Future hasn’t been himself lately, or, at least the version of “himself” we’ve come to recognize over his decade-long reign as one of the most copied and adored songwriters in rap. He’s chopped his dreads down to a blonde-dyed puff and there’s scenes from this video where he’s walking around without the blackout shades that I could have sworn were welded to his face. But deeper than that he sounds at peace, an abstract concept for the great bluesman of our time. Being tortured by his own infidelity impulses, drugs, and the memories of homies lost has had Future wailing into his double cup the way Otis Redding once did the ‘Frisco Bay, so to see him admit he wants to live free from the pressures of any “crown” or radio expectations into being some humdrum rich guy is striking.

A quest for normalcy comes for most megastars as they tire of shaping culture; it’s why Michael Jackson built a ferris wheel in his backyard, what sent Frank Ocean into living a hermetic life in Japan, and why Future himself has purchased privacy by shutting down more fashion boutiques and Michelin starred restaurants than COVID ever did. Maybe between opening the World Cup and acting as a walking billboard for Louis Vuitton, Future yearns to be as boring a guy as any one of us.

His forthcoming album The Real Me could be stories about smoking too much weed and falling asleep watching basketball, but he’ll always be doing it on furniture that goes for high five figures with every woman from this video. No matter how normal he dreams of being, he can never be that again. “Radio” is itself an example of this trap; it’s a fairly forgettable lead single, but it’s melodically infectious the way any of his peak R&B cuts have been. The video is just Future walking around the tropics, but wherever he goes a flock of scantily clad models will always find him. Stardom isn’t an outfit you can take off when you feel done for the day, but a reality you must work to shape to your needs forever.

Radamiz & Caleb Giles, “BC, AD (Performance 1)” / “(Performance 2)”

I’ve been more conscious of the mediums in which messages are presented, as they are themselves supposed to be a message. When I see Brooklyn wiseman Radamiz splitting songs in half and releasing them as separate videos the way he has with “BC AD” and “It Comes It Goes” I see a three-pronged concept explored.

For starters it gives breathing room for every artist’s fantastic verses, each so intimate that the isolation from one another only elevates them, forcing a focus on the words rather than competition. Second, it’s a recognition of the economic strategies needed to make it as an artist. When you see Youngboy or Rio Da Yung OG drop a dozen videos a month it’s because they have endless songs recorded and stored to be slow dripped, but what of the artists who don’t work that way? Should they just starve while the art is poured over and edited on their own time while those who produce en masse are rewarded because it best suits a system nobody had any say in approving? Finally I see the split as a protest against the way we do things out of habit. Why not try to seize control in how a record is dismembered? Timelines on Instagram, Twitter and Youtube alike are scrambled based on algorithmic whimsy, so why not seize control of what bite-sized pieces of self get presented?

KIBO, “Zero Fux (Sim Card Samurai)”

Leaving your home with multiple devices and a subconscious overloaded with memes, forcibly downloaded social media discourses, and whatever entertainment you’ve streamed the last 24 hours is the standard and not nearly as cool as what Cyberpunk 2077 made it out to be. Yet KIBO makes being a modern cyborg feel freeing. Accepting this postmodern hellscape has given him license to shapeshift into many forms over the years.

On the UK underground internet radio waves he’s “The Victory Lap Warrior” compressing a vast vocabulary and school boy humour with such cheeky arrogance even Dave and Central Cee how to show praise. As the dark streets of North West London glitch out into Yu-Gi-Oh scenes and millions of swirling pixels, KIBO becomes one with the technorganic fray, a SIM Card Samurai, overpowering and chopping life one line at a time until he hits a new high score. “The world is full of dickheads and it sucks” but when you can become one with even the most aggressive jungle beats this side of a Nia Archives remix anything feels possible.

BabyChiefDoIt, “Ghetto Love Story (From The Block Performance)”

While the mercury expands in its glass casing to mark a real feel of 102°F on the East Coast, BabyChiefDoIt reminds us finding love is always a sticky situation. Matching the heat wave with a groovy So So Def Bass All-Stars type-beat, Chief raps into his dangling microphone with conviction toward his “ghetto lover/A mother of two and she got five brothers.” The odds are stacked against him the same way they’d be had he been cornered in the streets; he’s fighting through the influence of her besties, past heartbreaks, all the liquor in her system and that meddling boyfriend just to get her out on a date. For 3 verses Chief adds new twists to the plot, making me question how fine this woman could be to even make it worth this hustle. But it’s the thrill of the chase guiding us to the dance floor, and whether he ends up smashing or getting smashed to bits is left to our imagination.

Ksuuvi, “Triple B”

Hip-Hop’s relationship to cover songs is simple; don’t do it. With that being said, you can leverage some loopholes to get pretty damn close. Mos Def embodied ‘89 Slick Rick for a modernized “Children’s Story,” Cardi B gender flipped “Chickenhead” to “Bickenhead” without losing any of the original’s vigor, and now NYC’s Ksuuvi has deep fried Lloyd Bank’s 106 & Park classic “Beamer Benz or Bentley” into a paranoid nu-jerk anthem. Let’s see if Joell Ortiz has the heart to grab this beat and reclaim his title as the supreme Lloyd Banks remixer.

