic.

I’m going to put this in a stupid way, but: to articulate a vibe. It’s one thing to talk about what music sounds like. It’s another to provide the historical cultural context. But it’s such a compelling challenge to me to just touch the fucking spirit and pin it down in a way that is not inside baseball and is not something that will be irrelevant in two weeks. And if I gave it to my 65-year-old boomer friend at the bar, he wouldn’t think it was gibberish. And I think that I got decently good at that through criticism.

In the mutation from that writing to the book, whose work not only had an effect on you, but really made you want to finish your own manuscript?

Well, it’s funny, because if you asked me five years ago, my answer would’ve been Eve Babitz. But I’ve soured on her a little bit in recent years. I just feel like she lies sometimes. And obviously everybody lies by omission—the most interesting part of someone’s book is what they leave out. But with Eve, I’m like, “Everybody can’t be handsome. Every party can’t be amazing. Everything can’t be all, like, jacarandas and bougainvillea and amazing crispy tacos and hot sex all the time.” And then you read the description from one of her friends during the ‘70s, and he talks about how her whole living room was littered with bloody Kleenex and her cats were getting high because there was fucking coke everywhere. And that’s just entirely out frame up until basically [1993’s] Black Swans. And by that time, she’s sober. And you could tell that she sort of resented it, she’s sort of listless and wistful and jealous of her former life. Who I replaced her with is Lucia Berlin, who I just think is the fucking dopest writer of all time because she, it is jacarandas and bougainvillea and tacos and Mexico, but it’s also like, “I am drinking Jim Beam at seven in the morning before my kids go to school, and I just crashed my car and now I’m in jail.”

Which is why you crashed your car and almost went to jail.

You can put that in there. Yeah.

What made you start SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE?

There are two reasons. Everything starts with just a sick-ass title, and it was 2020, and I was walking around Rogers Park. There was this neurodivergent fellow who would just scribble his rantings and ravings in Sharpie on various walls, really prolifically, and sometimes it would be about Putin and Ukraine. Other times it would be these amazing poetic fragments. And so outside the fucking Dunkin Donuts under the Red Line, he had written “Scary, cool, sad, goodbye.” I was like, “Oh, fuck. Well, this name is just burning a hole in my pocket.” And I probably started the Substack that day, honestly. Before I started it, I thought I was just done with writing forever. I just thought it was over for me. I was working at this weird random bar. I just thought I was going to be a bartender and service industry person after this. I don’t know if it was my last-ditch attempt. Maybe I was just broke and thought it would make some money. But I think subconsciously it was my last attempt. “Don’t make me not be a writer. Please.”

It can be like an albatross though. You start this thing and then you’re like, “Fuck, man. How often do I have to write?”

I don’t feel that way at all. I am not trying to be a Substack booster because quite frankly, I think I’ve got one of the only good ones, but everything clicked when I started. I don’t know. I don’t do a lot of writing that I don’t share. It kind of seems besides the point. Maybe I’m a fucking vain narcissist and I want kudos, but I just don’t write shit privately. So this was the first time I could figure out what the fuck I actually cared about.

Earlier you were talking about how you realized you needed to stop defining yourself through your taste. But now, what would you say is the unifying quality of art you appreciate? Because I will see or read or hear new things, and every once in a while I’ll think, “Oh, this is a Meaghan thing.” But I’m not sure I could articulate what it is.

I like this American quality that is sort of the triumph of will over reason, and I like people who kind of seem like they got the shit kicked out of ‘em. I like people—and I’m cribbing this from an interview I did the other week with this guy, Daughn Gibson, but he said he admired people who lived a sad life confidently, or who did batshit things with confidence. And I think that describes the artists that I admire. I mean, the American dream is something that comes up in my book so much. I remember someone asked me, “Why are you so into the past? Why are you so nostalgic for a time before you were born?” I’m like, “Well, fucking look around, man!” Nobody likes this shit. If you do you’re a sociopath and you don’t know any better. You know what I mean? I can’t watch the NBA playoffs at the bar because it’s only on Peacock and not on NBC. And fucking eggs are $6, and buildings are hideous and nobody can fucking read. But at least I can use DoorDash. Look around, man. The dream has left the building.

So you’ve been talking about how the parasocial relationships people had and have with you are a drag. In some ways I think of you as a private person, but we’re all also creatures of the internet. And like you said, all your stuff goes online. You got a ton of attention for the interview you did with Tony, which on some level is what sustains us, economically but also as people. But that’s your life, too, and it must be sort of uncanny to have it laid so bare.

The only fear I have with this book is that I’ve said too much, that I’ve overexposed myself in a way that I can’t take back. Because I do feel like a private person, weirdly enough, even though it seems like I’m always spilling my guts on Substack. But that’s very controlled. There are so many things that are untouchable and just will never appear. So, yeah, it kind scares the shit out of me, man. Obviously Twitter is real, the internet is real, but I can walk away from that shit at any time and never look back.

Before we started recording you said your book is in some ways a dead-mom book. I remember when 808s & Heartbreak came out and you said that people think of this as a breakup album, but to you it was very obviously a dead mom album. What do you think are the hidden qualities of the dead mom canon that you can sniff out that not everyone might be able to?

I think maybe it’s different for guys and girls, but it has to do with this constant performance for the approval that you’ll never get. In me, definitely, and in Kanye, definitely, it creates a level of exhibitionism that I probably would not have otherwise. Ultimately, I don’t want to be a hermit. I dream to be one, but I don’t know. But it’s also so embarrassing for me to talk about myself. When people have been asking me, “What’s your book about?” I curl up in a ball and want to die. It’s so pathetic and weird, but I just want to feel like I did a good job and then I want everyone to leave me the fuck alone. Is that so much to ask?

What do you want to write about next?

Well, the big story looming over me that I still don’t even know the half of is Tony. He might still be alive, so I don’t know. If he were dead, I would be emotionally equipped to write about it. But if he’s alive, then I have to find out. Right now, I’ve shut out the possibility of finding him alive; I just can’t even touch it.

But if you had to put odds on it…

I think he’s fucking alive.

In 1967, “The Saturday Evening Post” sent Joan Didion to San Francisco to experience the “abrupt mutation” occurring during the Summer of Love.

On her reporting trip, Didion watched the Grateful Dead rehearse behind Bob’s Floating Homes on the Sausalito waterfront. Afterwards, she interviewed the entire band, save for Pigpen (“easily the most photogenic member”), who was nowhere to be found.

An abbreviated scene from the interview was later including in Didion’s landmark collection of essays, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” but until now, the full three-page essay on her time with the band has never seen the light of day.

Last March, the New York Public Library opened up Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s literary archive to the public. Thanks to POW confrere Timothy Denevi, who is currently working on a Didion biography, we are now all able to read Didion’s full unexpurgated thoughts on “the boys,” who she found “very engaging and very unpretentious.”

For Dead scholars, it exists as a landmark early interview with the band directly after the release of their self-titled debut album, but before national stardom swept them on the Golden Road to unlimited devotion and drug consumption. For Didion scholars, it begs the question: what would she have made of the beguiling charm of the irascible Pigpen. Would literary and musical history have been irrevocably altered? Would she have become a harmonica aficionado? We will never know. After all, life proceeds by its own design.

I went out one afternoon to where the Grateful Dead rehearse, behind Bob’s Floating Homes on the Sausalito waterfront. (CORRECTION: Don McKay’s Floating Homes.) It was late in the afternoon and there were 3 girls sitting around listening –– the kind of girls who travel with rock groups –– all pretty –– one with no makeup other than enormous thick eyelashes, a blond with dirty bare feet and a cotton shift, a golden girl; one a little girl in a sailor suit who danced by herself with her eyes closed while the boys rehearsed; the third a kind of baby fat soft-brown-haired girl in a blue duffel coat. I asked two of them if they worked with the group. “No, I just come out here a lot,” one said; the other said “No, I just sort of know them.” The boys were drinking Cokes out of cans, and there were some quarts of beer on top of the piano, and behind the piano one of the girls was making sandwiches from a loaf of French bread and cheese and a jar of mayonnaise. She offered me one. When I first came in the girls assumed I just wanted to listen and made a place for me.

I told the Dead I was trying to figure out what was going on and one of them said “When you find out, tell us.” “It’s an abrupt situation,” another said.

There was a great deal of electronic equipment around and we sat down on it & talked. They had just come back from playing at Cheetah in Los Angeles, which they didn’t like. The lights were programmed, there was a computer, everything was programmed. “Well, it was pretty easy to break that down. We just get up there, it’s all real stuff going on –– our equipment broke down –– a lot of hassle –– it was pretty sloppy by the time we finished.” They were pleased about it. Cheetah is in the old Aragon, and Jerry Garcia said “We were up there drinking beer where Lawrence Welk used to sit.” “Too much,” everybody said.

Another kind of place they don’t like is the Continental, an old roller rink in Santa Clara. “They get bigtime groups there, they charge a lot of money so you pay a lot of money, cops frisk you at the door, nobody has a good time.”

“Bands in the city tell each other where they got burned, then nobody goes there anymore.”

The Dead have been together 2 years, but they all knew each other before that, playing in different rock and roll groups around the area.

“We play at Davis, someplace like that –– they’re not really alive there. We got a dead curtain behind us. They bring us up because they hear that’s what’s happening. Not even their minds are moving. We can pick it up – it’s like playing to a brick wall, except worse, because this brick wall expects something and you don’t know what.” (Garcia.) “It’s horror,” somebody adds.

“If they get on this scene about if – they – do – it – in – the – Panhandle – then – we’ll – do – it – in – the – Park, we should get together with Big Brother and say fuck you, we’ll play together.”

“That’s right, it’s our trip, not these hippie merchants.”

“I think of it (he means the Park scene) as a gift of the bands to the people for supporting us the rest of the time –– they pay a lot of money at the Fillmore and Avalon.”

What they are objecting to here really is the plan of the Council for A Summer of Love (“the highest echelon of the power structure,” they call it) to have a program in the Park all summer. “Why should they program the Park?” “It’s like why should there be a musicians’ union, stuff like that.”

“In the Park there are always about 20 or 30 people below the stand, ready to direct the crowd for their own uses, ready to take them on some militant trip.” “Yeah,” laughed another. “Militant peace.” Garcia again: “Always ready to make some political pronouncement –– we don’t want to direct the crowd, we just want to have a good time.”

“The only think I think when I go to the Park is I don’t want to go to jail.”

“It’s interesting to watch the spades on Haight, when there is a scene, & the cops come, the spades hang back, observe….”

“The cops are OK too.”

“Who doesn’t like a nice scene, everybody does. The kind of people who have fights with the police, they’d have them with somebody else. How hip are these people?”

“Originally this was a small and productive creative thing. Then all these people in some lame bag or another are attracted by this energy. “

“You see the same faces on Haight now as on Market. Maybe they’re super-lame, but if they fall into a good scene their head gets straightened around, they get a lot of approval or acceptance or whatever and pretty soon get into some more responsible bag.”

The boys advised me to see Bob Nelson’s movies at Cedar Alley, also Psychedelic Sexualis, by an SF filmaker. “It’s OK, they just smear this stuff on it to sell it.”

The Dead are going to NY and Europe this summer, or this year. “No point in lying around doing what we did last year.” Garcia: “I was born in San Fransisco. It’s the only place I have that’s like a home.”

They are uniformly appalled by a song one of them heard on radio which turns out to be a “Wear Flowers When You Come to San Fransisco.” “Love vibrations sweeping the nation.”

“You can take pictures, but Pigpen’s not here. Pigpen is easily our most photogenic member.”

“You know even his mother calls him that now. His mother calls up and asks for Pigpen.”

“He smiles a lot –– he’s really a pixie.”

“We could start a Pigpen comic book, something along the lines of Gasoline Alley.”

“Or a Pigpen and Laird comic strip –– called ‘Bickering In the Basement.’”

“Our managers are perfect examples of hippies that are making good –– they’re sort of part time students at San Fransisco State. They just decided to manage us. They didn’t know anything about managing, of course, nothing at all, but they got into it tooth and nail, learned what games are played, super–great.”

The Dead are a 7-man partnership. “It’s an adventure we’re on.”

“What’s happening with our own scene, where we live and all that, there’s this huge influx of people, we haven’t had too much time to get by ourselves.”

“We’re the embodiment of nothing but the Grateful Dead.” “We’re each on our own trip.”

Of the San Fransisco groups as a whole: “It’s just like a family. Most of the guys in the different groups know each other, we were all playing in rock and roll groups around, so there’s no competition.”

The boys are all very engaging and very unpretentious. When once one of them said something a little deeper than usual, he prefaced it with –– “I’m not talking in some Marshall McLuhan way, but….”

In interviews, HavinMotion insisted he didn’t want to get into DC politics. This was borne out in his catalog; he worked with Nino Paid and Yung Maaly, KP SKYWALKA and SituationSlim. It didn’t matter who had beef with whom. Motion existed adjacent to, but meaningfully outside the abrasive and lawless free car scene, DC’s more chaotic answer to the sample drill that has unfurled from Booklyn over the past half-decade. He had songs that the ATV squad around the city would crank from their speakers, yet also recognized how to infuse go-go rhythms and the textures of ‘90s neo-soul into his music. On some tapes, like 2024’s Motion, he raps with a controlled freneticism, weaving outlaw tales of selling on the corner and protecting himself from cops and opps alike. Elsewhere, Motion smoothed out his sound: On 2025’s Sorry Ma—a stripped back, 2010s club R&B-tinged LP—he delved into personal strife with love and his family.

No HavinMotion album sounds quite the same as the others. His curious ear for beats and mix of blatant and obscure samples made him the Kanye West of crank. “I like that elevated shit, that old school shit,” he told Big Mouf Media. If KP Skywalka is the loverboy of the DMV, and Nino Paid is the embodiment of grappling with childhood PTSD, Motion is the conflicted youth, hoping to escape the trenches through music, but leering of straying too far.

Motion notched hundreds of thousands of views on songs like “Vibe 2,” “10 Hour Drive,” and “I Just Want U.” He stamped Maryland, repping Bryans Road out in Charles County, but believed in the mission of the DMV scene. “It don’t matter where you from, DMV fye as shit,” he told Big Mouf Media. “When you divide it shit don’t go nowhere.”

On April 23rd, HavinMotion was shot and killed on the 3300 block of Wheeler Road in Southeast DC. He was 22. The DMV has some of the most creative and talented rappers in America, yet like far too many of his peers, Motion saw his life cut short. And like most of those fellow late DMV artists, his introduction to national audiences came when he was in a casket. That’s not how it should be. So let’s honor HavinMotion the best way possible: through his music.

“I’m Sad”

One of the first HavinMotion songs to get a release, featuring a foreboding beat that sounds like you’re entering a particularly cursed dungeon. It’s mostly braggadocio, and Motion is still finding his flow, but the short stanzas flash the potential he’d make good on later.

“B Road Flow”

Another early glimpse of his potential, Motion digs into the crate to pump up Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “Much Better Off,” showcasing improved control in his flow and refined punchlines with the rhythmic bounce to his cadence that he’d continue to utilize.

“10 Hour Drive”

Motion lays out the circumstances of an intense drug run, capturing the exhilaration and fear of the experience. The sped-up “Flashing Lights” channels the paranoia of a late-night drive where one slip up could lead to a violent end.

“Vibe 2”

The quintessential HavinMotion track where he turns Kendrick Lamar’s “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” into a refreshingly longing love song. The 808 beat blasts as he rattles off items he’ll buy her and what she means to him. A hood loverboy classic.

“I Just Want U”

The melodic sample is contorted beyond recognition, adding an eerie, liminal atmosphere to the track. Motion is back in his loverboy bag, but this time the girl doesn’t want expensive things, she’s concerned about his lifestyle. The song sounds like a long phone call of reassurance, broken up by a confessional conversation. The bliss and struggles of modern youth in love, packaged into a catchy song fit for 2 A.M. reflections.

“Night Shift”

An early preview of the sample crank Motion would continue to tweak, “Night Shift” screws a beat that sounds like OutKast’s “Da Art Of Storytellin Pt.1.”

“Already Knowin”

Motion rarely used features (aside from with Swerv, and even then mostly before he blew up), though he was happy to deliver assists like Luka on many DMV rappers’ songs. That’s one element that makes this track special—the other, his tradeoff flow with superstar Nino Paid, proving he could go toe to toe with the best coming out of the area.

“Cheaper To Leave Her”

Blissful piano gives way to foreboding energy. Despite that, this rounds out into something comparatively lighthearted, a tongue-in-cheek realization about relationship ambivalence. In this economy, I couldn’t blame him.

“Shit To Do”

An indie rock sample gets injected with bounce as Motion crafts one of his most poignant and reflective tracks. He opens up about his fear of leaving the trap because the environment is all he knows; about friends he’s lost; about his dependence on drugs to regulate all those feelings. An honest depiction of the tension between wanting to make music work, but fearing the unknown, that made many Motion tracks compelling.