Extras

The first time I listened to Phiik and Lungs—some of their work together is collected in a series called Another Planet, other times that phrase stands in as a group name—was the first time I’d been glad to feel as if my brain was misfiring. I would grin in my car as an image of Brett Favre’s hands tremoring from Vicodin withdrawal and another of a New Yorker walking nervously through a Midwestern Target, convinced he’d become the target of a mass shooting, bled together, blotting one another out. It became clear to me that all the data would not compute on the first pass, which is how the world at large has felt for some time now.

Phiik and Lungs are childhood friends who grew up mostly on Long Island, where “motherfuckers were doing bear heroin,” the latter says. Over the past handful of years, they’ve distinguished themselves amidst a thriving New York underground. Both members cite their relationship with another lynchpin of that scene, AKAI SOLO, as formative—not only as on-mic stylists, but in terms of the work ethic required to hone those styles. “Writer’s block is not fucking real,” Lungs says. At one point during our three-way video call, and at Phiik’s urging, he shows me the gigantic bags lining the wall of one room in his house, each one stuffed with notebooks full of rhymes that will likely never be used.

“Tireless” works as a descriptor not only of the process, but its results. On their songs, each MC raps what sound, at first, like impossibly dense walls of text. This often gets mistaken for double-time rapping—sometimes the delivery is fast, but it is more often than not simply unending.

People Are Not Your Friends is produced entirely by steel tipped dove, and will be released on dove’s Fused Arrow Records next week. It sounds, more often than not, like an old robot found in a crawlspace and shocked back to life. Yet for as obviously and delightfully considered Phiik and Lungs’s work always is, the new LP scans, more than any of their others, like a natural and inevitable consequence of a certain worldview, one where everything is interesting and most things are ominous.

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed and then filtered through fiber optic cables that run under the Atlantic Ocean.

What was it like working with Dove, taking your hands off the wheel on the production side?

Lungs: It’s nice because Dove has this shit together. It’s always fucking kind of smoke and mirrors: People will tell you that they can do some shit and then they can’t, or they just don’t have the right experience. Sometimes heads are good at one thing and not the other. There’s a lot that could go wrong. So working with Dove is nice because, yeah, it’s just like everything is situated. He’s been doing it for a minute. Normally I record, mix, and master everything for all our shit. So I did Carrot Season—well, Zeroh did the mixes on that. But AP4, all the APs, all the NoFace stuff, BAD NEWS, all the stuff I did with [Fatboi] Sharif, I generally do. Because in the past, almost every time that I’ve outsourced something to somebody else, I’ve had to just go back and do the whole thing over again. And that’s not true with certain people: Zeroh is amazing. But with Dove it’s just nice. I mean, I literally just had another child. I just had the birth of my son couple weeks ago, so it’s been really nice. It’s been really a pleasure working with him.

You guys have been making records together for a minute now. Are you constantly writing and recording without particular albums in mind, or do you say, “We’re going to do an Another Planet record right now?” And are you generally writing together, or writing to beats separately?

Phiik: Me and Lungs have known each other since we were like, yea high. Since elementary school.

Lungs: So all this shit about best friends is not a myth. I’ve known Phiik since I was in kindergarten.

Phiik: That alone makes it super easy for us to figure out what we want to do, and collaborate. That’s my man, that’s my best friend. So at the end of the day, it’s pretty seamless when we come together.

Lungs: We’ve literally been doing this since we were 14, and I’m what, 31?

Phiik: Fifteen years-plus of trial and error. But yeah, we do everything together for the most part. I mean, when we go in on something, we definitely have a plan in mind, but we don’t strictly stay with that. Like me and Lungs right now are working on something with Ewonee from Mutant Academy and simultaneously we’re gearing up for AP5. The writing we do is usually together. Lungs writes by himself, too, because he’s got the ability to mix and master, and he’s got the whole setup at his crib. So sometimes he’ll get ahead of it and be like, “Yo, I just laid this for this,” and then he’ll send me the version and I’ll have some time to work on it. But ultimately I get the best spark when I’m around him because it’s just easy to bounce energy off each other and really lock into a place that we’re both very familiar with.

Now in terms of bouncing energy, that makes a lot of sense. But you’re not writing linear story songs, right? So how much discussion, if any, is there about what do you want to do on a given track? Are you talking about direction, texture, theme beforehand?

Phiik: I mean, not really.

Lungs: Yeah, we’ve known each other for long enough that we both know what we want to do. We both know what we want to accomplish. The thing developed on its own and it’s developed as a product of who we are and who we have been and what our life has been. You know what I’m saying? The only person that I will even do that [premeditation] with is Fatboi Sharif. ‘’m trying to represent whatever the fuck the current moment is, be it dystopia or not dystopia. And I can do that by just doing good writing.