How Life Been

Combining his breathless energy, ravenous appetite for inventive beats, and more detailed honesty over his trying circumstances, How Life Been fleshes out HavinMotion’s vision, giving extra depth and a new dimension to an already rich catalog. His experimentation ramps up: reverbed and screwed Jodeci to express his struggle to change his ways (“Insane”), spacey cloud rap to underscore his grief over losing his friends to the street and the cell (“Free Tall”), menacing synths to soundtrack a stick up (“StoreWalk”), twisting Erykah Badu’s “Don’t Cha Know,” into a reflective rap song (“Kickin’ My Cup”), it culminates into a project that proves he’s a student of the game, finally realizing his vision.

How Life Been feels like a step forward. Motion coalesces all the different sounds he experimented with into a varied, sharp, and eclectic account of the trials and tribulations of being a buzzing rap star with one foot in and out of the streets.

During the interview, Motion is asked why he hasn’t reached the next level of buzz. He doesn’t get mad, calmly explaining the situation. “I take breaks from rap,” he told Big Mouf Media. “I don’t be feeling it sometimes, I just get in some type of mood. I like getting money and rapping don’t get no money. But ever since the end of 2025, I had to get focused. I gotta show them I can really rap, I don’t got to diss, I can make real music.”

He was on the path to taking his career seriously, possibly capitalizing on the potential that captivated listeners during his breakout. Instead, we’re left with a catalog of ghosts of the talent we’ll never see flourish.

I stood eye-to-eye with Tampa duo They Hate Change as they shattered the land speed record for most words a duo has ever rapped without breaking eye contact or breathing while dressed as industrial painters. Vonne Parks and Dre Gainey’s pounding mix of grime, ghetto tech, and footwork colored the air as they blurred down the middle of the sticky, 80-person crowd clustered inside an empty clothing store called How Bazar. It was day one of BIG Culture and Arts Festival, a three-day sensory overloading carnival stacked with more than 100+ musicians and headlined by Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist, and Mavi, all shoehorned into a quarter-mile bubble of Gainesville, Florida.

How Bazar wasn’t the main stage; in terms of capacity, the traffic cone-colored building was probably the fourth biggest venue employed by the festival. But for the last 51 weeks, it doubled as BIG Fest HQ for local organizers Laila Forkoury, Khary Khalfani, and Jahi Khalfani, who deputized a trusted crew of friends, volunteers, and long term collaborators.

The trio came together in 2018 to found Don Dia Records, an umbrella company combining a dedication to art of all disciplines with social work. First came platforming local talent through silent discos, art exhibits, and traditional concerts. Then, the opportunity to lead music recording programs for prisoners and terminal care patients at local hospitals. Soon followed How Bazar, the worker-owned clothing store-slash-bar-slash-venue that would travel across the state for clothing festivals and their own fashion shows. After a meeting in 2022 with Atlanta multi-hyphenate Zack Fox, BIG Fest would open in 2023.

On this opening Friday, as the sun finally tired out of whipping our asses all afternoon, a Fast & The Furious-style car show sparkled under the streetlights next to How Bazar’s entrance. From the far corner of the grounds, rays of baby blue and pink spilled out around the exposed lumber of a half-built tiny home acting as a swampy rave hideout. A market of clothing vendors hawking custom logo tees and vintage NASCAR merch buzzed on, but buzzing louder was the sound of tattoo guns detailing folks by the dozens on a folding table next to a screening of an experimental student film. A fresh graduating class of clowns and fire dancers contorted atop multiple platforms while the flags of Sudan, Palestine, and the Congo flapped freely above the sea of fans.

Everyone who stepped through the security line played a role in this collectivism concert. Miniature microphones and iPhones strapped to tripods flanked the walkways, with interviewers taking the time to do impromptu vertical content with artists and fans alike. The Larry King of FaceTime interviews, EricTheYoungGawd, conducted interviews with Papo2oo4 while Sydni of Chicago’s Real Ones Show popped the biggest question possible to fans; “What type of Florida Man are you?” With every laugh and hot take the invisible walls separating performers, creators, and fans dissolved, opening up pipelines for coalition building under the shade of oak trees and taco trucks.

Inside the Atlantic, a dive bar with the strongest A/C unit known to man holding one of the festival’s many stages, a three-piece band of middle schoolers named Youth Ambulance shook the dead with their unvarnished iteration of punk music. It was endearing to see performers visibly nervous, but still deeply trusting in the power chords to cover for them. While stained glass style paintings depicting Prince and David Bowie smiled down from the walls, the underpriced, overstrong mixed drinks let parents and patrons alike headbang in peace. The rawness of their youth and warm roar from the crowd created the purist set of the weekend.

The tavern’s entrance was hidden in the shadows of the BIG Stage, home to countless photographers flashing press passes in hopes of getting the closest shots of everyone from neo-soul songstresses Purple Essence to the living semi-conductor ZeeloperZ. As dusk set in, Kelly Moonstone, a brash Queens native in the mold of Jill Scott, caught spirits on this stage performing her ex-slamming anthems and self-motivating poetry with a vocal beauty that studio mics just can’t quite capture. Enthralled by her performance, Jersey super producer subjxct5 stood amongst the crowd with middle fingers up, screaming “fuck that n----” like he was the one cheated on.

With most of the performers being niche stars of “if you know you know” fame, cameos like this littered the weekend. Sideshow, fresh off releasing the best rap album of the year, fiddled through clothing racks before faking a phone call to duck the crowd surrounding him. AKAI SOLO, the most brolic rapper this side of an LL Cool J NCIS commercial, cherished his joint around the side of the mainstage, pausing for the occasional fan photo. YL sat deep in the cut of zayALLCAP’s set, raising his cup in the air in approval as the art pop superstar tore the How Bazar stage down. Walking toward the parking garage at the close of night one, ISSLA was passing the time posing for photos as her (or a friend’s, or a fan’s?) blown-out tire was replaced.

The BIG Stage also became a pulpit to both 00Jordie and Mavi as they closed out Friday night. 00Jordie’s DJ set, infused with diasporic Latin flavors, hit its crescendo with Bad Bunny’s “DtMF.” As Benito’s swaying chants echoed over the crowd, dozens of flags, family photos, signs, and bedazzled jackets representing nations affected by American imperialism—Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic—flooded the stage, showcased by Latino artists and fans. One sign reading “We are living proof” waved amongst the powerful totems, a stance against ICE and the attempted erasure of immigration from being a pillar of this nation’s existence.

Mavi’s set, the night’s true finale, was its own tearjerking affair. Channeling the showmanship of James Brown, Mavi writhed in pain, crawling to the crowd like a sinner does a church altar for forgiveness, performing through a strained voice the already will testing “Book Of Job”. He ran the gamut of emotions with “Self Love” and “Triple Nickle” over his 40 minute set before sending us off with a karaoke session of MF DOOM’s “One Beer” surrounded by Pink Siifu, Ovrkast., zayALLCAPS, and AntoneNow, hitting their best rap hands in unison from the side stage.

Saturday started with me getting blinded by The Alchemist’s diamond pinky ring from the back of the line for his cash only vinyl pop up. Allegedly Anysia Kim was on stage performing by the time we got close enough to cop a signed poster, but the Tony Seltzer beats banged so loud who’s to say who was singing under them. It was here I met the crew of Bonita Springs high schoolers behind Bliss Magazine. Harry Torrez, the main man behind Bliss and the fledgling multi-media company Stamey, took pride in being the foremost rookie covering the event. “Our magazine is only digital right now. We’re still working everything out of the PicsArt app on my phone, but we’re here.”

Deeper on the grounds stood an all white cargo hitch lined with paintings. Magnetized to the outer wall was a work by Cletuskills, a skater and painter from St. Petersburg, Florida, whose maximalist work was brighter than kindergarten decorations but nightmarishly haunting. Sucking the soul out of a cig next to him was Naples’ clothing designer DEJ, with a custom oversized white tee with “FUCK ICE” and “FUCK TRUMP” hand drawn on its back. Curated by Omar Bloomfield, the exhibit was centered less on style, personal connections, or “what can just sell” but rather “artists trying to get out a true emotion.” Even something as simple as a painting of the Avengers, displayed battered, bruised, and dragging cigs of their own, was a play on exhaustion. For us consumers, being forced to see these mutants on the big screen every summer turned once appointment viewing into forced labor to keep up with coworkers. For the multiverse heroes themselves, the aura of fatigue was attached to being trotted out in their own worlds as defenders for a thankless society.

Come Saturday Night, Earl Sweatshirt, zooted to the heavens, cranked out “Vin Skully,” “Charli 2na,” “ Exhaust,” and “E. Coli,” with stoic confidence as the closer of the late night showings. By Sunday the BIG Stage would be gone as networking and smaller performances from Redveil and Little Giver finalized the weekend odyssey. In many ways, Earl was never out of sight from the moment the gates opened on Friday until their closure on Sunday. He was the spirit animal of this entire weekend. Across his many arcs as fearless wunderkid, hermetic vicenarian, to now beaming road dog and father, Earl intentionally controlled his destiny, creating with whoever could ride his wavelength, spotlighting anyone close to the frequency. Now, BIG Fest was becoming the same for the Don Dia and How Bazar crews, pulling hordes of folks from across the country yearning to do right with what resources were in their grasp.

It was in the back of the art trailer that the busiest woman in Florida, Laila herself, appeared and spoke about why the events from Don Dia’s early days were able to blossom into a festival teeming with life. “The shows were so crazy because they were hip-hop and R&B, and Gainesville didn’t have that. Our first show we got 125 people, then 200, then 400. It started building all this community. People flocked to them because they filled this gap that we felt. We saw the need and the necessity of it.”

Naturally, the deeply conservative community members who govern every aspect of Floridian life have pushed back. Before exponential growth became the norm, venues rejected their rap shows, city officials complicated simple events, and smear campaigns disparaged Laila, a Palestinian-Lebanese organizer, as having “expressed support for a terrorist and spread hatred of Israel.” Fueled to find a way through the mudslinging, this weekend-long, eight-stage block party in which her crew was a central player has laid a living blueprint for navigating an art world littered with road blocks.

Americans compartmentalize. But seeing so many flags alongside handfuls of keffiyehs each day, while artists created space in their sets to call out nations and oppressed people struggling for sovereignty in the face US interference, made it impossible to ignore our own complicity—or to see collective expression and appreciation of art as a force equipped to unite us in service of something better.

In the middle of our talk Laila received a call, leading her to jog out of the unit toward the main stage. There’s really no free time to look back when the stakes are this high.

Comprised of five of San Francisco and Oakland’s most original rappers—ALLBLACK, 22nd Jim, Lil Bean, Lil Yee and Zaybang—1Umbrella exemplify the unique creative spirit and independent hustle of their region. Their genuine friendship and individual rap skills translate into an authentic sound forged from the region’s hyphy history, but unified in a goal to change the Bay’s narrative.

On this episode, 1Umbrella break down how the Bay has changed since they grew up, how hyphy was dangerous, why almost everyone took their sauce from the Bay, and how the tech industry took over but gang culture never did. They also talk about their love for LA artists like Drakeo the Ruler, get into conspiracy theories about aliens and underwater civilizations, and explain why there is never a need for gimmicks.

Most three-letter acronyms are bad—a bunch of non-governmental organizations or corporate gibberish. “GPB” is none of that. It stands for Gangsters, Players, Ballers, all good things. And Los Kemet hits the trifecta with a rubberized flow and hydroplane command. Raised in Jackson, MS and now based in Austin, TX, Kemet’s latest is a slab cruise through interstate molasses.

Produced by Gutty and Max He, “GBP” evokes reserve southernplayalistic energies. Guitars chuck along with mystic bounce, while a saxophone bubbles below twice-fried 808s. Kemet is rocking a Jerry Rice Raiders jersey, lest we ever forget that the greatest wideout of all time claims Crawford and went to Mississippi Valley State.

“It’s like a power or a force that gets a hold of you. I was raised in Mississippi. All I knew was Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi. Anybody from Mississippi will tell you, you don’t think about New York, Chicago, L.A.,” Kemet told POW’s Will Schube in 2023. “GBP” stays truer still, paddling through delta waters, not backward or forward but sideways.

Isaiah Rashad, “DO I LOOK HIGH?” f/ Julian Sintonia

It’s Been Awful is anything but. The pride of Chattanooga, TN spends much of his new album in a warm and controlled shadowbox before hurling himself out of the ring. It’s soulful and sordid, earnest without righteousness. “Do I Look High?” is the music’s superego. It rhymes “innocence” with “simple then” and puts Superman on load management.

Produced by Keem the Cipher, this psychedelic third single gets a suitably fluid visual. Rashad, stoned and sunburnt, is spliced with hopeless hitchhikers and radio static. Furtive stares go unrecognized, left to trickle away in dry heat. It’s a series of meaningful nothings. Julian Sintonia’s hook is slight but stretches far beyond its blocking. And Rashad sounds either wholly depleted or cosmically reborn—knowing him, it’s a bit of both.

Bby Kell, “2019”

We’re staying in the south with Atlanta’s Bby Kell, who assumes the princess crown and then covers it in slime. She’s playing with house money because “U Don’t Have to Call” is an epochal heater. But Kell makes it her own through wild-card delivery. She pivots and lurches off of a Fulton County twang—it’s unique and hilarious. “Hustle my blood and my bones” spills out like jamboree. “‘Cause they don’t know what I got on my feet!” croaks out through sobs.

The summit is Kell’s tribute to No. 44. “I feel like Obama / I ain’t get to smoke with Obama / Fuck, I miss Obama / fuck, I love Obama / If I meet him, I’ma call my momma / shit, I mean my grandma, she the one that like Obama.” Somewhere, Arne Duncan frantically books a flight to Hartsfield–Jackson.

Kenny Mason, “Bounce Wit Me”

Fellow ATLien Kenny Mason returns with “Bounce Wit Me,” cold-fusion crunk and neon candy blended together. Mason is a rock star in a bottle rocket; FearDorian and COUPE equip him with an adjustable exoskeleton. The layered vocals create something like stadium echoes, and they set the song up for its rarely-earned beat switch. As our protagonist shows here, it’s so hard to not look cool while rapping in front of a bulldozer.

Mason outs himself as an elite ball-knower—he takes the safety off and checks for Budda Baker (84th for the position on Pro Football Focus). The “bounce wit me, bounce wit me” refrain works for a walkout, but it also sweeps into the solitary outro. The devil has cue cards. The plug is a pendulum. And the black bar is bending to the poles under heavy spirits. A full-length BULLDAWG is set for May 12 release, with features including Dominic Fike and Paris, Texas.

Student 1 & Demon Marcus, “kevinkevinkevin”

In which two men buy a bicycle, then decode the forbidden truths—the readership’s standard Thursday night. Say “Kevin” three times and, well, this happens.

Student 1, an Ethiopian-Eritrean rapper from Minnesota, glows and grooves across gossamer funk. Producer Demon Marcus is here to spot him, and he hits some inspired pointer dances in front of strobe lights. These two are having a lot of fun, to the point that it spills into picture-in-picture boxes. We end on a stray “I’m gonna get you bro” and a neighing explosion. “kevinkevinkevin” is music for tandem dissociation. Student 1’s truant is due on June 19.

T.F. & DJ Muggs, “Dusted Edition — Cha Cha Chicken”

Muggs’s dusting is neither chopped nor screwed but that elusive third thing. It’s more beige than purple, and more paranoid than sedating. Snares really snap. Background fuzz becomes strangely menacing. The prolific DJ did three “Dusted Editions” last year—his Soul Assassins 3, the Champagne for Breakfast triptych with Madlib and Meyhem Lauren and Rome Streetz’s Death & The Magician. This latest retouch chamberizes T.F, South Central ascendant. Slow spirals are undercut by revving motorbikes.

Dusted poultry? What is this, the Cheez-It crumb-crust turkey leg from the Citrus Bowl? No, it’s never that. T.F. instead unlocks the padlock at the trap spot to flood L.A. with “Cha Cha Chicken.” Curry salmon and Cuban medallions are thrown in for good measure. Muggs’ piano roll was already sinister on the original version, but this update is a new kind of unsettling.

“I just want to make music with my motherfuckin’ middle finger up,” Muggs told me for this site back in 2018. “When you reach in and go outside of yourself looking for something, you get lost. You lose your path.” The crate-digger still knows where he’s supposed to be—the beautiful abyss.

Fifteen years ago this spring, I was in a small ad-hoc gallery in Montréal staring at a looping video. It was about 20 seconds long, and for that 20 seconds, the camera pulls steadily back. Initially, there is just a silver shimmer; as we zoom out, we see a grid of discrete silver figures, once square but now contorted, presumably around whatever, or whomever, is underneath. At first it recalls marathoners wrapped in the emergency blankets volunteers hand out at finish lines. But as the the sheer quantity of blotches multiples—and as the movement under them registers less and less—it suggests, instead, victims of some sort of mass casualty event. Finally, there’s a reference point for scale: a standard Bic lighter. These are pieces of aluminum foil. The title of the video, written in marker on a sheet of paper tacked to the wall, was “SUPERMAN.”

Ten years after I saw that video, I reviewed The House Is Burning, Isaiah Rashad’s sly and smart third record, for Pitchfork. That review begins: “It seems as if Isaiah Rashad only makes comeback albums.” Now, another half-decade on, Rashad has returned with IT’S BEEN AWFUL, his most ambitious, accomplished, and idiosyncratic music to date. Again, the subtext is a long absence and personal gauntlet endured to get here. But AWFUL is not a reprise of Burning’s rehab arc—it scrambles tidy recovery narratives, for Rashad and writ large. Over beats that are mostly midtempo but shot through with a sense of urgent, perpetual motion, he offers a self-portrait in asides. The challenge of confronting life on its own terms is rendered as a puzzle that keeps morphing just as you think you’ve locked some pieces into place. Though dotted with songs that could stand alone as radio hits, IT’S BEEN AWFUL is more accurately understood as a collage of counterarguments to conventional thinking about sobriety and personal growth.

This is true in part because AWFUL is not about sobriety per se. Substance abuse is presented as both horribly destructive and a necessary escape—not one after the other, but with each reading bursting through at inconvenient moments. Wedding rings and debit cards are given the same semiotic weight; on “M.O.M.,” even the act of pouring out confessions on record is presented as a vice, which of course it can be. Things feel good and then they corrode your brain, stomach, soul—and it all happens at once.

From the time he released Cilvia Demo in 2014, Rashad has been a phenomenally accomplished rapper, able to channel the bend and syncopation of his largely Southern influences, and to map those qualities onto the more staccato cadences that are in vogue today. On AWFUL, his voice is almost always tweaked just a few degrees in one direction or another: sometimes doubled, at others isolated, occasionally with a little distortion kicked like sand across its surface. What results are rewardingly varied textural shifts in a record that has a uniform rhythmic pulse. Rashad has also honed an instinct for delivering personal revelations in unlikely vehicles.

On “ACT NORMAL,” a brief family history of sex addiction comes in a pleasant, bouncing flow that could be the template for any anodyne-but-professional Rap Caviar fodder. What makes this feel radically honest is that the point is not the juxtaposition of form and content—it’s that any venture can become suffused with the dread and neuroses we accumulate throughout our lives. Earlier, on “DO I LOOK HIGH?,” the sort of lightly extraterrestrial vocal manipulation that Kendrick often uses as a virtuosic flourish is used instead as a way to depersonalize the vocal and therefore invite confession, the way Future uses Autotune. Imagine stumbling across a group of adolescent aliens, crashlanded and “watching too much porn to even know what we like.” “Superpowers,” he raps, “don’t overuse ‘em all.”

Over the past decade and a half, much has been made of rappers breaking the genre’s long-held taboo of never copping to addiction. Until the 2010s, mainstream rap had seen infrequent songs about alcoholism, but narcotic use on wax was relegated mostly to weed, and weed was something to brag about—quality, quantity, price in either direction. What happened next was twofold: Rap began to intermingle with EDM, and rappers started rapping unabashedly about doing molly in a way that was once relegated to the Bay Area. Elsewhere, a separate wave of MCs began to detail extreme, sometimes debilitating dependence on prescription cough syrups.

The latter is relevant to IT’S BEEN AWFUL, which is sometimes painful to listen to for the way Rashad details the toll substance use has taken on his health and his relationships. While a handful of different narcotics are alluded to, the one that hangs over the LP is meth. This is novel for rap, both because it runs counter to the image of downers as the default drugs for self-medication—rumination reads as escape from trauma in a way that ecstasy does not—and because many people with largely straight social circles don’t know people who do meth on a regular basis. In 2022, two sex tapes of Rashad with other men were leaked; on AWFUL, he raps tenderly about both men and women, but the pronouns of his love interests are likely less foreign to straight listeners than this particular substance. The truly masterful thing Rashad does with meth on these records is to communicate, without ever explicating the point, how a desire to feel more than human is in fact the thing that can destroy you.

Rashad offers a dizzying number of melodic ideas; little tangents within verses could be load-bearing choruses on other commercial albums. The most confounding—and most fun—aspect of the record is that rather than seeming polished, this array of hooks disorients the listener. At its core, IT’S BEEN AWFUL is a fugue: of love, of self-destruction, of regeneration. It’s an argument against absolutes, a celebration of the grey.

This conversation must begin with Nots.

Arguably the greatest art-punk band the 2010s had produced, the trio-to-quartet-to-trio formed at a pivotal time in the Memphis punk scene’s existence—where its denizens had largely moved away from the messy, BBQ slathered, blown-out rhythm & blues it had been renowned for since the heyday of the Oblivians, the Reatards, and the mantle Goner Records had taken from venerated garage punk label Estrus.

Formed in 2011 by Natalie Hoffmann (guitar, synthesizer, vocals) Charlotte Watson (bass), and Laurel Ferndon (drums)—and with a few lineup changes with Watson moving to drums, Meredith Lones on bass, and Alexandra Eastburn on synth for a few years—Nots released a handful of killer seven-inches and three LPs prior to their 2019 hiatus. Their full-length catalog was bookended by two great efforts (debut We Are Nots and final album 3), and in the middle was nothing short of one of the decade’s best punk records (2015’s Cosmetic).

Glints of several musical styles can be detected in Nots’ singular brand of punk music; bits of hardcore and “post-punk” more than a dollop of no wave, a profound psychedelic aftertaste, all mixed with stained glass shards in an industrial strength blender.

Hoffmann had never played in just one band for too long since she moved to Memphis for art school; when Nots first formed, she was also in the killer garage punk band Ex-Cult, and by Nots’ quiet indefinite hiatus in 2019, she had started a synth-driven project called Optic Sink. Chem trails from 3 lingered in the sound of Hoffmann’s new outfit, but it all felt intentional.

While playing synthesizer for Nots, Hoffmann landed on a handful of songs that revealed themselves to be worthy of their own project. She contacted Ben Bauermeister—formerly of Memphis garage poppers Magic Kids—who played percussion on drum machines for this new group. Together, they recorded Optic Sink’s self-titled debut and released it in early October 2020—about six months into pandemic lockdown, an unexpectedly ideal timeframe for such a thrillingly claustrophobic LP.

More or less since time immemorial it has been a staple of underground music, but particularly in the last two or three years, “lo-fi” has become a trendy aesthetic signifier again. Since Optic Sink predates this recent spate of Tascam reels and cassette recordings, it’s safe to assume its borderline uncomfortable intimacy was conjured out of necessity—but seems no less a very considered production strategy. The low-end-heavy ambient hum of opener “Drone” makes way for the nervous “Personified,” which feels a lot like a room bottoming out and everything in it collapsing into a smaller, darker room.

Or, given its intense pace, falling through every floor of a skyscraper from the penthouse.

With its blend of analog warmth and the icy distance of electronic instruments, a retrofuturist pallor defines the eight tracks on Optic Sink. Its influences host a range of nonmusical references—a hallmark of artistic depth for any musician, in my humble opinion—from films like Metropolis and Alien to art movements like Dada and Bauhaus. Toss in a little Simone de Beauvoir and Maya Deren (more on the latter in a bit) and you have the cocktail from which Hoffmann sips here.

Dystopianism defined the era in which Goner Records released Optic Sink’s debut. Between the aforementioned pandemic lockdown and the widespread panic from the unpredictability of the current POTUS’s first term in the Oval Office, there was, quite literally, nowhere to run. Conceptually, lyrically, and vocally, Hoffmann rose to the occasion on Optic Sink.

Leadoff track and first single “Personified” frenetically digs deep into Trump 1.0 unease and the warped-timeline feeling of living in (or through) it. Hate generating hate, people getting crushed by the heavy wheels of white capitalist ideology. Hoffman sings intentionally robotically, but not without feeling. Sequencer-generated melodies merge with largely improvised accompaniment—before Optic Sink, Hoffmann considered herself solely a guitarist—while Bauermeister plays drum pads as if “Personified” is punk rock in Blade Runner wardrobe, which is exactly what the song is.

Back to my point about Hoffmann singing with emotion: “Exhibitionist” deftly adds a layer of bawdiness to her voice, alluding to sexuality many layers underneath her satirical commentary on how social media is a pharmaceutical narcissism booster when she sings, “You can watch yourself / Under glass.” Hoffmann’s vocals still retain a mechanized feel, making the song feel almost like a disconcerting AI sexbot come-on. A brilliant and rather disturbing track in this light.

On the next song, “Vanishing Point,” Hoffmann nearly slurs, “Gathering dust / Gathering dust / Gathering speed, speed and lust.”

“Girls in Grey” is a sparse rebuke of “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss” culture. The skittish arpeggios on “Soft Quiet Life” undercuts its lyrical theme—the “tradwife,” years before that lifestyle had a name. “Dumb Luck” is a woozy, minimal, psych-electronic-disco jam perfect for any darkwave dance night you may attend.

The album’s closer, “Set Roulette,” explores the feeling of stagnation—there’s a hopeful tone which augments the frustration of being trapped in a harmful or hurtful cycle. In Nots, Hoffmann had been showcasing her skills as a formidable songwriter; on Optic Sink, she proved she could shift the context of her music and her artistry would still land immaculately.

If Optic Sink was the bedroom synth-punk masterpiece reverberating across the underground during the heaviest days of COVID lockdown, 2023’s Glass Blocks found the band expanding their sound once people finally started making their way outside.

This panoramic version of Optic Sink can be credited in part to its addition of Keith Cooper (late of Memphis garage punks the Sheiks) and its production, courtesy of Caufield Schnug, founding member and guitarist of Sweeping Promises. Optic Sink made the trek to record for 10 days at Sweeping Promises’ home studio in Lawrence, Kansas—a trip dozens of bands have made at this point. The addition of Cooper is notable because it freed Hoffmann from having to program sequencers and gave her synths a little extra room to breathe.

Hoffmann also plays guitar on Glass Blocks, but it’s more for color than foundation.

Even though the band recruited a new member in Cooper, Glass Blocks oscillates in a much more open, starker space than Optic Sink. If you’ve been into punk and punk-leaning music for as long as I have, you’re already aware that bands can become a little self-conscious about expanding their sound as their catalog grows. There are no such hangups with Optic Sink, who, with the help of Schnug, simultaneously become more minimal and more musical on their second full-length.

Opener “Modelesque” kicks Glass Blocks off by showcasing the band’s cleverness in arrangement with its synth and guitar parts slinking in and out of each other’s path over the song’s solid keyboard bassline. Hoffmann’s lyrics evoke a sense of glamour over the darkwave instrumental, setting a scene of shimmering club lights cascading over bodies in its packed vicinity. “Live Illusion” follows the glam with a punk-indebted punk; scratchy guitars and blue skies somehow being a cue for impending anxiety. Gone is the robotic diction of Optic Sink’s debut—Hoffman sings and intones lyrics in equal measure; the latter lightly gesturing the commanding and ominous presence she cast over Nots’ discography.

LiLiPUT’s 1983 single “A Silver Key Can Open an Iron Lock, Somewhere” was originally recorded as a gentle, dub-influenced track, a lilting addendum to the band formerly known as Kleenex’s storied run as punk pioneers. Optic Sink reimagines the song as a midnight romp through the streets. It’s somewhat faithful to the original, in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the musical identity of Optic Sink themselves; doing exactly what a cover should do.

Optic Sink render their musical world as a city much bigger than Memphis, where it’s always 2:15am. “Summertime Rain” is more like a balmy, weird night on the strip, grinding teeth chattering about the afters, than some idyllic, romantic moment in a California sunshower. Armed with laser synths and a funky bassline that used to be a defining characteristic of the now-meaningless term “post-punk,” the album’s title track foretold Optic Sink’s ability to capture such danceworthy excellence that they could credibly back Memphis rap stalwart Tommy Wright III at Gonerfest 22 last year.

Glass Blocks is not necessarily an improvement on Optic Sink. I rarely feel that bands this talented should improve. “Getting better” is an artistic cliché, more associated with an outdated notion that the line on the graph should always be on the incline. I think expansion, or blazing new trails, are much more worthy goals, which Optic Sink achieve tremendously on their second album.

The most immediate realization I came to when listening to Lucky Number for the first time late last year was how immense it sounded. Optic Sink didn’t expand their lineup for their third album, and the LP was once again recorded and produced by Caufield Schnug in Kansas. But compared to the stark and spacious Glass Blocks—and surely its thrillingly boxed-in predecessor—Lucky Number feels ready-made for the big room or the outdoor stage.

Rife with layered, sophisticated, and frankly irresistible tunes, Lucky Number has earned frequent comparisons to New Order since its Halloween 2025 release. (Shout out to Cooper, who gets his Peter Hook on by using as much of the fretboard as possible.) Leadoff track “Laughing Backwards” is empirical proof that Optic Sink knows how to kick off an album, with its urgent synth line and Hoffmann barking in all caps, “ARE YOU LIVING / ARE YOU LIVING / IN A FANTASY.”

Its song structure is stacked as immaculately as a perfect game of Tetris, and the rhythm section constructs a beat that keeps the insistent pace of a marching band on a Friday night. As a matter of fact, some intrepid marching band should just learn this song. It would bang at a high school football game.

Part of the structural perfection of all the songs on Lucky Number could be attributed in part to Greg Cartwright—onetime member of the mighty Oblivians and the great Compulsive Gamblers, as well as on a very short list of the greatest songwriters to ever come from Memphis; right alongside B.B. King and Alex Chilton.

Cartwright was originally scheduled to drive with the band to Lawrence and produce Lucky Number, but a family health situation prevented him from doing so. But he did sit in on a couple Optic Sink rehearsals—”He sat at the drum kit” and listened, Hoffmann told Tim Abbondelo for see/saw—and offered suggestions on how to tweak the song ever so slightly. In whatever way Cartwright’s touch helped those songs, the songs themselves make up an exceptional collection for Optic Sink to have their label (the great Feel It Records) press up on vinyl. The seven-minute banger “Construction” is exactly what I think of when those New Order namedrops come up in conversation.

The album ends Side 1 with single “Don’t Look Down,” where, like many of the songs on Lucky Number, examine Hoffmann’s interiors (whether fictionalized or very personal) on the brink of existential collapse. There is a little bit of that in a lot of us these days. Musically, it’s foreboding but not quite ominous—more like seductive danger. “Golden Hour” is so climactic—in its pacing, rhythm, and Hoffmann’s guitar and vocals—I’ve found myself forgetting that it’s not the album’s final track.

The last two songs, which make up the final eleven minutes of the LP, find Optic Sink branching out into new territory as a band once again. “Kinetic World” is alluring psychedelic new wave—if new wave was actually cool and not an industry push to make a commercial alternative to punk music. This is the alternate universe electronic new wave, the shit that would be played at gallery parties with very good drugs. Closer “Luxury of Honesty” is a dismissal of, well, any number of insanely powerful men leading the destruction of our society as we know it, over a shuffling, trippy backdrop. An extended jam on the back end sends the album off into the twilight of dawn.

Maya Deren was an artist of many disciplines, but she was best known and most celebrated as a filmmaker. She brought an enormously bold and experimental approach to her work, utilizing artistic tools such as jump cuts and multiple exposures back when French New Wave was a twinkle in Truffaut’s eye after getting expelled from his umpteenth school. Hoffmann has long cited Deren as an influence on her own multidisciplinary practice—in addition to being a musician, she is a phenomenal graphic designer—and Optic Sink’s first show after Cooper joined the band in 2022 was the first of many where they live scored Deren films.

The band’s musical interpretation of Deren’s debut film, “Meshes of the Afternoon,” is a drone piece set to the backdrop of a dark scene unfolding in the California sun. A key, a knife, and a flower figure prominently into the film’s rolling imagery. Without giving too much away—because you definitely should watch the film with Optic Sink’s score providing its soundtrack—the music perfectly encapsulates the beauty, violence, and death the film spends most of its 14 minutes building toward.

After a spate of improvisational live scores and the great VHS recording of a Memphis performance (provided by the great Zach Mitchell at Machine Duplication Recordings), Relentless Metamorphosis: An Original Score for the Films of Maya Deren was recently released on DIG! Records. The onetime Guggenheim fellow and Cannes winner having her work reinterpreted, musically, by what is essentially a punk band would be the sort of cultural subversion I’m certain she’d be proud of.

The album opens with “The Very Eye of Night,” building around a minimalist, almost metronomic beat and a synth loop cycling for over 15 minutes, with Hoffmann, Bauermeister, and Cooper improvising movements and motifs which by its completion feel astral, but almost like a spaceship that has run out of gas. “A Study for Choreography” is short and appropriately danceable and not-period-specific in a pretty thrilling way; its ‘80s exercise video aesthetic turns the original material on its head.