I am not a huge fan of [high-concept approaches], with notable exceptions: I think of “Loosifa” by Juggaknots. That shit is like what Sharif kind of is on, which I fuck with, because to me it has to be some sort of show-not-tell. Every rapper should read fucking Elements of Style by E.B. White. Literally, bro. Me and Phiik don’t want to make something bugged out for the sake of it being bugged out. Sometimes I feel like Another Planet be getting lumped into “weird hip-hop,” which we definitely are, but I think we’re more weird in the vein of old Def Jux shit. So a lot of the times I’ll try to not tap into the super conceptual writing shit. For me, what’s more interesting is structure, flow, “How can I make this interesting in terms of its punching style?” I want people to be able to listen to it and relate to it in terms of what 2026 is and not some fucking abstract, crazy other place.

We’ve talked a lot about writing, but how did you two arrive at the vocal styles you have today?

Phiik: Oh man, that took a minute. We both used to sound a lot different. I’ll never forget, actually, the one tip that Lungs gave me early on was: Rap from your chest. That doesn’t sound like it’s all that complex, but it makes a huge difference. And hearing yourself over and over and over again—you instill a sense of confidence in yourself as you continue to do it. Because you can hear us both being less timid or just more full in our voices over time, really figuring out the way that we want to convey something.

Part of it is taking time to really decide what it is that you want to sound like. Because we both didn’t start rapping fast—but it’s not even fast. We weren’t putting a bunch of words in a line when we first started, if that makes sense. That whole development really, I think is what brought us to where we are.

Lungs: I just fucking watched Ip Man movies and I saw his punching style and then I was like, I could rap like that. Because it’s not fast. It’s relentless. He just punches motherfuckers like 10,000 times, you know what I’m saying? In the movies, they make it look like it’s punching fast, but it’s more so about not stopping. That’s what heads get confused: I don’t want to be Twista.

You guys never seem bothered by the pace. There’s still room for bend and personality and dynamics as opposed to, when you hear a lot of rappers who are just rapping fast, it’s like they’re pushing themselves to the limit in every bar.

Lungs: And if you notice—at least for me, Phiik raps a little bit louder—I’m quiet as fuck. I can literally make an album in my house without getting a single noise complaint. And the reason that I do that is because if you use less breath overall, that gives you more to work with. And also the way that I literally write the raps, too: every single word is on my phone in just one line, and then there’s spacing in between the bars. So it’s literally just vertical, straight down vertical. Single words. Because then if I’m doing that at a level where I’m not yelling, that’s the biggest thing. If you listen to my early raps, I’m yelling OD. Nobody want to hear that, bro. How hard you are going on the song is not necessarily the thing that dictates how hard the song is. Ka don’t go above a fucking whisper most of the time. And that shit is heavier than anything that you’re going to hear from a motherfucker who’s yelling at you.

It’s just studying, taking things away, even from Wu-Tang and other popular rappers like that. There are purely punching, purely mechanical things [to learn]; I feel like sometimes with coke rap, you see white rappers who are on some, “Yo, I have to completely be a different fucking thing.” But when I listen to Roc Marciano, the takeaway to me is not like, “Oh, this dude’s rapping about street shit,” it’s like, “Damn, bro, listen to how well he was able to do that breath sequence.” Of course when I’m listening to music I’m hearing people speak their truth and shit, but the content is not the thing you have to emulate anyway. You have to replace that with your own life experience.

More broadly, as white people in rap, how do you think about your place in the ecosystem?

Lungs: I think of my place as somebody who just makes rap music who’s trying to do something to the best of their ability. Overall I think my purpose is to assist in any way that I can. And I also think that as a white rapper, my purpose is to play the background frequently—in a good way. The main thing that I never wanted to do with this shit was disrespect it. Especially as a white person, if you’re going to be doing this shit, you have to really study what it shit actually is. At the end of the day, it was revolutionary music that was intended to communicate not only political messages, but bring light to situations and voices to people who are being completely fucking ignored. So for me, I’m very thankful to people—even though heads talk about corny rappers and shit, I fucking love Immortal Technique. I’m very thankful to heads like that. But I think as a white rapper, it’s your job to love this shit enough that you’re being yourself. And also speaking about the things that need to get spoken about—and then keeping your fucking mouth shut and understanding when you need to shut the fuck up. This is a privilege that heads are allowing you into spaces and shit, so just don’t be a fucking asshole.

You got to show up, you have to put in work, and the scene legitimizes itself at the end of the day. All of these relationships that we have, all this shit is just organic. And heads are kids, bro. You know what I’m saying? We were all just kids fucking running around trying to do this shit. And I mean, it’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful right now. A lot of our friends and people that we’ve known this whole fucking time are doing great. I mean, I get fucking emotional at AKAI SOLO shows, bro. I swear to God. I literally have watched that motherfucker rap in front of actually no one. You know what I’m saying? And seeing that shit is fucking great. And there’s so much love in the New York scene too, right now.

It seems like it’s in a great place.

Lungs: It is, bro. It really is. It’s doing great. And all the shit that they say about New York is bullshit. When people say no one in New York supports each other, it’s like, bro, it’s not the case. Y’all just don’t go outside.

We’ve talked a lot about how, in content and form, you guys are delivering a kind of information overload to evoke feelings about an era that’s defined by that very sort of saturation. But what is the concise answer to someone who asks “What do you rap about?”

Lungs: If everything just blows up and the apocalypse happens and aliens find this shit, I want them to be able to listen to the thing and be like, I understand the vibe, the dread of the time period that they lived in.