Divorced from its context, Relentless Metamorphosis serves as an outlier in Optic Sink’s growing catalog of jams. But the LP also captures the band at their most adventurous, emphasizing each member’s ability to listen to and improvise with the others, as well as interact with these film experiments that were light years ahead of their time. By the moment “Meditation on Violence” calmly enters and exits the aural space—along with its chaotic middle section—these compositions feel transformative, like a meditation only these musicians could have guided you through.

Optic Sink as a band seem emboldened by the ways in which they can challenge themselves and the existing status quo. Their proper songs contain sharp critiques of modern society at large, and then they turn around and interpret the work of a dynamic artist who did the same thing in very different ways. Memphis has inherently been known as a musical city for over a century at this point, and whenever the music from there is threatened to be pigeonholed, a new sound emerges; whether it’s Issac Hayes, Three 6 Mafia, or a darkwave band led by an art school graduate, determined to render the ill-at-ease feeling in the air of modern America into something that turns our encroaching dread into sweat on the dancefloor. Or tears on the arthouse theater seats.

If the first few months of 2026 are any indication, this is going to be an exceptionally strong year for jazz, improvised, and related music. As soon as the calendar flipped over, the music came as if in a flood, with almost too many excellent albums to acknowledge, let alone write about. This is particularly needed now, when so many people are in so many difficult and untenable situations. Given music’s power to act as a salve and to offer a source of inspiration and political resistance, the timing is a blessing. Here are five new albums, one reissue, and three historical live albums that bring a welcome infusion of positive energy.

First, the new records:

Tomeka Reid, dance! skip! hop! [Out of Your Head Records]

When the press review copies for cellist Tomeka Reid’s latest hit my email late last year, I had a feeling it would be big. As word spread, it blew up the jazz corner of my Bluesky feed. dance! skip! hop! is the perfect name for an album that xudes playfulness and adventure. Along with bassist Jason Roebke, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, Reid takes listeners on a five-song journey that goes by so fast it needs to be experienced again and again. On the infectious title track, Reid’s light touch and higher range of the cello along with Fujiwara’s crisp and restrained drumming gives the music a loftiness and airiness. The musicians never press, and even the composed sections feel loose and spontaneous. “Oo Long!” shows off Reid’s snarling side as she plays heavy strummed chords that bite. Halvorson picks up on Reid’s mood and rips some fuzzed out distortion.

“Under the Aurora Sky” features Reid’s beautiful work with the bow even as the track ends in a distressed wash of reverb and delay laden sound. By the time the wistful “Silver Spring Fig Tree” closes the album, the listener has traveled from a childlike sense of wonderment during the album’s opening moments to an adult world of more serious demands. Accessible and moving, dance! skip! hop! pulls off a mix of joy and seriousness, ease and rigor. Hopefully its early 2026 release date won’t mean it gets forgotten about when everybody creates their year-end lists. But I’m sure people have already marked it down as a strong contender for their favorite album.

Recommended If You Like: jumping in mud puddles; being ok with letting some things just be

Aaron Shaw, And So It Is [Leaving Records]

Although I recognized Los Angeles-based saxophonist and flutist Aaron Shaw’s name on a few tracks from various Carlos Niño and Friends albums, I was largely unaware of his other music. Based on his long resume, which includes work with Anderson .Paak, Herbie Hancock, Mary J. Blige, and others, I am late to the party. And So It Is could not be a better belated introduction. That this album exists at all is no small feat, as Shaw was diagnosed with bone marrow failure in 2023, which not only damaged his health, but threatened his musical career. After experimenting with equipment and rebuilding his approach to playing music, Shaw linked up with Niño to construct a deeply affecting album. “Soul Journey” opens with overdubbed saxophones and reeds atop a lush background of harp, piano, and cello. His playing here and throughout most of the album takes on a contemplative and meditative mood. On “Heart of a Phoenix,” his plaintive alto saxophone floats over shakers, harp glissandos, deep drums, and wordless vocals before meeting an overdubbed flute countermelody.

At other times Shaw channels alto players like Gary Bartz and others who came in the wake of John Coltrane. Overdubbed flutes are a strong presence—a choir of them close “Heart of a Phoenix”; pillows of them match Niño’s percussion on “The Path to Clarity”; and in a moment reminiscent of André 3000 and Shabaka, Shaw uses them to set up and build the buoyant polyphony of “Jubilant Voyage.” Chick Corea’s composition “Windows to the Soul” is a lovely, slightly lilting waltz duo between Shaw and pianist Sam Reid. Even in moments of complexity, when the overdubbed saxophones, flutes, and range of strings, percussion, and effects create a large ensemble, there is still delicacy and a poignancy to the music. It has strength and immediacy—an intimacy demonstrating Shaw’s willingness, or even need, to share his journey. Music as a healing force, for musician and listener both. Tracing its lineage from Alice Coltrane and Lonnie “Liston” Smith to Shaw’s contemporaries Kamasi Washington and Shabaka, And So It Is is spiritual jazz for the twenty-first century. Exquisite.

RIYL: getting the perfect surprise gift when you really need it

Asher Gamedze, A Semblance: Of Return [Northern Spy]

South African drummer Asher Gamedze follows his previous two albums, Constitution and Turbulence and Pulse, by further exploring the political and philosophical power of art. Recorded in Cape Town, A Semblance: Of Return features a South African quintet that laces its music with contemporary grooves that one might hear on a Makaya McCraven album or indeed, on any stylistically related record made across the Black diaspora. While there are solo voices, particularly trumpeter Keegan Steenkamp and Nobuhle Ashanti on keys and synths, A Semblance (Of Return) is often focused on the group sound: conversational and call and response between keys, trumpet, and Zwide Ndwandwe on bass while Gamedze and percussionist Ru Slayen interweave percussion breaks and fills.

Several cuts feature vocals, all of which focus on the Pan-African freedom struggle. On the opening track “Stranger No Death,” the band echoes African American spirituals, singing “I’m on my way, to the mountain. And there’s no stopping me.” The funky “Of the Fire” calls on listeners to “assemble the forces of victory,” noting that “the oppressed are on the right side of history.” The backbeat heavy “State (Of the Internation)” is a rapped/spoken word critique of capitalism, state violence, and other agents of death and exploitation. Near the end a background voice intones “I just want to see a revolution.” As previous artists like Fela Kuti demonstrated, channeling political critique into music with a collective spirit and shared purpose opens the potential for propelling those on the right side of history to victory.

RIYL: Pan-African liberation; celebrating community through music; imagining a better future

Walter Smith III, Twio Vol. 2 [Blue Note]

I’m a sucker for tenor sax/bass/drums trios. Without a piano or other chorded instrument there’s nowhere for the saxophonist to hide and plenty of space for them to show off their invention. The format also highlights the interaction between the bassist and drummer, which can get obscured in a thicker ensemble sound. In a concise, yet meaty set of jazz standards and lesser-played compositions by Thelonious Monk, Carla Bley, and Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III’s trio of bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Kendrick Scott offer a choice example of the format’s possibilities. Tenor titan Branford Marsalis joins Smith for friendly sparring sessions on two tunes. If Branford’s presence wasn’t enough of a boost, bass legend Ron Carter replaces Sanders on five tracks, including a poignant duet with Smith on Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan.” Full of tasty swinging, spirited romps, and straight to the point playing, Twio Vol. 2 is easily one of Smith’s best albums as a leader to date.

RIYL: a pot of coffee—black, no sugar, no cream, very hot

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Anne Muldrow, Electrical Field of Love [Pi Recordings]

Harriet Tubman (guitarist Brandon Ross, electric bassist Melvin Gibbs, drummer JT Lewis) is a power trio that has been transcending the genre boundaries imposed on Black music since 1998. Their list of collaborators ranges from avatars of the avant-garde such as trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith to turntablist DJ Logic. On their first album for Pi Recordings—which specializes in its own method of boundary blurring—they team up with vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow. Think Funkadelic meets mid-70s-era Miles Davis meets June Tyson singing with the Sun Ra Arkestra, all refracted through a twenty-first-century prism. Like Miles’s electric era, this album was constructed from selecting and editing the best parts from a single long improvised recording session. The mostly slow grooves are as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon, and Gibbs and Lewis hold them down with the gravitational power of a black hole. Ross is less about shredding than he is about letting the sound of his guitar fill and color the air. Muldrow picks her spots, singing of dreams, the body, and of the metaphysical. The result is a cosmic funk/rock/jazz/dub album that pulses with life, creative energy, and the expansiveness of great Black music, ancient to the future.

RIYL: clearing space out so you can space out

Also of note:
John Irabagon, Focus Out
Irreversible Entanglements, Future Present Past
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, Deface the Currency
Carlos Niño and Friends, Bubble Bath for Giants
Adam O’Farrill, Elephant
Shabaka, Of the Earth

And now the reissues, the latter three of which are Record Store Day releases. A disclaimer: I have a lot of conflicted feelings about Record Store Day, and I haven’t lined up to celebrate it in years. However, each year finds an ever-increasing number of archival and historical jazz releases. While we may have already reached peak Bill Evans Trio saturation, there are a number of other releases this year that should pique jazz fans’ interest regardless of personal taste. For those who don’t want to wait in line and aren’t particular about getting the LP version, many of them are also available on CD and streaming.

Julius Hemphill, Dogon A.D. [CD edition: New World Records; LP edition: Superior Viaduct]

Saxophonist Julis Hemphill’s 1972 avant-garde masterpiece has long been out of print, so its reappearance on both CD and LP versions is worth celebrating. Along with trumpeter Baikida Carroll, cellist Abdul Wadud, and percussionist Phillip Wilson, Hemphill recorded one of the touchstone albums of the era that influenced generations of players. While vinyl freaks will gravitate to the LP edition, I’d suggest going with the CD version, which comes with an extra twenty-minute track absent on the LP along with a meaty booklet containing an essay and photographs.

RIYL: not having to spend a stupid amount of money on an OG copy if you don’t have to

Joe Henderon, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase [Resonance Records]

For a few nights at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago in February of 1978, tenor saxophone titan Joe Henderson along with pianist Joanne Brackeen, bassist Steve Brodby, and drummer Danny Spencer achieved levitation. Hard to believe, but the proof is in this 3LP/2CD set. From the epic opener, John Coltrane’s composition “Mr. P.C.,” through standards such as “Good Morning Heartache” and Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” to Henderson’s own “Isotope,” which closes the collection, the Henderson quartet performs an acrobatic highwire act. With agility, inventiveness, and an uncanny hookup between all the musicians, the band pushes the limits of what should be achievable. Lightning tempos, an endless churning out of complicated melodies, marathon stamina, and players stretching out on long solos to see how far they can go before the wheels come off—it is impressive that the quartet could sustain these feats night after night. There are certain moments when a musical performance reaches an ecstatic level where the only possible responses are disbelief, laughter, shouting, or some combination of all three. On several occasions it was all I could do but make every cliched response possible. It’s easy to forget about or ignore somewhat stylistically down-the-middle hard bop jazz in the 1970s, as acoustic jazz fell out of favor, but Consonance is a reminder that the Blue Note heroes of the 50s and 60s and their disciples could still—and would continue to—tear live venues to pieces.

RIYL: suspending disbelief; making your best stinky “oh” face

Roy Hargrove, Bern [Time Traveler Recordings]

My first real jazz concert was seeing trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s quintet about the same time it played this live set in Bern, Switzerland, in 2000. I saw him several more times in the next few years, so this recording scratches a nostalgic itch for me. Hargrove, who sadly passed away at the age of 49 in 2018, emerged out of the shadow of Wynton Marsalis and other neo-conservatives to create his own brand of hard bop, fusion, and Latin jazz. His versatility led to collaborations with Erykah Badu and appearing on D’Angelo’s Voodoo. In Bern, Hargrove and alto saxophonist Sherman Irby, pianist Larry Willis, bassist Gerald Cannon, and drummer Willie Jones III threw down a scintillating set that foregrounded Hargrove’s potency as a trumpeter and the horsepower that a band peaking together can generate. The recording might be twenty-six years old, but contemporary straight-ahead jazz doesn’t get much better than this sizzling performance.

RIYL: feeling like a kid again; the reinvigoration of tradition

Cecil Taylor, Fragments, The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts [Elemental Music]

There are few performers, whether playing solo or with a band, who brought as much intensity and fire to their music as pianist Cecil Taylor. This is especially so with his trio with drummer Andrew Cyrille and alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. On November 3, 1969, the trio met tenor saxophonist and flutist Sam Rivers at the Paris Jazz Festival. The performances have been available to watch on YouTube, but this is their first official release as an audio recording. The quartet’s music is thick, loud, ever-changing, and dense. It can be episodic, with long stretches of all four musicians playing furiously before moving into a section of solo piano or a sidebar into extended duels between Cyrille and Taylor or the saxophonists. As difficult as the music can be, each musician is straight from the jazz tradition. Lyons is if Charlie Parker turned Cubist. Rivers follows Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and other wailing and screaming avant-garde tenor players. Taylor comes from Duke Ellington and ragtime, and Cyrille’s drumming is an extension of the innovations of bebop drummers like Max Roach. The performances are long, and the music can be overwhelming. The listener’s best approach, especially if they are new to Taylor’s music, is to let the entire tapestry of sound wash over them or to focus on the different episodes and sections, as each tells its own story and helps manage the music’s sonic and emotional immensity. These concerts were magisterial. The meek need not apply.

RIYL: the deep end; embracing sensory overload

Last year, I walked into an afternoon screening of News from Home, Chantal Akerman’s avant-garde documentary from 1976, where footage of New York is overlaid with Akerman reading her mother’s letters detailing family life back in Belgium. I heard someone call my name: It was my friend Tosten. Just before the lights dimmed, a nervous theater employee apologized profusely for the fact that this was not, as had apparently been in the fine print of the listing, the original, French-language version of the film subtitled in English, but rather the version for which Akerman had translated her mother’s letters into English. When the film was over, Tosten and I immediately agreed: The film’s most moving effect is the way New York (and Akerman’s imperfect English) sometimes drowns out the voice of her mother. Subtitles—legibility, that is—would have run counter to the whole project.

Tosten and I originally bonded over our shared passion for Blu, especially the less celebrated, more experimental work he released after Below the Heavens reshaped the rap underground while we were in high school. Across dozens of albums, in nearly as many strata of audio fidelity as distinct rapping styles, Blu has pushed the form to, and past, many of its supposed boundaries, burying himself under distortion, prying his verses away from any linear, literary readings. It was around the time of the News from Home screening that the New York Times Magazine began canvassing critics for their package about the 30 best living American songwriters. I sent a ballot that was arranged alphabetically, but it felt right that Blu was at the top.

I recently asked Blu to pick the ten records of his that he believes are most representative of his staggering catalog. What follows are pieces of that conversation, except for that two-minute stretch in the middle where the audio got all fuzzy.

Below the Heavens w/ Exile [2007]

Tell me about rapping for Suge.

My cousin was interning at Death Row. He came and checked me out. I was in the I.E. with my homies out there, and I had just recorded 20 songs in two days. I was playing him the songs like, “Yo, I’m going crazy right now.” He was like, “Dude, you got to meet Suge, man.” I was so on board because they just dropped that XXL cover with Left Eye, Crooked, Kurupt, and Eastwood. And then the article, Suge said he was looking for real lyricists. So I already felt like he needed to hear me.

Who would you say you sounded like then? I remember finding some old, old interview where you said you had a little DMX thing going on in high school.

I sounded like DMX on, like, my first three songs when I was 15. But at this point I was 19. I was listening to a lot of Canibus. I was on my battle rap shit. When I met Suge, I kicked him 50 bars. He said rap and I kicked him 50. Then he was like, “Give me another one.” I kicked him 64. He said, “another one.” And I kicked him a hundred. All just battle rap shit, just barring off. I think I kicked 24 bars of my hundred bars from the Wake Up Show.

Did it feel to you like it was going to happen? A deal with Death Row?

Yeah. Right after I kicked the hundred bars, he said, “OK, come to my office.” I walked into his office. He said, “What are you looking for?” I said, “I want a house and a car.” He was like, “Oh, man, that’s definitely doable.” I thought it was going to go down. I left the office and called my producer at the time, who was working with me and RBX. He hits RBX, RBX hits me up: “Don’t do it. Suge will take all your money. Nobody has had a good experience there.” And I was like, all right, I’m going to take his word for it. And my boy convinced me more so by saying, “Give me a year. I’ll get you signed to Roc-A-Fella.” And then, in that time, I met Exile, and then everything just changed.

So you were kind of straddling both sides: the L.A. underground and the mainstream with Death Row. Stones Throw was talking to you too, right?

Oh, yeah. We pitched Below the Heavens to Stones Throw. They told us—what was their exact words?—they said something like, it’s too commercial.

When you were making most of Below the Heavens, you were in Long Beach, right?

Yeah. I was in Long Beach staying on studio floors, couch hopping, all through Long Beach.

My understanding is that you, in the years leading up to that, were rapping all the time, recording crazy numbers of songs, hosting shows, playing at others, battling. Do you feel like your writing and rapping changed a lot in those sessions with Exile?

Yes. When I met Exile, the songs that I was working on came out on a project called California Soul. That was more so my sound when I was trying to get picked up by Roc-A-Fella. And I had two underground songs on there. I mean, I had had underground content, really like raw rap shit throughout the project, but there were two songs, one called “Feel Good Music” and one called “Soul Sista,” that really resonated with people a lot. Coincidentally, both were produced by my boy Bombay. When I met Exile, I was already in the mind state of like, ‘OK, this is what people are feeling the most.’ So when I got up with Exile and I was like, this dude is Hi-Tek, Pete Rock, Premier, Dilla, all in one. I was amazed. I was amazed. And I was like, dude, I could do the perfect hip hop record with this guy. And that’s what we pretty much set off to do, man.

One influence you’ve cited a lot is Common, and specifically One Day It’ll All Make Sense. When you first got your hands on that record, how did it change how you were approaching things?

Well, One Day was the first Common album I heard. I was just so impressed with the lyricism and the content of the album, the maturity of it. It was some deep songs on that album as well as spitting shit—I’m a spitter first. Man, it really cracked my head open.

I always heard that Exile had submitted the “Show Me the Good Life” beat for Be.

Yes. “Show Me the Good Life” was made intentionally for the Be album. It was a crazy time. That was right when Below the Heavens blew up off of the leak.

That was the middle of ‘06, right?

Summer ‘06. We had a 30-day tour; I’m sleeping in a van. We’re circling the whole States counterclockwise, from Cali to the South, to the East, North, and back west ending in Seattle. When we get to Texas, I find out the album leaked. By the time we got to Florida, and for the rest of the tour, everyone knew the words to every song I was doing. So I was bummed in Texas. But by the time we got to Florida, it was a totally different story. That’s my best album to this day, man. I try to top it. Every time I make an album, I try to top it.

Her Favorite Colo(u)r [2009/2011]

Well, I’m going to make a counterargument in a second. If my memory is correct, a version of Her Favorite Colo(u)r was online in ‘09, but the final version came out in 2011. I assume this happened right before or right after you signed to Warner?

When I was signing to Warner in 2009, the agreement was to make an album called Her Favorite Colo(u)r produced by and ji. It was going to be a three-part album, produced by Ta’Raach, Shafiq Husayn, and Wajeed. That was the idea. But my girlfriend at the time left me, and I was shattered. I did these songs in two weeks, and I needed a title, and it was the perfect title. And so I dropped it on MySpace. I’m in the middle of the deal with Warner. I still hadn’t signed, and they called me immediately: “Did you just drop our record?” I was like, “Well, yes, but it’s not that record.” And to me, I put the art first at that moment, you know what I mean? Before the business. I should have held off and given that record to Warner. That was what our agreement was. But it was something that I had to do for the art.

When you were making Below the Heavens, you were also making The Piece Talks and Johnson&Jonson. But after Heavens did what it did, there must have been pressure to make your next record this big, widescreen biographical thing. Colo(u)r is very much not that.

Yes. And it was intended to be a big, big album, but like I said, the art was calling me in a different direction, man. I had been making beats for two years, and I made that project from my heart for my ex-girlfriend, and put it out like, “This is what her favorite color is.”

So around the same time, I assume you’re making what I would argue is your best album, theGODleebarnes(lp). Was that intended for Warner?

No, I started producing in ‘07 when Below the Heavens dropped. I moved in with my grandparents and I had a computer with Pro Tools on it, and I started just chopping samples straight in Pro Tools, no midi, just with a fucking mouse. And I made hundreds of beats. By 2008, I was sitting on some songs. By ‘09, I had stopped working on it. I just put it to the side. I got signed to Warner. I was ready to do my big stuff, stuff that I was taking more serious; the things I was producing and rapping on myself were more so for me, just getting my chops up on beats, just keeping my chops up with the raps by spitting over my own beats, and I would just drop it on MySpace. Then my hard drive crashed. So all those sessions were lost. And I just put together a mix of all the songs and gave it away in 2010.

I remember it very well, that single .MP3 file. So obviously you had lost the session files and couldn’t further mix or master anything. But you make it that one, 70-minute .MP3, and this is when a lot of people start talking about the sound quality or distortion on the record. Was that intentional?

Yes. I put this filter over it thinking I was going to get my hard drive fixed. I wanted the songs to be out, but if I ever went back and retouched them, I could put it out professionally. And then in 2015, my whole studio got robbed, and I lost the hard drives.

So that was after the fact. But then, by the time you make Jesus, it sounds like you’re experimenting with different sound approaches to the actual recordings, right?

Yes. I got a very expensive mic, and I just threw a sock on that bitch. I held it in my hand. I didn’t have a mic stand or nothing. So I’m rapping straight into the mic, just holding it, and I put out the project unmixed and unmastered.

I mean, it sounds like you’re rapping to a two-track, your voice on the finished beat.

That’s exactly what it was. That was when I got released from Warner—or for lack of a better term, I got released from Warner. First, my A&Rs got fired, then the presidents got fired. Then the whole company was brought out. So when the new ownership was in, I went to the office to figure out what the next steps were with my contract, my album, my project. And when I went to the front desk with the new ownership, they asked me my name. I said “Blu,” and they looked me up. Nothing. They said, “Do you have another name?” “John Barnes.” They looked me up again. They said, “You’re not in the system. We don’t know who you are.” And I went home. I called my A&Rs who signed me, called the former vice president who signed me. And they all told me, “Yeah, we’re fired, man. We’re gone. We advise you to move on.” I didn’t know I was supposed to legally leave them, you know what I mean? I just started releasing shit on my own. Fuck it. I released Jesus online. And like I say at the end of “what if I was,” I think, I say “Egypt 11, bitch!” I shouted it like three times. And the reason why I said that was because of the revolution that was going on in Egypt in 2011, when the president released everybody out of jail. So what I did was release Jesus, release NoYork!, release the Flowers album. By the end of that year, that was me doing my Egypt 11.

I had moved to L.A. around that time, and became friends with Nocando, and started going to Low End Theory all the time. And to me, NoYork! is kind of the definitive encapsulation of the beat scene era in L.A..

Exactly. It was intended to be capture the beat scene because the beat scene was so huge at the time, so flooded with talent. I remember an A&R saying to me, “You don’t want a Kanye beat?” And I was like, “Man, that’s my whole budget.” But I was also thinking, these young guys in L.A. are the best in the game right now. Flying Lotus, Samiyam, Shafiq, Madlib, Daedelus, Dibia$e, Knxwledge.

I have to come clean. I’ve always really preferred the original version of the second Blu and Ex album [give me my flowers while i can smell them, released on Bandcamp in 2011 before being fleshed out and given a proper commercial release the following year as Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them].

It wasn’t really the second Blu and Exile album. Actually, I hit up Exile when I signed to Warner to get some electronic beats from him, and he was like, “Man, I’m not doing my electro style right now, but I got these loops that I chopped, check ‘em out.” And they were fire. I was like, “Oh, these shits are beautiful.” And so I had a bunch of raps that I wrote during Her Favorite Colo(u)r that I didn’t use, so I put them over the Exile beats and made a little project in two weeks. Then I put the project to the side. I remember Warner was like, “What you been working on?” And I played them a couple new songs. They were like, “You working on anything else?” And I was like, I did these Exile songs and I sent it to ‘em, and they went nuts over it. They were like, “Yo, can we put this out?” But I was trying to do NoYork! In retrospect, I guess I should have put it out with them, but I was pretty focused.

By that point, you sounded so much different than you had on Below the Heavens; flowers and NoYork! and Jesus are all different from one another, but none are like Heavens. What were you doing in 2009, ‘10, ‘11 to push yourself into new modes.

Man. Well, between those three projects is different eras. In 2009, after Her Favorite Colo(u)r, like I said, I just had a bunch of verses laying around. I got signed to Warner, and I had a lot of pressure on my back to make a great record. And that writing resulted in NoYork! And to be honest, NoYork! was not done at all. Those are all demos. Those were the songs we were going to choose from. And my intention was to go in and reproduce the songs with the producers. NoYork! is really me rhyming over two tracks again. But Warner didn’t cut the budget, and then they ended up releasing me, unquote. And so Jesus, I wrote Jesus in two days. I was on tour in the South, and the homie introduced me to trap music, the driver. And that’s my first time hearing just trap shit. When I say, on the song “Jesus,” I saw the future, told the homie, keep winning,” I was talking about the rapper Future.

Good to Be Home w/ Bombay [2014]

So there’s this tumultuous time, getting on and off Warner, putting all this music out. Then Good to Be Home comes out in ‘14. Had you mostly been working on the Bombay songs in that time, or were you working on other stuff you set aside?

I started working on the Bombay around 2012. I hadn’t talked to him in a long time. Years. In high school, I got a beat CD, and I played it for my producer. He said, this is DJ Quik. He said, “You found DJ Quik’s beat CD.” We didn’t know who it was. So I asked the guy who I got it from in the I.E. I said, “Yo, who is this?” He was like, “Let me find out.” He finds some guy, the guy says, “Yeah, those are my beats”. We pay him for a beat. We ask for more. He ghosts. Months later, the guy I know from the I.E. is like, “No, I found the real producer.” So we hit up this new dude looking to buy three beats. He sells them, 75 bucks a beat. And we ask to hear more. And my producer still swears it DJ Quik, that we’re being scammed for DJ Quik beats. Anyway, we find out the last dude who sold us beats was Bombay’s cousin. One last time, we drove from L.A. all the way to the I.E. to meet another guy to get these beats. And I remember Bombay hopped in the whip, and he played us some. And I’m like, “This is not the dude. They’re fucking us again, bro.” But it was. He was like, “Since my cousin robbed y’all, you can have the beats for free. And I put those on California Soul, and that was the last time I talked to Bomb. And then years later, he hits me up again. Dude sends me 300 beats. Now I’m not new to 300 beats. In 2009, I got 500 Madlib beats, which it took me a full year to go through. But with Bombay, I remember the beat for “Child Support” came on and the vision just clicked to me for the album.

Good to Be Home doesn’t sound like Quik.

He had changed his whole sound. It took me a minute to really accept the new sound. But then, when I accepted it, I was like, damn, he’s fucking in here killing shit. All the Madlib shit, he’s fucking killing these loops when before he was playing with synthesizers, keyboards, all his beats had been keyboard beats, and now they’re all samples, no keyboard whatsoever. But it finally clicks. I started working on an album called Red Barnes, and that’s what the album was called up until the end. But I called it Good to Be Home, because I was back home from touring for a while. I had been just at the crib most of the year, which was rare.

Bad Neighbor w/ Madlib & MED [2015]

So Madlib had sent you 500 beats, you say. For Bad Neighbor, did you just circle back and say, I finally found a few I really want to fuck with now?

When I dropped Jesus back in 2011, Mad hit me up. We actually started working on Bad Neighbor back then. After Jesus, MED hits me up. He’s like, “Yo, I heard the Madlib joint you dropped. What’s up with a Madlib-Blu-MED album?” MED is the first person that took me to Europe, in 2005. He’s my OG at this point. One of the songs that I sent him was “Burgundy Whip.”

Was that originally on Jesus and got taken off or something? I remember it being available, briefly, before Bad Neighbor.

No, what happened was, as we were working, we were supposed to be on the Medicine Show, the 13 albums that released in 2010 and 2011. And I remember the 11th tape came out and I was like, “Bro, I don’t think our tape is coming out.” And sure enough, Madlib dropped the last tape. So I dropped a mixtape called UCLA. Man, that shit was online for three hours. Stones Throw shut that shit down. But sure enough, it worked: Two days later, Madlib hit us up. He was like, “Let’s do this record.”

Was the DOOM feature simply a matter of Madlib hitting him up, or did he sift through Madvillain 2 sessions?

That was a favor actually dating back to MED being on Madvillain. MED hit him up for the favor, and he was down. He said something about that on the intro of the song: “Go visit my cousin right quick.”

The Blueprint w/ Shafiq Husayn [2018]

This brings me to what I think is maybe the most interesting record in your catalog, The Blueprint. A lot of the songs here feel to me like the product of freestyling sessions, no?

Fast writing, very fast writing, which is as close to freestyle as you are going to get. Just putting the thought straight down, no stopping.

There’s the song on there where you’re basically just listing Crip sets.

Yep. Come on, man. You can’t escape it out here, man. Especially growing up. It’s way more chill now, but that’s just a part of my DNA growing up here. I was living with my dad on Western and Slauson. It was everywhere.

But your name’s not some ironic rejection of that, right? I read that it was literally about “feeling blue” but that never sounded right to me.

No, no. I got the name in high school. My dad got a house in San Pedro, and I was new to the school, and he bought me a bunch of clothes for back to school. And I got two weeks’ worth of sky blue outfits. I had two shoes. I was a big North Carolina fan at the time, big on the Penny Hardaway Magic. So for me, it was just some basketball shit. And sure enough, I would play basketball every day, and they didn’t know my name, so they would say, “Blue, pass the ball!” And the name stuck. I remember I got my first manager, I was like 17, and he was like, “Yo, what’s your rap name? And I was like, Spitting Image.

That is such a teenage rap name.

Come on. I was trying to be like Common Sense. You got to have the two names, you know what I mean? But he was like, “What’s up with Blue? Everybody calls you Blue.” Then he told me I should go by John Barnes, my real name. And I was like, “Nah, fuck it. I’m Blu.”

What were the Blueprint sessions like? When you say it was written very fast—was that something you and Shafiq decided to do? Did you want the album to have that energy?

Well, I got out of jail and I was dead broke, and I owed Shafiq money. I did four months in jail and then two months in a mental hospital to get out of jail early. I asked Shafiq, “Can I do a mixtape over this beat tape you just put out on Bandcamp? And all the proceeds you could keep?” I didn’t have any money for studio time, so I bought a $20 mic, not knowing this is going to be the shittiest-sounding mic ever recorded on. I plugged this motherfucker up. I could not get it to sound good for nothing, bro. I was like, fuck. And I’m spending my last on a fucking $20 mic. So I do thismix tape, make a couple Gs in a fucking day, two days, you know what I mean? And Nature Sounds hits us up the second day it was out, like, “Yo, what’s up with this shit? Let’s put it out. And I was like, “Y’all crazy. You want me to rerecord?” They was like, “Nah. Just like it is.”

I think it makes sense. It feels like you just stepped in from outside and said it.

Yeah, I did it in probably four days. I remember before I wrote it, I was reading a lot. I was reading books when I was locked up, and I got out and I read more. I read that I was reading the Tookie Williams book, the Raymond Washington book. [Ed.- Both Williams and Washington are widely credited as co-founding the Crips in L.A.; Washington was murdered in 1979 and Williams was executed by the state in 2005.] I actually came up with the idea for the album in jail, the song titles and everything. But I wanted it to be a big record. I got out and was just so broke. So when Shafi dropped these beats online, I heard these amazing tracks—he’s one of my favorite producers ever—and I’m going nuts over these beats. I owe him money. It all just came together like that. I was just listening to it the other day; I feel like it’s some of my best material.

You said you came up with parts of it, the titles and concepts and so on, in jail. Did you find you were able to write while you were inside? It goes both ways. Some people find it really is conducive to writing a lot, and some people really can’t write inside.

No. I remember when I got locked up during Good to Be Home, right at the end of that process, I wrote three songs in jail that made that record. I think there were the best songs on the record, especially “The Return” and “The 50z.” And I wrote those with just the beat, the memory of the beat in my head. If you listen to “The Return,” it’s a nine-bar loop. I still was memorizing that the sequence of the song and everything. But when I got locked up the time after that, I couldn’t write whatsoever for those six months. I didn’t write anything It was terrible in there.

Miles w/ Exile [2020]

So it’s funny to go from being in that place for The Blueprint, with the $20 mic, and then the next one you want to talk about is Miles, which sounds as clean as anything you’ve ever put out. How did it feel to be working with Exile again?

Well, at first, see we got signed by Fat Beats in 2015, and I started working on Exile electronic trap record. He gave me a bunch of—or actually, I collected a bunch of—his trap beats, a bunch of his electronic bounce beats that I’ve been trying to get since NoYork! And so I started doing this project to that, and in the midst of that, I got robbed, went to jail, all of that. I got out and I was still trying to push this trap album, and Exile wasn’t feeling the energy. He was like, “Man, just the energy around everything that’s been going on the last couple of years, I don’t think this is what our fans need. We haven’t released that record in a while. I think this isn’t the smartest move.