I walked into Zebulon and gently shouldered myself into the large “O” encircling a group of musicians. It was July 2024, and the semi-nascent quintet SML was performing to commemorate the release of their debut album, Small Medium Large. I hadn’t heard of them and had no idea what to expect, but I grew mesmerized by their fluidity. A pall covered the crowd, a collective laser focus. When a song, jam, offering—whatever you want to call it—finished, a hush would hover as eyes fluttered open, lips broke to reveal soft smiles, and warm mmms of satisfaction peppered the air.

Put reductively, the band consists of guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, saxophonist Joshua Johnson, drummer Booker Stardrum, bassist Anna Butterss, and synthesist Jeremiah Chiu. In reality, every member is constantly flirting with the perceived limits of their instrument, bending time and sound via pedals and unexpected syncopations. Whatever you think a specific instrument does, SML challenges the notion. They operate with a precise, hard-earned kind of whimsy.

In the time since that Zebulon show and debut album, the group has toured the world, held a successful Big Ears residency, and released two more albums: 2025’s How You Been and Spontaneous Music Live, which came out on June 26. All their albums have been released by International Anthem, the Los Angeles by-way-of Chicago label responsible for giving a home to radical, progressive sounds from the likes of Jeff Parker, Carlos Niño, jamie branch, Makaya McCraven, and many more.

Spontaneous Music Live differs greatly from their previous albums in that it is, as its name suggests, two recorded live sets presented as-is. Their other records were, conversely, a collection of highly-produced songs using live elements as the source material to manipulate. The musicians were essentially flexing twice on those works, taking something they’d done in the past and reworking it through their unique lens once again. Both of those albums were highly praised, with much of the acclaim coming from the live material they had to work with. Which is why people are likely champing at the bit for this new album that preserves some of that SML secret sauce.

I say likely, but I know it is true. I went to their show on June 27, the second night they were playing to commemorate the release of Spontaneous and to celebrate the 21st birthday of the beloved audio journal Aquarium Drunkard. The records were sold out before the show was over.

People wanted to hold on to the sorcery they just experienced. It was interesting to see SML perform almost exactly two years later, again in a circle in the middle of the audience—only this time elevated above the crowd. It reminded me of a pentagram, on some cult kind of tip. I say that with reverence. Things happen inside that circle that feel unnatural, other-worldly. A pentagram is appropriate for their presence: a five-pointed star drawn from a single, continuous line.

SML live is the embodiment of an entity being greater than the sum of its parts; as a group, their caliber upshifts into exponential overload. I was impressed by the economy of movement for the sheer amount of sound being produced; Johnson, Uhlmann, Butterss, and Chiu move with a refined delicacy. But their sonic subtleties pack a wallop. About halfway though the set, a combination of crowd-like and nature sounds began looping. Butters made a face that conveyed peculiar interest and stopped playing their bass, listening to the sounds over a rolling beat from Stardrum. Something sparked and Butterss got off their stool and headed to the synth bass to tinkle across those keys. They started smiling, bopping their head. I looked across the stage, Chiu started smiling, too. His head bowed seriously over his gear, but a dimple peeked through as the group skated from those cyclical, lilting sounds into something hard, edgy, and propulsive. Suddenly I felt like I was at a concert for The Prodigy, head-banging to an inventive intro to “Smack My Bitch Up.” The group has range. They’re artists crafting sonic sculptures in realtime.

I talked to Chiu, Butterss, and Stardrum on a Google Meet about ten days before the release of Spontaneous Music Live. Chiu was in Los Angeles, Stardrum was at home in Kingston, NY about to give a lesson, and Butterss was in Brussels to play a show with Jason Isbell. We talked about the origins of the group, the magic and terror of improvised music, the shaping of their sound, the role of the audience, and how SML names their goods.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I guess the first question I want to ask is: do you guys spend time together or are you actually only in person on stage?

Jeremiah: We spend time together.

Anna: We’re friends.

Jeremiah: Friends scattered. Everyone is in so many different projects and traveling all the time, that we spend different amounts of time with different partitions of the group.

I had dinner with Josh the other night, and it was great. But I had this one thought, hilariously, which was, “The more we tour, the more we’re spending time together. But if we have an opportunity, we might be on vacation together before we’re a band together.”

Wow.

Anna: Do it. I’m down.

That’s great to hear. You’re all very busy with wildly different projects. I thought it was maybe a strategy to keep the improvisation pure. As if you have to keep re-meeting each other on stage and find your footing. Do you have a way of talking about the formation of SML or did it just kind of happen?

Anna: It was because those first two ETA shows [Uhlmann’s in 2022] where the band kind of formed. But, neither of them were all five of us playing together. Night one was Jeremiah, Josh, and Greg. Then night two was me, Booker, Greg, and Jeremiah.

Right after that, I think Scotty [Scott McNiece, International Anthem label co-founder] came in, and we all started talking about it together. So it’s definitely a collective. We have different roles in terms of organizational things for sure, but, musically and creatively, it’s a collective.