What had made you want to pursue the trap record? Was it the same wave of inspiration you caught while making Jesus?

No, I just love Exile’s electronic sound. I love those beats.So I had great ideas for songs with him, and I was really trying to push the agenda. But I was in a bad headspace, so the songs are really street and a little trashy, you know what I mean? A lot of shit-talking on there about the police and shit I was going through. And Ex took a year to convince me not to do that record. We sat down and he was like, “Dude, Fat Beats is hitting me up. We haven’t done anything for a year.” And I was stubborn. I wasn’t replying to him, hoping he would just put out the trap record.

In hindsight, do you feel that he made the right decision?

Definitely. Mainly because when we started working on [Miles], it gave me a lot more purpose, again, for writing. I felt like I hadn’t written a good rap since I got out of jail.

Why do you think that was? What was keeping you from getting back there?

Losing everything I worked on, my life for ten years. The only thing I had invested in was my studio, all my equipment, all my records for ten years of being an artist—and then all of a sudden all that was gone. And it was tough for me to accept: I was not making beats, not listening to records, not collecting any records, you know what I’m saying? Not digging anymore. I would try—a dope rap will come out every now and then, but it wasn’t like me fleshing out anything. I was shook after coming out of jail, feeling like I was wrongly put in jail. So it was a bunch of shit. And Exile was like, “Write about this, what you’re really going through. Don’t try to feed into the negativity of what’s surrounding you. Write about your true feelings/” And I remember I did a song called “Miles Davis” over a DJ Premier beat that I was trying to buy at the time. And Premier didn’t sell me the beat. It was like five Gs or something; I didn’t have the money. And so I said, “Ex, you know what? If you could flip this Miles Davis song and you agree to do an album called Miles with me, I’ll be down to do a new Blu and Exile record.

And that was the title.

It wasn’t so much about Miles Davis as the day that I got robbed, I found out I was having a son, who later passed prematurely, and his name was Miles.

I’m so sorry.

Man. Thank you, man. So for me, it was like, if you really want me to rap about this shit that I’m going through… And the miles is the miles it took to get here. I go on and on; it’s a double album.The songs are longer, more drawn out. I’m saying so much on that album, man. And what’s crazy is I didn’t want to do it, man. And when Exile put the battery in my back to write with purpose again, man, he gave me purpose again. He was like, “People come to us for a feeling, like a healing.”

Afrika w/ Nottz [2023]

You’ve made a lot of albums with a single producer. What do you like about that?

I like the consistency of albums as albums. I like when I’m listening to an album, and it takes me on a journey where I don’t want to change the next song. I fall into the next song and every one flows into each other and you enjoy the whole thing. I think what makes that possible is consistency. And when you’re working with one producer, you tend to get a collected sound, a consistent sound. That’s been my thing since listening to [Common’s] Like Water for Chocolate. I know that’s not one producer.

No, but it’s one collective of people.

Right. It has that consistency. Now, I’ve said this quite a few times, but Nottz is the fucking greatest producer. He’s producing hits, smash singles for all types of people, all types of artists every day. Nottz is like a machine, bro. I met him in 2012, I believe, maybe 2011, at a VA show, with Chad Hugo, and he says, “Let’s go to my studio after.’ And I was like, “Hell yeah.” I’d been a Nottz fan since ‘98 with [Busta Rhymes’s Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front]. We go, and I remember he played me a beat that was so amazing. I heard Nas, I heard Jay-Z. I could’’t believe he played it for me; producers don’t play you their best shit unless you got bread, unless you’re a big artist. So I’m like, “Why are you playing this?” He says, “Do you want it?” And I sat on this beat for years. And then Coalmine Records hit me up to do an EP with Nottz after they had done a Sean Price and Small Professor EP. And we did Gods in the Spirit, Titans in the Flesh, two EPs, that we then combined for an LP. And we went on an incredible run after that.

Where did the idea for Afrika come from?

A lot of material for Miles had come from reading. I just started reading more at the time, and I was reading a book on Africa and was very inspired, and I was like, “I want to do an album on my roots.” I felt like I had more to say about the subject.

I like that it’s packed so densely with guests, so you have this very open-ended topic filtered through so many different lenses.

Yes, exactly, man. It’s like everybody has something to say about Africa.

Los Angeles w/ Evidence [2024]

The writing style on Los Angeles is not exactly the same as The Blueprint, but you still get into some of those almost-freestyled cadences. It’s very—not experimental per se, that’s not the right word—but you’re trying a lot of different approaches, different pockets on there.

Los Angeles, to me, was a return to being comfortable writing again, feeling good about where my pen was. In 2015, when I got robbed, I went through a mental breakdown and I flipped out on Alchemist and Evidence and other people online and in life. I was diagnosed with psychosis, which is when you have a traumatic episode stemming from a dramatic event. I’d been robbed; I’d lost a child; my brother just got double life. My grandmother just passed. I was going through so much shit, and I was losing my nugget. I lost my nugget completely. And the robbery topped everything off. You know what I mean? And when I lost my son, and that was it. That was just the breaking point. And I just started tripping out on everybody, man. And it wasn’t me at all. I’ve never been that way. You know what I mean? I’ve never been that type of person. I’ve never had an event happen like that to me. I really was lost, bro. And I did six months and kind of found my head again. And then it just took years of healing. Finding my pen again, building friendships again after tripping out on so many people. Building relationships with family members again. And I finally got back after Miles. Miles was released in 2020. I had my son in 2022, and I was on fire. I did 12 albums in a year’s time. Evidence hit me up, and I was a little overwhelmed. Evidence has had my back since I flipped out on him, and he still had my back. Evidence is one of the first established artists to ever reach out to me. He’s the first from the coast to reach out to me, show me respect, put me in the studio, you know what I mean? Since my debut. And so he’s been a good friend forever. And so when I tripped out, I’m so blessed that he knew that wasn’t me.

Yeah, that’s wonderful.

That they still stuck with me and waited out, waited it out for me. They let me go through that shit and was still there for me after I went through it, you know what I mean? And he was like, “Yo, man, I’ve been producing for artists. What’s up? Let’s cook something.” And I felt my pen was on fire. It was just perfect timing. Evidence is the king of the L.A. underground to me. Since ‘98. He’s just so prolific, bro. And he puts albums together better than anybody. So it was an honor, and I wanted to make it special. And to me it was, man, it’s one of my favorite albums.

Is there a song on there that stands out as an example of you feeling comfortable as a writer again?

Oh, I love “The Land.” I love the second verse. I love the song “Los Angeles”—the scratches, the beat. That defines the Evidence beat to me. [Co-founder, along with Evidence, of Dilated Peoples, DJ] Babu is one of my favorite DJs. You know what I mean? Even though I got Exile on it, it was still the same feel to me. It was what I was trying to capture. I wrote the album in two weeks, maybe one, and we cut it in a month, man. It was crazy. We were on fire.

So you’ve cited a lot of these albums as being written very quickly. When you’re in the thick of writing an album, what’s the process like? Is it really regimented, waking up at a certain time and getting to it?

After years of doing all these albums, I realize I get hit with waves of inspiration. When Evidence hit me, it took me three months [to start writing]. I sat on the beats for three months. I would put ‘em on periodically during an Uber ride and just listen to ‘em, come up with concepts. And when the whole album, it’s in my mind, then I could put it down.

God Takes Care of Babies & Fools w/ Myka 9 & Mono En Stereo [2025]

Now, if we’re talking about other kings of the L.A. underground, we’re talking about Myka 9. The guys who really took me under their wing when I moved here had come up under those Fellow guys. So to me, they were always like gods.

And they are, bro. Myka, he wrote a song on the first N.W.A album. Bro, on a side note, have you read Myka’s book?

No. I’ve always meant to.

Get it, bro. It’s mainly lyrics, but there are amazing stories in there. You’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, this dude is the dude, man. Insane. The Good Life freestyles, the Wake Up Show freestyles, the Project Blowed freestyles, and the songs in between. Like, man, come on.

What does it feel like then to be in sessions and stuff with those guys?

Well, leading up to that, I did an album with Fatlip. In high school, I was a huge Pharcyde fan. You know what I mean? That’s one of my biggest L.A. influences growing up. They had a huge influence on Below the Heavens, like with the singing hooks, the freedom to be yourself in L.A., you know what I mean? Not be a gangster—that comes from Pharcyde. And so doing an album with Fatlip was crazy. He had two albums. He had two Pharcyde albums out at the time, and one solo album. You know what I mean? And then [these legends] are like, “Yo, we’re down to do an album with you.” And I’m like, what? This is crazy. I had done a project with Fat Jack from Project Blowed, and when we were working on it, he asked me who I wanted on the album. I was like, “Yo, could you hook up a Myka 9 feature?” So Myka comes down to the studio, blazes the verse—the coolest person ever, telling me these crazy stories, right? When I meet him, I’m like, “Dang, this fool is dope.” And then I reached out to him for three more features after that, for different projects. And he was always efficient. He always just come through and really shut shit down. My favorite verse on the Out of the Blue album Shafiq and I did is the last verse on the album, which is Myka’s. I hit him up. I said, “Yo, Myka, would you be down to do an album?” We had a rapport already building and it just trickled over. Man. It was an amazing experience working on that album. I love working with Myka. We wrote the whole album, texting each other back and forth with our verses.

Texting?

Yeah, I would write my vers; I would write 12 bars, send it to him, and in 15 minutes he’ll have his verse written.We wrote that whole album over the phone really quick.

Time Heals Everything w/ Exile [2026]

You guys took long between Heavens and Miles—when you consider that Flowers was a different process—but now you’re in a quicker cadence again. How does that feel?

There’s a secret to the new formula. I can’t reveal yet. But it’s a reason. It’s the reason behind the madness, there’s a method behind the madness. I love this album. The response has been so overwhelming already. Exile actually named this album; it’s a representation of the returning back to the essence after going through so much in life. You know what I mean? Trying to let you know that time does heal everything. It’s like a breath of fresh air after so much.

You’ve been writing raps for decades now. What do you feel like you’re currently getting better at?

I remember working on Below the Heavens, and it would take me forever to write a song. It would take me so long; it was so much pressure. I would be sitting there trying to craft the verse forever, and now verses just fall out. After years of experience, verses just come to me, and it’s become a lot easier with experience, man, I’ll say that.

Art by DJ Short

In real life, you’re not supposed to look. You can’t be caught doing a double take at their sultry head tilts, prêt-à-porter shoulder leans, and gyroscopic triple axel fit reveals. This isn’t fashion week; there’s no front row set aside for those who want to alternate solemn gazes and reverent nods of approval. This is the VIP Section of Coachella, hallowed ground for the hollow. And these al fresco photo shoots and calculated reel creations are both an influencer rite of passage and form of financial restitution. Remember Econ 101: There is no such thing as a free all access wristband.

If gawking is what you want, you have options. In fact, you are highly encouraged to drop your favorite acronym in the comments. But don’t be gauche. These passionate declarations of sartorial approval and remonstrance are reserved for the fans judging at home. In the flesh, you must keep the fun going, as prescribed by the sign on the Google Gemini Photo booth. And why not savor the aesthetic bliss of this collagen Versailles—where everyone can be a spray-tanned Sun King?

Consider the cosmic blessings that allowed you to be on the polo field, versus those condemned to life in the digital bleachers. Pour out a little bit of Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila for those who didn’t make it. Inhale the Sol de Janeiro perfume mist. Remember, you cannot petition the Lord (or even Lord Disick) for prayer. That power belongs to Justin Bieber and Justin Bieber alone.

Coachella is no stranger to obsessive fandom. Recent stan armada invasions have included the Blinks, the Harries, Los Conejos, and the Frank Oceanographers. Normally, this intensity of devotion has been relegated to the GA masses outside the beeping VIP pylons. But the fully grown Beliebers have overrun the entire festival with the swiftness and fervor of peptided Mongol hordes. Even Julian Casablancas of the Strokes thanks the crowd for fulfilling the band’s “lifelong dream of opening for JUSTIN BIEBER” (Casablancas pronounces his name with the implicit heart-eye emoji).

Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G nominally headlined this year’s Coachella, which was easily the best since the pandemic. Some of the most innovative artists of the last half-century delivered brilliant sets, including Young Thug, David Byrne, Jack White, Iggy Pop, Clipse, Isaiah Rashad, and Trent Reznor. As always, America’s premier music festival elicited cameos from past and probable future headliners: Olivia Rodrigo, Lisa from Blackpink, Peso Pluma, Billie Eilish, SZA, Madonna, Snoop Dogg, Will Ferrell. But you didn’t need to see the thousands of car windows in the parking lot crayoned with “Bieberchella”—alongside the date of the messiah’s birth—to know that this year’s iteration was defined by the Elvis Presley of a generation barely sentient for the pre-iPhone world. If Elvis needed a swag coach.

The line for swag is endless. Across the field, at all hours, at least 100 people queue at the 10,000-square-foot, Bieber-branded Skylrk Oasis for the opportunity to buy $140 “It’s Not Clocking To You” hoodies, t-shirts advertising Bieber’s latest album, Swag, and “Future Mrs. Bieber” baby tees designed by Hailey Bieber herself (wink wink). Like the 2Pac hologram would have wanted, you can purchase your own “Bieberveli” merch or cop a “Sizzler” silicon iPhone case, equipped with a joint-shaped “integrated multi-use holder.” According to reports, Bieber’s Skylrk brand grossed over $15 million over both weekends in Coachella, shattering the previous record for an artist-owned brand on festival grounds by nearly nine times.

In the week leading up to the festival, TikTok and IG were a conflagration of psychic horror. Demand for “Bieberchella” became too obscene. After dangling free passes in exchange for content, brands and influencer agencies abruptly revoked them. Dozens of Airbnbs, confirmed and paid for, were cancelled. Would-be revelers were forced to slum it in seedy motels along Highway 111. In America, there is always someone richer, or at least dumber, and owners of modest four-bedroom desert abodes with a pool were now getting $50,000 or upwards for four-night stays.

You’re laughing, but you didn’t glimpse the tears of the quasi-influential and abandoned. You weren’t with them at the stylist being tousled, primped, lightened, and flat-ironed. You weren’t shooting injectables with them at the dermatologist’s office. You could never withstand the pain of taking a hammer to your cheekbones. Remember the saddest eight-word short story ever written: Infinity trifold makeup mirrors packed, never used.

But as Victor Frankl wrote, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’” For approximately 200,000 attendees at Coachella, their raison d’etre was the 32-year-old ex-Lil Twist accomplice behind mission statements like Believe, Purpose, Swag, and its sequel, Swag Harder.

It’s the wrong side of midnight on the first Saturday of the festival. For the last 50 minutes, Bieber has crooned songs from the Swags, solo in an oversized pink hoodie and Adam Sandler pantaloons. He performed an acoustic portion—the type of all-grown-up artiste gesture that gets you booked with a symphony orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Think Jon B making a Frank Ocean album. Or if Jack Johnson got really into early ‘10s Chris Brown. But now, it’s time to log on.

Sitting down at a laptop, Bieber cracks his knuckles and tells the audience that he’s going to “take us on a journey,” which entails a YouTube time machine back to his breakthrough single “Baby” and the ‘07 clip that got him discovered in the first place: a talent show cover of Ne-Yo’s heart-shattering “So Sick.” He was 13 and finished in third place. Within three years, Bieber would be the most famous teenager since Britney Spears.

In 2013, Bieber’s former manager Scooter Braun claimed that the then-teenager was “the only person in humanity who’s grown up the way he has—with smartphones and cameras on him 24/7.” He is one of the first native mutations of full-time surveillance. A commercial product of the age where the camera phone, social media, and the notion of performativity has thoroughly demolished our previous understanding of what it means to be a human. And now, Bieber offers a post-verbal chronicle of his roots via URL surfing and nostalgia for the time before internet memes became a form of mechanized warfare.

At Coachella, most people surrounding me are filming the 100-foot-tall projection of Justin Bieber glued to a laptop, watching his pre-pubescent self be taped for a singing competition. Within minutes, they will post videos of themselves watching screens that show Justin Bieber watching himself. Of course, millions are simultaneously watching it on the livestream. Whatever you want to make of it, Andy Warhol was right.

These days, if you leverage your 15 minutes properly, you can be famous enough to sell Fashion Nova for a lifetime. The idea of the household name is obsolete.

Network TV is dead, and cable is endangered. Outside of Timothee Chalamet and a few Euphoria stars, very few can name any legitimate movie stars under 40. NBA Youngboy is arguably the most popular rapper under 30, but New York Substackers are writing essays about how astonishing it is that no one downtown knows his name (unless they have a Pitchfork byline).