Jeremiah: For sure. I almost think of ETA IVtet, Ryan [Julio, ETA’s booker] and Bryce [Gonzales, ETA’s recording engineer] are kinda collectively the foundation for a lot of this stuff. People like Ryan who are tapped into different musicians in town and give people opportunities to do what they want—that’s a pretty special environment and it nurtures a community like this.

So we’re all sort of operating around a space Ryan created. And then, the other big part of it is, none of this would’ve probably made it beyond those doors unless Bryce had recorded all of it. So I think there’s just this combination of all these things that feel truly like nobody was intending for it to do anything beyond facilitate a place for the community.

It feels like ETA is kind of having this longer swan song of everyone lamenting its loss as a venue. I feel like it’s getting more shine now, publicly, than it did before. I ran into one of their old bartenders recently and we were having this kind of sad, eulogy-esque conversation about what that space was and what it represented.

Jeremiah mentioned the ETA IVtet, which Anna and Josh are part of. Do you see the sound of SML as forged in the sound of ETA and the teachings of Jeff Parker—who has also been in contact with many of you in different entities.

Anna: I don’t actually know if I would say SML, the sound and conception of it, is deeply rooted in ETA. I think it wouldn’t exist without ETA for sure, but we played four shows there. I think ETA brought us together and that community and physical space, but the music has mostly been made outside of that space. So it’s transitioned pretty quickly into new spaces. And I also think that, while, while we’ve all been extremely influenced by Jeff and that whole Chicago scene and the music around Tortoise and the Chicago Underground, we’ve been trying to do something that doesn’t sound derivative or come completely derivative of that.

And, you know, I think we’re a new band and we’re still building our sound in a lot of ways. But, in that building, we’re definitely looking forward.

Jeremiah: Yeah, that feels accurate. For me in terms of less the sound, but more the ethos of what Anna’s describing. There’s this spirit of Chicago groups that are just ‘looking for new.’ I feel like that happens to us the more we play. I understand how we play as individuals better every time we play together, and then it allows me more freedom to come and try to throw something else into the mix and see how people respond.

I think everyone probably does that to a certain extent. I don’t think that’s always the case in groups. This sort of unspoken trust that anyone can bring something into the mix that’s unexpected. People will respond in a positive way versus the opposite. Booker, does that feel true for you?

Booker: Yeah. I was just having a sort of loving feeling towards the larger music community. You know, we’re sort of talking about it.

You [Nereya] were asking these kind of leading questions about where we fall within the context of the scene at ETA. I see it as a little bit bigger than that. I mean, maybe that’s my perspective because I lived in LA for several years, but I’m coming in as someone who doesn’t live there anymore.

The nature of us coming together is something that feels very organic, and it feels very much like a product of sort of the larger experience of being in a pretty expansive music community. We all have so many friends and collaborators and people all over. It’s a really large community of people doing things together, and the nature of being an improvising musician is sometimes you just get put together with people. Anna and I met at the first show that we played. Now we’re touring the world with each other.

I’m feeling sentimental that we, like, shook hands and then just started jamming. And it was fun and we got lucky that our good friend Scotty was in the audience and was like, “Let’s do this.”

There was kind of a happy accident that we were sort of nurtured into being something together. But it really is the way that musicians—especially improvising musicians—gather.

Sometimes we’re just kind of put together, sometimes we’re introduced, and then a few years go by and you’re best friends with these people and you’re making music with them all the time. It’s actually just a really beautiful process.

Jeremiah: You know, that term “improvised music”is oftentimes in a jazz context, and I definitely didn’t come to it from that place. Booker and I knew each other prior and we were playing more experimental music. Improvisation in that space is very different than in a jazz-oriented context. I don’t have those skills the same way.

So there’s some level of healthy discomfort that I still have every time we’re playing together. I won’t speak for anyone else, but I really like it. It puts me on edge to basically be like, “Is what I’m doing cool?” I have to bring a level of presence and focus. I have to really be in there to hang because everyone in the group is such a heavy hitter.

It feels fun for me to continue to do that. It’s not easy every time. The moments that sort of express ease are always when we’re listening back and I remember that, in that moment, I felt like, “This is a ride that I’m hanging on for dear life.”

I saw you guys in summer 2024 at Zebulon. It was amazing and, as a viewer not at all steeped in the language of improvisation and the adaptability it requires, it does seem quite effortless. It feels like you’re listening to a fluency in a language.

Are there certain roles that you find that you guys do play? Is there someone who really consistently takes you out further? Someone who always brings people back home?

Booker: I feel like we all have our moments of bringing it home and of being the disruptor. Like, Jeremiah, for maybe 70% of our sets I would say, is sort of setting some kind of backbone and pacing because he’s setting up rhythmic sequences on his modular setup. Then we’re all kind of jumping in and live arranging around that sequence.

I feel like Jeremiah might be some kind of backbone. But then there’re a few times in a set where we’re locked into something, and it’s Jeremiah who disrupts the rhythm of it or starts sampling us and passing our sounds around.

I think we all have our moments like that. Jeremiah, Greg, and Josh are all doing a lot of electronics, so it’s often hard to pick out who’s doing what. It obviously doesn’t matter at all, but we don’t know what’s going on. I mean, the bass and the drums are a little bit simpler to parse out—we have our roles, we kinda hold it down playing grooves and stuff. But also, not only that.

I think it’s a pretty dynamic kind of experience. I don’t know. Does anyone else wanna elaborate on that?

Anna: I agree with that. To go back on what Jeremiah was saying a little earlier, I think because it is an environment that can feel really intimidating: just jumping in and trying to create something really good and having to accept that it might not always be good.

For me, I find there are spaces—zones, rhythms, melodies, harmonics—that feel a little more comfortable for each of us. It can be really easy to unintentionally settle into those. I think something that we’re all aligned on is that we want to disrupt the idea of there being a set role. I think it can be really easy to say, “You play the drums, you usually do this type of thing.” But I think we have a constant process of creating discomfort for ourselves so that the music can go forward.

But it’s hard to do because…well…beacuse it’s uncomfortable! It’s nice to be able to play a show where you can just relax and everything feels good, but I think that’s kind of anti-SML in a way.

Jeremiah: I’m seeing this idea of discomfort as actually creating opportunities for intuition and trust, right? You’re sort of forced to respond, but also be hyper present. I think that that feels fresh. To Booker’s point, it’s why I’ll do things like sample the drums or the sax or et cetera. It starts to be a little disorienting because you’re like, “I thought that Josh was the only person that can make the saxophone sound, and now this is coming a different way.”

Then, vice versa, Greg and Anna have also brought some synth into the mix, too. There’s an assumption that because I have the modular on stage, a lot of the synthetic sounds are coming from me, but they’re absolutely not. They’re coming from everybody in a wide variety of ways.

Booker: A phrase that came to my mind where I feel like we’re fluent with discomfort. I think the five of us are OK with a little unknown and maybe we’re quite good at handling the emotions that surround that feeling. I think we’re both uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time.

With this new album, what prompted the decision to just release it as the sets and not go through the editing process of your previous albums?

Jeremiah: I don’t know if we’ve talked about it yet fully. We’re sitting on a ton of recordings right now. We’ve gotten into this really nice place where we played more shows in the last year or so than we had in those first two records combined.

So there’s just many more sets of material to mine from. I think we’re also currently working through how to continue to create new approaches to album-making. This felt like a moment where we talked about doing the opposite of what we’ve just done in editing from live. Instead we found a couple nuggets that expand that narrative a little bit more.

Anna: It also puts the studio records in context for people. People are pretty familiar with how we make records. We’ve talked about it a lot, and it’s been, the whole formation of the band. But most people who are into our records have not had a chance to come see us live. I don’t know if this was something we were specifically thinking about when we had the idea to do it, but I really like that it contextualizes what we do, how the records are made, and it’s kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit. It expands the SML universe, I think.

Providing the raw material. It’s interesting for you guys as you’re “touring a record” [air quotes], right? Because you’re always working on whatever will be the new record while you’re touring. The majority of musical acts are playing something they made in the past over and over. But anyone who’s at one of your shows doesn’t know if that’s gonna be the source material for the next record, which is exciting as an audience. You never know if Jeremiah’s gonna sample someone’s conversation as they were walking in, you know?

Jeremiah: Yeah, watch out.

I know.

Jeremiah: I think Makaya McCraven was at the show you were at and he was like, “You gotta yell. You know, if they’re recording it, that’s how you get yourself on a record.”

That show was my first introduction to you guys. After that show, I went and listened to, Small Medium Large, it was the only album out at that time, I think.

Booker: Yeah. Because that show you went to actually, two tracks from How You Been are from that run at Zebulon.

OK. Yeah. Well after I listened, I thought I should’ve laughed an obnoxious laugh. You know in a comedy show that one person’s laugh gets in there somewhere.

Anna: You’re on the record in spirit.

Thank you for that, Anna.

Jeremiah: For the record, I’m not the one recording that stuff often. It’s Bryce. It’s the front of house.

Oh! That extends into what you were saying before of how multiple individuals helped forge SML as a band.

Jeremiah: Yeah, for sure. I mean, those Bryce recordings are special because he’s captured a live performance that sounds like a studio recording.

I’m always wondering how he made this thing sound so good, so well-mixed, and so usable?! It doesn’t come out of the gate as being a live recording or a live record. We can actually work with that source material to edit from, and I think that that’s quite amazing, too.

I love a title that explains the plot. Spontaneous. Music. Live. Great. That’s what you’re getting. How, how do you guys usually go through the naming process for your works?

Anna: We have a hard time naming things. We have to suggest a lot of very bad names before we get to a good one.

With this one specifically, how did “The Drums” and “Roundabout” get named?

Anna: “The Drums” was a reference to this Keith Jarrett record that me and Booker really love called “Fort Yawuh,” a live record. They play a song called “De Drums.” It has this great bass solo thing on it. And because Booker…well…The story behind that track was that Booker has Jeremiah in his ears. So Jeremiah started a sequence and Booker started playing along to what he was hearing in his ears, but Jeremiah didn’t have anything coming through the house yet. So Booker thought he was playing with Jeremiah, and actually he was just playing drums by himself.

When he found out, he wasn’t thrilled. We all thought it was great.