Earlier Saturday, on the same stage, Addison Rae had triangulated Oops…I Did It Again Britney and Lana Del Rey to perform the most compelling pop set of the festival. She has 88 million TikTok followers. By any quantitative measure, she is absurdly popular. Yet in terms of real-world impact, her ceiling is probably limited to a massive, ever-expanding cult. Your average normie probably couldn’t pick her apart from Madison Beer (I don’t know who Madison Beer is). “Diet Pepsi” may have 677 million streams on Spotify, but no million-dollar Pepsi commercials are airing at the Super Bowl.

By contrast, Justin Bieber is a religion. This is partially a quirk of timing. Bieber rocketed to fame right before the monoculture finally shattered, at the start of an all-too-brief cultural renaissance. The first half of the last decade now feels like a final heave of collective hope. The most severe aftershocks of the 2008 recession had largely ceased. Your parents hadn’t discovered Facebook. Obama was inviting rappers to the White House and Lin-Manuel Miranda was just an aspiring librettist trying to emerge from the garbage can where Immortal Technique had tossed him. AI didn’t portend a looming economic upheaval; he was still hooping in Turkey. The combination of low interest rates and a venture capital boom ensured that the millennial lifestyle was being subsidized by low-cost transportation, food delivery, and free Vice parties sponsored by PBR. Chromeo was everywhere.

In 2010, the future 45^th and 47^th President of the United States was still hosting The Ultimate Merger, an Apprentice spinoff in which he attempted to help Omarosa find love in a hopeless place (Las Vegas). Al B. Sure was eliminated in the sixth episode. At the end of the show’s run, Omarosa winds up with no one, a portent of the future to come. And that same year, Justin Bieber, a cherubic, mop-topped Canadian, was introduced to the world as the unblemished protege of Usher and Ludacris. What could go wrong?

It’s not like there weren’t warning signs. In that second year of Obama’s presidency, the Based God already cautioned us that how the Age of Information was ruining the human race (“everything is now on the internet…are we dumbing down for technology and the cost of living?”) To Bieber’s credit, he was obviously listening—at least since Lil B had rhymed “Bieber Fever” with “know I got the heater.” And on the first Swag, Bieber finally paid off his creative debt by bringing Mr. Look Like Jesus to preach unity on “Dadz Love.”

Bieber was by no means the first bubblegum phenomenon. Despite the differences of technological transmission, his initial ascent ostensibly seemed little different from long-forgotten ‘70s adolescent heartthrobs like Leif Garrett, David Cassidy, and Donny Osmond. He was clearly in the lineage of the New Kids on the Block, the Backstreet Boys, and ‘N Sync. Nor could you ignore the patronymic lineage of the first teenage daydreams-turned-Sirius XM channels, Presley and Frank Sinatra, the original young pope of the bobby-soxers.

But Bieber had several unforeseen advantages. For one, he, Usher, and Scooter Braun successfully exploited the vacancy for male teen pop idols that had existed since the boy bands broke up. The Disney-to-Platinum pipeline almost exclusively manufactured female stars like Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Bieber’s ex, Selena Gomez. His lone direct competition was the Jonas Brothers, who were so wholesome that they made Hanson look like Van Halen. By the time that One Direction reintroduced suspenders to American shores, Bieber had already been nominated for multiple Grammys, released one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all-time, and become the first artist in Billboard charts history to have five US number-one albums by the age of 18.

This is when signs of post-child star turmoil began to appear. There was a Calabasas egging brouhaha with his attorney, Lil Za. A Miami Beach arrest for drag racing drunk with an expired license in a yellow Lamborghini. He abandoned his pet monkey, OG Mally, in Germany, mooned his friends at the Mayan pyramids, and was escorted out a Brazilian brothel in bed sheets bearing said brothel’s logo. He puked onstage and pissed in a bucket in a restaurant kitchen while screaming “Fuck Bill Clinton.” There was an alleged assault of his bodyguard and a limo driver. Worst of all, he insisted that people call him “Bizzle.”

In later interviews, Bieber blamed it all on the Xanax. Mostly, it was a sensational career move. In order to be taken seriously as an adult, Bieber needed to shed the baggage that follows when your teenage years are spent being petted like a Shih Tzu by Ellen DeGeneres. And when Skrillex and Diplo remixed a piano ballad that Bieber had co-written with Poo Bear into “Where Are Ü Now,” a generational dubstep-meets-chipmunk soul heater, it suddenly elevated him into the ranks of pop stars that you had to take seriously—lest you be called a rockist, a hater, or the second coming of C. Dolores Tucker.

If you were outside in the mid-2010s, you couldn’t deny “Where Are Ü Now” or its sequel, “Sorry.” I even heard them played a few times at Low End Theory, where having Justin Bieber in your Serato would have been considered a war crime only a few years prior. While the critical fawning was slightly excessive, Bieber earned the respect. He always had a nimble and levitative voice, but he picked the right collaborators and learned how to really sing. He’d never be Usher or Ne-Yo, but he had a lighter touch and more range than Justin Timberlake, whose blue-eyed soul throne he’d snatched.

In a moment fraught with extreme paranoia and conspiratorial thinking, we’ve paradoxically welcomed the extinction of our privacy. Every now and then a few consumer advocates might raise the alarm that Kash Patel is using the Patriot Act to set up fake Kalshi accounts. But mostly, the American people have embraced the panopticon, flipping the cameras back on ourselves in search of maximum profit. We’ve upended old taboos about what personal truths were appropriate to reveal to perfect strangers. Everyone is micro-dosing celebrity. If the concept of shame had long engendered needless repression and self-loathing, it’s more refined sibling, dignity, helped safeguard a functioning society. A noble virtue that allowed for necessary restraint is now an enemy of the algorithm.

The last Great Gold Rush is for the cannibalization of the self. The winners are rewarded with clout dementia, a condition for the neurologists of the next generation to study, where nothing real exists outside of your narrow lens. This is what it’s like to be present for the Coachella Influencer Ironman: I am an NPC in their infinite scroll. The costumes, settings and songs may change with each seasonal fad, but in this matrix, the outside world is merely a prop. A splash of paint on a trompe l’oeil or a Sim without personality traits. And the high priests at the top of this ritual pyramid are the Biebers.

Unlike Anne Frank, I would not call myself a Belieber. For most of the last decade, I was only ambiently aware of the level of sustained worship towards him. Every few years, he’d pop up and do a magazine cover, where he’d obtusely reckon with religious piety, the temptations of fame, and the weight of being The Chosen One. There was the occasional Coachella or Grammy cameo. The close association with the Calabasas illuminati. That cultish Hollywood Pentecostal church. “Despacito,” of course. And someone named The Kid LaRoi? Not for me.

In 2018, Justin Bieber married the former Hailey Baldwin, a union that made them the Jay-Z and Beyoncé for people who have replaced their morning coffee with a caffeine reset sculpting cream mask. When Erewhon, the private equity, gluten-eradicating cold-pressed paradise partnered with Bieber for her own $20 Strawberry Glaze Skin smoothie., it made the supermarket an international status symbol. When they quietly took her name off of it last fall, presumably due to the licensing deal expiring, it made national headlines. Outside of the Jenners, there is probably no more closely followed Gen Z(ish) female figure—at least among those known for reasons unfathomable to your grandparents.

It’s a fairy tale for “Get the (Birkin) Bag” culture. The princess is played by a modestly successful model, former diehard Belieber, and daughter of the third-most popular Baldwin brother. After biding her time and saying her prayers, the biggest pop star of modern times proposed with a half-million dollar diamond ring. At her 2019 wedding reception, Hailey Bieber was serenaded by her husband and childhood crush. You can watch love conquer all on episode eight, “The Wedding: Officially Mr. & Mrs. Bieber,” of the YouTube documentary, Justin Bieber: Seasons.

This, too, was a sensational career move. Off the strength of her looks, charm, and new last name, Bieber launched the skincare brand, Rhode, in 2022. In less than three years, e.l.f. cosmetics purchased it for a billion dollars, leaving her in charge as the Chief Creative Officer and Head of Innovation. While I’m no cosmetology expert, my sources tell me that Rhode’s invention of an iPhone bubble case with built-in lip balm storage was the most ingenious technical innovation since the car cupholder. On both weekends of Coachella, Bieber and her brand hosted “Rhode World,” an “invite-only immersive activation” in honor of their new “hero product,” a pimple patch called Spotwear, which was developed with Justin Bieber across two years of laborious toil.

If you peruse the current Mrs. Bieber’s Instagram (58.1 million followers) or TikTok (a svelte 18.7 million), the content is almost thematically identical to any of the Coachella beauty influencers who have perfected the double-billed platypus pout. She’s posing in bikinis and expensive gowns, eating sushi to Britney Spears songs in face masks, and constantly dropping her skincare routine. The principal difference is that sometimes Billboard’s 8^th Greatest Pop Star of the decade appears, as does their son, Jack Blues Bieber. At Coachella, the 20-month-old is decorated with a “Bieberchella” tattoo, presumably temporary.

If Justin Bieber’s better half depicts a jetset girlboss fantasy life, his transmissions to his 294 million Instagram votaries (the most of any male musician), have often been chaotic. This, too, is to his benefit. For the last 18 months, the content salt mines were aflame with videos asking some variation of “Is Justin Bieber Crashing Out?” At his most visibly erratic, there was a two-week stretch where he posted a different Drakeo song every day, a gesture that caused me to radically reevaluate my understanding of Bieber’s game. Clearly, Justin Bieber knew the truth.

But Aldous Huxley pointed out that “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.” In Bieber’s case, the most acute manifestation was his viral confrontation last June, where he confronted a paparazzo outside of the Malibu SoHo House. Cowled in a blue hoodie, the singer unleashed an impassioned tangent that became an instantly platinum meme. “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business” became one of those cultural hiccups to achieve total ubiquity, alongside other 2025 contenders like “6-7” and the software executives cheating at the Coldplay concert.

Within weeks, Bieber posted himself in a “It’s Not Clocking To You” hoodie, which eventually became the most ubiquitous merch of this year’s Coachella. As the internet does to everything, it made it a joke, which Bieber was in on, all the way down to a Swag skit where Druski reproaches him for over-enunciating “business.” But in its inevitable memetic dilution, it deleted the emotional power of Bieber’s rant from the collective long-term memory.

If you watch the video again, it’s his variation of Britney Spears smashing the paparazzi’s car with an umbrella. Authentic flesh-and-blood fury aimed at the cameraman, who serves as a proxy for all previous tormentors. A Truman Show-style break, where Bieber’s “rage” was really a moment of clarity and attempt to escape the prison in which he was trapped before he was old enough to understand the consequences.

The less amusing part of the video—the seconds that didn’t get clipped and quoted in news aggregations—concern Bieber’s raw humanity:

“I’m a dad! I’m a husband I’m a human fucking being!” Bieber tells the videographer, who keeps filming, aware that each extra second captured could be worth another thousand dollars. “You don’t think I’m a real fucking guy do you? You’re going to take this video out of context. You’re going to say I’m mad…Stop provoking me. I’m a real dad. A real husband and a real man!”

If this was once self-evident, it isn’t any longer. Bieber’s enduring superstardom coincided with the rise of stan culture. It’s not a particularly novel observation that celebrity (and politics) have filled the spiritual void once occupied by religion, family, and the cash rules pursuit of happiness. But the combination of parasocial obsession, the dehumanization of screen life, and our own narcissistic self-branding impulses, make it pretty fucking easy to pretend that these aren’t real people. For Justin Bieber, the world has always been a stage; for the rest of us, it’s an audition.

If Bieber possesses a streak of genius, it’s a byproduct of instinct. Most pop star crackups end in rehab, not the main stage of Coachella. But Bieber capitalized on his duress better than anyone in recent memory. There’s an old baseball pitching term called “pleasantly wild,” which refers to a hard-throwing pitcher who turns his unpredictable control into an asset. The batter can’t quite get comfortable at the plate because he never knows when a 95 mile-per-hour fastball will go screaming at his head. Intentionally or not, Justin Bieber embodied the concept: posting possibly drug-addled videos all over his Instagram, standing up to the paparazzi, singing in his boxers at the Grammys. No one could look away. In the process, he created insatiable anticipation for his Coachella performance, where the overarching question was, “what type of crazy shit will he do?” Bieber reportedly negotiated his own $10 million performance fee. No manager. We should all be so mad.

In the first section of Bieber’s set, the answer to all of the anticipation is nevermind. When I rewatched it later on the Livestream, it was memorable. But after six hours and three double whiskey and sodas, the reality of watching Justin Bieber croon wispy Calabasas slow jams was pretty deadening. The visuals were almost non-existent. No backing band or big name guest boosted the adrenaline. Still, the masses were enraptured. Usually, the audience thins out as the night winds down, but this is the most crowded that I’ve ever seen it.

Bieber is up there all alone, doing yearning R&B ballads like he was Mario, Lloyd, or any other mononymous loverman from the late ‘00s whose Coachella invitation was surely routed to spam. The question of race becomes unavoidable.No one expects Justin Bieber to be Jeremih, but is he a better performer than Lloyd? In the music business, star power and commercial viability will obviously take precedence over sheer talent, but by stripping the songs of all scaffolding, it revealed certain inherent limitations. Maybe this is all a little unfair to Bieber. But then again, there is skit on Swag where Druski tells him, “your skin is white, but your soul is Black.” Jack Harlow was taking notes.

Where we once expected showmanship, we now require spectacle. Bieber’s voice is strong and cuts cleanly through the cold desert air, but if this was about skill and catalogue, we would be watching Usher. The Canadian dream is confident and poised onstage, but little more. Charisma can only take you so far. He compliments the “beautiful people” here at Coachella. But his gift is for understanding the last possible moment to correct course.

Whenever the set threatens to fly off the rails, Bieber snaps back to control. His decision to show the crowd a Funniest Videos highlight reel initially seems like the improvised whim of a delusional superstar. A few years earlier, Frank Ocean, a mercurial sometime-genius, unraveled under these bright and unyielding lights. His influence can be heard all over Swag, through Bieber and his talented creative collaborators, Mk. Gee and Dijon (who joined him onstage later). For a few minutes, it seems like Bieber was about to take the same errant route as his inspiration. Then he opted to comfort the audience with the nostalgia they were tacitly seeking.

Millennial and Gen Z reminiscence is rooted in a shared cultural memory of ephemeral products, shows, games, memes, and clips, mostly consumed online. In the end, the Deez Nuts meme will be our Ozymandias. And Bieber instantiated this desire to return to a misremembered Eden. Here we are, at the most celebrated music festival in the world, where one of the most famous artists of his generation hurtles back to those halcyon days when the Double Rainbow guy could shut down the internet for a whole week. But the Double Rainbow guy died in 2020, possibly due to COVID.

When Bieber watches clips of himself walking into a glass door or falling through the stage, his face revealed an expression of glee and wonder. It’s as though he were watching them all for the first time, slightly unsure if he was actually the same person as the one depicted—as if the memories only became real once they were replayed on the screen. When he presses play on the abbreviated clip of his paparazzi encounter, he gives the masses what they want: a Dadaist recreation of the “It’s Not Clocking To You” confrontation. But this time, they can film it themselves. It’s slightly weird and boring to watch in person, but it is unique content.

None of the oldies were delivered as expected. For about 20 minutes, Bieber queued up snippets of early hits like “Never Say Never” and “Beauty and A Beat.” The old videos played on the giant screen, the Tiger Beat­ teenager beaming innocently in the background. In front of the laptop, the nose-ringed and neck-tatted final form sang karaoke, a second or two behind the beat of the backing track, simultaneously wary and wistful for the before times.

The desire to rewrite the past is the conflict at the center of everything from The Great Gatsby to Back to the Future to much of our political myopia. Just because we have to learn to live with regrets doesn’t remove the impulse to somehow redress them. But there has never been a stronger desire to live in a world where it doesn’t feel like you are being constantly followed or demanding that strangers follow along. A recent survey of 18-to-29-year-olds found that 62 percent believe their life will be worse than previous generations. At theoretically the most carefree time of their lives, nearly half wished that they could live in the past. When stability is elusive and salvation impossible, it’s only natural for such romantic longings to appear. And when daydreaming gets old, there are always the numbing distractions of the present to avoid having to confront the schizophrenic and hollow-tipped future.

Maybe Justin Bieber intuited all of this on a subconscious level. Or maybe he was just high off a Perc 30 and a blunt, and thought that a YouTube wormhole would be a great Coachella bit. No matter the motivation, it was secondary to the strangeness of the moment itself. After the initial shock of the journey back to our digital dawn, everyone around me couldn’t help but stare at Bieber remixing his own memories. They couldn’t wait for the next click, wondering where it would wind up, and what caption to write.

In those moments, Bieber satisfied all his believers still present—from the obsessive fans to the Nepo baby brand founders; the skincare packaging creative designers, the wardrobe curators, the backflipping streamers, the cruelty-free beauty tutorialists, and the TikTok prom princesses with “ADHD + Depression, but make it aesthetic” in their bios. Katy Perry and the former Prime Minister of Canada. All watching with eyes wide open, their stares riveted to screen and stage.