Booker: It was the last time we played together, and it was the first song on the first night. I come in so hot. My partner was like, “Wow, like you really just took a drum solo right up front.” I was like, “What do you mean?” Jeremiah kind of tricked me on that one. I’ve forgiven him. It’s totally cool.

For “Roundabouts,” we were listening to the tracks and trying to come up with names and that track has this circular feeling. We’ve got all these repeating patterns happening. In my head, I was thinking “circles” and “round.” Kingston, the town I live in, has two prominent roundabouts and, actually you guys don’t know this, I have a good friend who has a gallery here called “Roundabouts Now.” I like that name and it came into my head, I proposed it, and people were into it.

Anna: Mm-hmm.

Booker: I can’t remember who came up with Spontaneous Music Live. I think that’s Jeremiah.

Anna: Yeah. Jeremiah. At least he texted it to me and I was like, “Yes.”

Jeremiah: The SML letters.

Booker: Oh!

You didn’t put that together?

Anna: No, no, he’s joking. He’s joking.

Booker: I’m not joking. I don’t think I’ve put that together.

Anna: Booker. What?

Booker: Listen, you guys like to play lots of word games.

Anna: That’s true.

Booker: I’m just, you know, I’m just a dumb drummer over here. No, I really didn’t put that together. That’s so funny.

Anna: I…have to leave. Not just because of this, but I have to go play a show.

Booker: Where are you? The Netherlands?

Anna: Brussels.

Booker: OK. I saw you drinking that Spa seltzer with the nice effervescence. Have a good show.

[Anna leaves]

Are there differences in a quintet versus other formations? Advantages or more challenges? Especially for improvisation?

Jeremiah: Travel is more challenging with the quintet. Playing…well, I’ve played in slightly bigger or smaller groups. The smaller the group, the more you feel like you have to be doing.

I don’t know if you feel that way, Booker, but I think it’s quite nice in this group that there’s some level of like, I can just…for example, the Salt Room show, where it almost felt like we partitioned into two groups–

Booker: Hmm ...

Jeremiah: —in the middle of the set. It was Greg, Anna, and Booker just going, and they’re in their own zone. It allowed me to just look at Josh and we started to work something out to disrupt them and rattle something new into that fold. That was quite cool. I don’t know if we’ve done exactly the same thing, but it became a strategy in the moment. We were like, “Oh yeah, we don’t always have to be playing. We can kind of actually start to work something, prepare, and then go in there.” So it’s a trio and a duo. Booker, what do you think?

Booker: Oh, yeah. Totally. I think we could probably make better use of that strategy, We could do it more, breaking off into little sectionals. We’re a band that operates with a lot of controlled density. There’s a lot of layered sounds and ideas and we’re always sort of playing with that. Layering things on top of each other and rhythmic cycles that are interacting with each other in maybe odd ways.

There’s so much to be done as a quintet with all five people playing at the same time. With that said, being in a larger group does relieve people of the necessity to be playing all the time and having some moments of space. Josh does a great job of playing and not playing. He’s a very patient musician. He’ll wait till the right moment, and then he’ll blast off. That dynamic moment is so clutch. Where as I’m very… [laughs]

Are you the impulsive one?

Booker: I like to push things around. I love sitting on an idea for a long time and letting it develop really slowly.

I had an experience recently where I saw a duo play and—to Jeremiah’s point—I could tell that at every moment they had this feeling like they had to make something happen. I kept thinking, “You don’t actually have to make something happen right now. The music’s already happening. The instrumentation’s beautiful. The sound of the space is great. Let us just feast on the minimalism.”

I can take that, too. I’m gonna wash myself in that idea.

Booker, I know you need to go so I’m going to ask two questions and you can choose which one. First: You said before that it felt like the formation of SML was the broader music community fusing together opportunities. Do you have a similar feeling now of where the community wants to take the future of jazz/improvisational music? Second: People often describe you guys as avant-garde, and I’m wondering what that means to you.

Booker: I don’t know if I have a thought out, smart answer for where I think any music is going. I don’t know where jazz is going or improvised music. I can kind of see where it is, but we’ll just have to see where it goes.

One thing I’ve been reflecting on recently while watching the [NBA 2026] playoffs. I was thinking about how special it is to gather with my friends and know there’s a couple other million people watching the same thing at any given point.

Jeremiah: Mm-hmm.

Booker: You spoke about the idea of how normally a band puts out a record, and then they tour on that record that already came out—it’s been done for a year and a half. By the time the music comes out, at least in my experience, I might be sick of it. I don’t want to make that music anymore. I want to move on. There’s something very special for me in SML that we’re always just creating something new. The next record’s always being made.

We’re not really ever looking back very. Watching the playoffs, I was thinking about how special it is to watch something unfold that’s truly live. We have no idea where this thing is going. I mean, I’m a Knicks fan, and watching them come back from being behind by 30 points or something and you’re like, “What the fuck? How is it possible that this is happening?!”

So I’m not gonna talk about the music, I’m gonna talk about the audience. I think with the rise of A.I. and music that feels quite canned and homogenous…very live music has the potential and the power to touch people in a special way. There’s so much predictability in a lot of art. I think it’s quite special to be an audience member and watch something unfold in real time and have little to no expectations about where something’s gonna go.

Jeremiah: Mm-hmm.