Afterward, Bieber wrapped up his performance with something that more closely resembled a traditional Coachella headlining set. He performed his hit single “Yukon” and brought out Dijon, Mk. Gee, and Afrobeats superstars Wizkid and Tems. Before he did, Bieber found himself hypnotized by one last viral video. Finally, snapping out of the fog, he sarcastically warned the audience about the dangers of “getting pulled into the deep dark web.” Standing up to face the crowd, he reminded them and himself that “we gotta’ keep this show going.” At this point, it might be the only advice left to give.

As shortcuts to profundity go, a Martin Luther King Jr. quote laid over footage of racialized violence is not exactly novel. But the one that that appears at the end of “Blackberry Marmalade”—“So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be”—is a pretty perfect organizing principle for American life in 2026. When King wrote that line while locked up in Birmingham, he was tracing a history of moral resistance and state persecution that snakes back through this country’s founders and all the way to Jesus; today, you and I and everyone we know are on various lists for innumerable and unknowable reasons, Excel tabs stashed away for a rainy day.

A decade ago, Vince Staples released the video for a song called “Señorita,” from his debut album, Summertime ‘06. The superstructure takes a familiar idea—violence in Black and brown neighborhoods is commodified for white amusement—and executes it with chilling effect, a tap on the glass, a smiling family. Today, the lines between participant, prop, and target are a lot blurrier. “Blackberry Marmalade” adopts the visual logic of first-person shooter games—though it looks an awful lot like the compilations of drone strikes that float around, the livestreamed mass shootings we’ve endured, and recalls the way young school shooters sometimes document their preparation. There is no authentic-inauthentic divide. There is just violence.

The guitars on “Blackberry Marmalade” are as Long Beach as Yankees and Indians caps; the Chuck Taylors and neatly tucked-in white tee Vince bleeds through in the video are archetypal in a few different subcultures there. Where his music circa “Señorita” was more bone-on-bone, Vince’s work in the 2020s has tended toward fuzzier beats, rolling flows, blurred edges. The vocals here feel of a piece with that, but those guitars are nicely serrated.

Action Bronson, “Triceratops” f/ Lil Yachty & Paul Wall

Despite being the target of the second-greatest non-song diss in rap history, Action Bronson has proved remarkably durable because he has adventurous taste in production and understands that he’s going to live and die by keeping the imagery lucid and the sports metaphors teetering on the brink of self-parody. His opening verse on “Triceratops” makes express reference to this graceful-ish, bankable-ish aging process (“I’m the old hound dog still humpin’ the leg”); Paul Wall, riding a gentle caterpillar at an amusement park, references the verse that made him famous in a flow buoyant enough to never seem too ruminative; Lil Yachty continues to finally show the charm that executives swore he had in 2015. This is low-stakes by design, superbly competent via sheer volume of practice.

JPEGMAFIA, “babygirl”

​​

When he broke through in 2018 with Veteran, JPEGMAFIA’s gift seemed to be an innate sense for texture—how to make his session files feel like physiological gauntlets and how to parse and increasingly unparsable internet, isolating the actual engines of sociopolitical fury and decay. He drew some ire for announcing that his new album will be called Experimental Rap, and in fact lead single “babygirl” has primary vocals delivered in a triplet flow that has been legible to audiences since 2013 or so. But the vocals are in fact buried, threaded through the mix in a way that treats them as a component part rather than stylistic anchor.

Shoreline Mafia, “TAKE U HOME”

During Covid, out of boredom and financial panic, I spent a few months writing press releases for most of the major labels. This was when drill rap from New York and club rap from across the Hudson was exploding; the labels were signing rappers, mostly 14 to 21 years old, at a dizzying rate. They were, almost uniformly, fluent in production that would have seemed absurdly uptempo in most branches of hip-hop for many years. It’s clear that the majors thought these scenes were full of cheap and replenishable lottery tickets. A few years removed from that—and even further removed from the L.A. street rap renaissance that birthed them—Shoreline Mafia’s two founding members, OhGeesy and Fenix Flexin, return with an album full of quick, nimble stabs and rejuvenation. In 2017, they sounded relatively plodding next to Greedo, Drakeo et al.; today, it’s nice to hear some emcees with bite on tracks like these.

In many ways, Of the Earth is an album of firsts. This might seem counterintuitive given the numerous records Shabaka has made with The Comet Is Coming, Shabaka and the Ancestors, and Sons of Kemet, as well as his recent solo LPs Afrikan Culture, Possession, and Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace. And despite his robust discography, the critical accolades, and the performances and collaborations that haven’t been recorded, the English jazz visionary still has new avenues to explore.

The list of firsts on Of the Earth is long. It’s Shabaka’s first true solo album: He played all the instruments and recorded, mixed, and mastered it himself. While it lacks guest vocalists, it does not lack vocals, as Shabaka himself appears for the first time as a rapper. It is also the first album on his new label, Shabaka Recording.

Of the Earth marks Shabaka’s return to the tenor saxophone after putting it away for a lengthy hiatus to focus on flutes and production. He came back to the tenor to play for the memorial concert for the legendary South African drummer Louis Moholo, who passed away last summer at the age of 85. Moholo was part of the wave of South African jazz musicians such as bassist Johnny Dyani, saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, and pianist Chris McGregor who swept into England in the 1960s. British saxophonist John Surman told Shabaka that when they came to London, “It was like a bomb hit. No one had ever seen that level of intensity and that level of actual joy in the music.” Shabaka says that the joy that Moholo and his peers “opened up is still around today in London. That joy in playing and the community you get from the music.”

Listening to Of the Earth, one feels and hears that joy in the layered flutes that glide over the surging percussion in “Dance in Praise”; in the reggaeton bounce of “Step Lightly” that Shabaka laces with flutes, clarinet, mbira, and synths; and in his swaggering tenor saxophone over a hypnotic drum and flute pattern. On “Stand Firm” his tenor soars, as he rides the thermals of synth pads, flutes, and crisp beats. Hearing the combination of distorted guitar, whistling synth lines, and chugging polyrhythmic percussion on “Call the Power,” one can’t help but think how fun it must have been to create an album with such a diversity of sounds and textures. Everything is not joyful, however, as on “Go Astray,” Shabaka raps about the dark state of the current world—its violence, social and economic inequality, and the multifaceted dystopia we find all around us. While Of the Earth may find Shabaka exploring new skills, techniques, and paths for the first time, it is a natural continuation of a musical project by an artist whose impact on jazz and Black music intensifies with each album.

I caught up with Shabaka over Zoom, where we discussed his new album and future projects, the relationship between breath and rhythm, why now is the right time for him to start a label, and how Louis Moholo influenced his thinking about music.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

How did you decide that you wanted Of the Earth to be a true solo album, with no band and no guest instrumentalists or vocalists?

It was a process of realizing that I’ve been learning different pieces of equipment over the last couple of years and thinking more about production and making beats. I always make music for myself. I enjoy making beats. I enjoy making little sounds and playing them for myself. Most things don’t make it to albums. Sometimes I might put things on Instagram and play along to them, but oftentimes I’ll just be listening to them for myself. But at some point I realized that actually the music that I’ve been making for myself is what comprises me artistically. At first I was going to book some musicians and go to the studio and start recording some material that could make an album. Then I realized I’ve been making my album; it’s the music that I’ve been working on slowly for the last year or two, just in very cryptic form.

By working at it I realized that actually it’s got to be solo. Because solo is the only way that I can actually really focus on the full realization of the music. As soon as you bring someone into it, someone else’s vision meets your vision. Or your vision meets someone else’s vision. Whereas I got so deeply into the music, I didn’t want to open it up. I just wanted to have it be a journey of where my mind could go with the material that I had come up with.

One thing I really like about the music is on several tracks you have a lot of layers of flutes, percussion, and different elements working with and against each other. How did you approach putting those layers together?

In general, I’d make the beats or a chord sequence—something foundational first. I often make music that’s too dense, and then there’s a process of stripping away. A lot of the times I might record four tracks of music. One track might have a lot of percussion, one track might have a bunch of melodic synth material. One track might have counterpoint material to that, and another track might just have general sound effects and the whole thing might sound intense. A lot of the material from the album that I started with was a lot denser than what I ended up with. After coming back to the material a few days later and listening to all the different parts separately, I might realize that there’s something really special within four bars of the bass part. So then I would take that and put it onto Ableton, where I could mix and match it with another sound that I recorded from another body of music. I was just trying to be as creative as I could in that process.

How was the process of putting the music together in Ableton different from playing live or recording in a studio?

In Ableton you can really chip away at things and strive for perfection because you’ve got the power to actually manipulate what you are doing. If you’re dealing with live performances, then it’s about the present moment. It’s about how you engage in that moment that you’re recording, how you engage with the band, how you engage with the track or whatever. And then after that, it’s immortalized. It becomes the representation of what you’ve done, and people appreciate that you’ve captured that moment in time and are giving it to them. When you start working in production, it’s not necessarily about that moment in time. That moment in time just gives you material that you can then consider. So then it becomes about the compositional structure. It becomes about how you relate to the thing that you recorded over long periods of time and finding its true form. I like to compare it to diamond mining. When you’re in the studio, it’s the moment of explosion when you blow up the mountain. You create a kind of blast in the mountain of your creative thoughts. From that you get some raw material from the rubble of ideas. Production is the process of refinement when you can see what kind of beautiful forms can come from this raw material.

In your flute playing, breath is obviously a very important element. On the record there are a lot of percussive and rhythmic elements. What’s the relation of breath to rhythm?

I guess rhythm is tied up with breath because it’s all just the body. It’s the body reflecting its positioning in time. If you try to play rhythmically without breathing in some kind of consistent manner, you’re not going to sound very rhythmic. It’s all one like dynamic system. Let’s put it this way, if your breath is shallow and you’re actually not breathing in a way that’s wholesome, your rhythm is going to be off. It all works together, whether you’re conscious of it or not. In terms of breath and rhythm, the only way that I’m going to be able to play rhythmically is if my whole body experience is with the music and that whole body experience involves breathing with the music and actually having my whole inhalation and exhalation be really in sync with the music that’s around me. Not in sync as in I’m breathing on beat one and exhaling on beat three, but in sync on a matter of focusing on the fact that I keep breathing as deeply as possible within it.

What inspired you to rap on a couple of tracks?

I thought would be cool. You know, I was making all these beats and considering Andre 3000’s story in going to flutes, I thought it would also just be really poetic if I as an instrumentalist developed rapping. It is just one of these things where it started out as just an idea of like, “wouldn’t this be cool to do?” Then the idea stuck with me, and whenever ideas stick with me, I think I kind of have a duty to fulfill them. So then at some point I thought, “what does me rapping look like and what do I have to say?” And then things took a life of their own from that point.

Who are your favorite rappers or influences that you draw on?

2Pac’s one of my favorite rappers. I’ve listened to him for a long time. I’ve always been a really big E-40 fan. There’s people from the UK like Kojey Radical that I really like how he uses his tone of voice. Right now I listen to a lot of billy woods and Elucid. I think that what they’re doing musically is broader than any small definition of hip hop. For me it’s literature.

What albums do you have planned for the future?

I’ve got a bunch of material that I’m working on production wise, and I’ll see when I’m further into it what form it takes in terms of albums. I’ve made a duet recording with pianist Pat Thomas, which sounds really great. I’m on electronics as well as flutes. I’ve made some recordings with this Palestinian musician, Dirar Kalash. Some of that sounds really great also. I’m looking at when they can come out, hopefully within the next year. They are more on the free improvisation side of things. I don’t think I’m represented very much as a free improvisation player on record. I do so much of it in real life, so it will be good to have that element of my musicality actually reflected on record.

Are those going to be on your new label? Why did you decide to create the label?

One of the reasons I decided to form the imprint is because it will actually give me the freedom to just put out things as I record them. And that’s what the main thing is about for me, having freedom—the freedom to express myself, the freedom to put out the stuff that represents the expression that I’m feeling in that time and not have it be bound by any considerations outside of myself.

Which I’m sure is probably a goal for, you know, most musicians, right?

Yeah. I guess, maybe. I hope so. But you know, it’s like this—the music thing is complex and multifaceted, so sometimes it’s about other freedoms. Record labels can give you certain freedoms that you might need at different times in your development. It’s about being perceptive to what aspects of freedom you need at what stage. And at this stage, this is what I need.

I suppose, if you’re at some point in your career you might need the label to do the PR work.

Yeah, exactly. Or even just the basic capital, right? So if it’s an album that takes and needs more than I can provide, you know?

Right. Because, studio time is expensive.

Yeah. Or if I need to travel to make an album, or if there’s some aspect of the album that could do with having a bigger label behind it. For me it’s about understanding that there are always options and figuring out what the best option is. For me, the worst thing a musician can do is just fall into a pattern of considering of releasing their music without thought, just thinking, “oh, other people have done it, therefore I’m just gonna do it this way.” Because sometimes the things that are done most regularly aren’t necessarily the things that make any sense business wise.

I would expect that trying to figure out the right balance just comes with experience.

Yeah. There’s nothing you can do to know. You’ve just gotta, you know, learn from your mistakes and be aware of what other people do, and talk to other musicians.

As far as other musicians, how will you be taking this record on the road? Are you going to be solo or will you have a band?

It’s going to be myself and drummer Austin Williamson, who I’ve been playing with for the last year or so. At first I wanted to do it solo, but then there’s something that I appreciate about taking something I made solo and opening it up to another musician. It’s been difficult figuring out how I represent the music live, in that I don’t want to necessarily have a situation where I’m just recreating music that’s been produced quite specifically with live instruments, because I think it’s a little bit redundant. But I don’t want to also just press a button and play over it. So it’s about finding the middle ground between these things—something that keeps the interest and the creativity on my end but that also represents the music that’s been carefully produced. I guess the gigs will be a representation of where I’ve gotten to in answering those questions.

That seems like that would be quite a process to work that out, especially with another musician who wasn’t part of creating the record. I guess that would take quite a bit of work and communication.

Yeah. And the only way to you can do it is really just to do gigs. You just gotta work it out on stage. There’s no real preparation you can do for it. It is just about doing the gigs and thinking about each particular gig that happens and how it can get better for the next one.

In addition to headlining at Big Ears, you will be performing there with Thurston Moore. How did that come about?

I played with him and Moor Mother in London maybe a couple months ago. Then he just got in touch asking me to do this duet with him, which I’m really looking forward to because he’s a free musician, you know? That’s the most I can hope for, to play with musicians who are free and open, who deal in creative sound.

Speaking of musicians who deal in creative sound, you started playing the tenor saxophone again to play at Louis Moholo’s memorial concert. Is that right?

Yes, exactly.

Was that the first time you got back to the saxophone or had you been planning on coming back to it?

I hadn’t really been planning on coming back to it, but that was the first time I’d come back for a bit more than a year and a half. It really wasn’t on my mind. As the memorial kind of came closer, I realized that I’d like to honor Louis’s memory by playing the saxophone.

Did you think about it as a one-off performance—that you were going to honor his memory and then put the tenor away?

Initially I thought that, but then when I actually played it, I just thought that the saxophone is just an instrument amongst other instruments. It was like the function of the hiatus has been fulfilled, in that I had a long period of being able to focus on the flutes and having to use the flutes in certain environments that before I would’ve used a saxophone by default. So I thought now, the saxophone has been democratized: it’s not taking up the space in my musical world that it used to. Now it is just one of my many instruments.

Can you talk a little bit about Louis Moholo’s importance to you?

For me he was very incredibly important. Louis is one of the first musicians that got me thinking about psychology when I’m playing. There was this sense when I played with him that he was not just listening to what I was playing, but he was actually trying to figure out how I was thinking. And then he would do things to try to subvert that, to try to actually mess with my mind. I remember the first time I played with him, not having a good experience because it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me and everything I tried to do was just being ruffled. It’s like he wasn’t really playing with me, but there was something that showed that he was aware of what I was doing and was just like taunting me almost. I thought so much about that experience and a lot of other experiences that I’ve had with him that I think that’s what he wants. He wants music to be something that involves your body and your mind and everything committed to the present. He didn’t want people to fall into this complacency of knowing what they’re doing and then not having to apply themselves fully. He was all about 100% application in the music.

There’s some concerts I did with him where he didn’t want anyone to stop playing at any point; he wanted full energy for the entire thing. He would shout at people if they stopped. All these instances that got me thinking after the fact about how I approach music. Like if you’ve got to play foot to the floor for a whole hour and a half by the time you finish, you really think about what you play, how you play, and why you play it, and what you choose to play in those circumstances.

This is the important thing for me with music: does it make you think about what you are doing and who you are? Or does it just leave you with a sense of fulfillment? Fulfillment is good, but I just enjoy it more when I come off of a gig and I have to really think about what happened because maybe it perplexed me or it did something to me. It’s got to move me in some way.