Booker: So I don’t know where the music is going, but I feel very grateful that I’m making improvised and spontaneous music. Because there’s something very real there that touches people and touches on something that people desire.

Your audience behavior also kind of speaks to that. At your guys’ shows, there’s such a reverent hush. Sometimes we’re not sure if the song’s over, but most often we’re just taking it in, still processing, and appreciating. Not to say it’s transactional to applaud for someone,, but there isn’t the same feeling of, “This happened, now I clap.” Everyone is very much in the place of letting the gravity of what was watched sit for a second instead, and then cheering as well. They’re heavier pauses.

Jeremiah: A lot of why we always push for playing in the round is because the audience is a part of that experience. We want to create the intimacy where it becomes a shared experience together versus a more transactional state, there’s less of a barrier between the two things. I remember you [Booker] seeing New York post-Knicks win and you were like, “Oh man, this is what the city could be like all the time.” Which is: joyous, positivity flourishing. There is some level of us trying to create those experiences at a micro level in these small venues with these immediate communities to flourish in the same way.

It takes a bit of courage to go and do the thing that’s improvised. Maybe that’s the avant perspective. We know we’re capable of writing a song and performing it perfectly time and time again. What’s more unknown and may result in something even more impactful or special is forging into that space together and having the trust that the audience is there with us. They’re part of that whole story.

Booker: Wow. You bridged the two questions beautifully.

Anyone who knows anything about battle rap, Los Angeles, beat music, or the art rap explosion of the early 2010s knows that All City Jimmy is one of the most talented MCs alive. Formerly known as Nocando, the Scribble Jam champion and Low End Theory co-founder has spent the last decade constantly mutating, merging his Project Blowed lineage with finely honed pop sensibilities and a blanket fearlessness. HOLLYWEIRD, his second album in as many months, is a blacklight fugue of low-stakes betrayal and Biblical thirst. He debuted these songs at a small gathering last week, initially introducing each record and letting it play uninterrupted. But eventually, Jimmy relented to Aceyalone’s demand that he rap, and rattled off a stark, shocking seven-minute piece that culminated with a verse written two decades prior, on the day of his first daughter’s birth. Recommended if you like: Strippers, but as people, and also as strippers.

Further listening

Chanel Beads, Your Day Will Come: This is deceptively engrossing, but I’ll be honest—the best part about it is that it’s got the same album title as this guy’s last album. What a bit. RIYL: Alex G and haunted houses.

LAZER DIM 700, The Rule of Success: LAZER DIM gets taxonomized, fairly, as a creature of the internet, where that means his style, mimics the freneticism of information overload and a jagged collage of front-facing videos. But The Rule of Success is at times patient and gentle, adding dimension and even more humor to his repertoire. RIYL: If all of the young guys who have debuted after 2020 give you hives, you should still give this one a shot even if your default is MF Grimm.

It felt like it was never going to happen, but was always just a delusion. Death takes everyone, a tired parent leading a child away from the window. Éliane Radigue was a French composer born in 1932, primarily creating feedback and synthesizer works in the 20th century, pioneering minimalism and musique concrète, before setting a clear demarcation point and creating an incredible body of acoustic work for numerous instruments and specific performers (often protégés or collaborators) over the past 26 years. She passed away in February at the age of 94.

I don’t know exactly when I first heard her work, but I believe my introduction was Quatuor Bozzini’s twin recordings of “Occam Delta XV.”

I sat down in the oldest chair in our living room, sunken and cheerfully haunted, and put on the peeling white headphones my old roommate had given to me. Despite at least one recommendation against it, I listened to both performances back-to-back. Each one made me cry; I’m not certain why. The infinitesimal perforations spreading across the sound’s spherical surface like mournful snails broke into my psyche and depressed the reset button. The opaque guise of stasis did little to betray the wonders occurring beneath. It was like seeing fireworks for the first time, shrunken down to the size of my palm and resonating twice as much. A graciously donated knife was slipped between the neurons of my auditory cortex; the droning strings shivered, the harmonics appeared to grow shrill.

Listening to “Occam Delta XV,” Trilogie de la Mort, or virtually any of Éliane’s other work, transforms one into a fish who has never known anything other than the sea, asking, “What the hell is water?” The invisible peace of a lake, slightly buffeted by a Western wind, ripples vanishing before you realize where they occurred, false inertia giving the sun’s rays a surface upon which to dance. Her spirit was always one with the water, hence the various deltas, oceans, and rivers that marked the titles of nearly all of her acoustic pieces.

Naldjorlak was a rare exception, continuing to combine her sound propositions with her decades-long practice of Tibetan Buddhism. In Intermediate Spaces, an extended interview with musician and writer Julia Eckhardt, Éliane explained that it comes from the Tibetan term for yoga, “naldjor,” meant to “reflect the union of body, speech, and mind.” Her faith and her music were rooted in an understanding of natural, endless, universal impermanence (anicca). “The ephemeral is found in everything that lives.” The turbulence of existence, whether a great and violent wind roaring across the waters or a gentle capillary betraying a hint of hidden volatility or a simple vibration, remains constant and true. Éliane’s oeuvre is dedicated to summoning that everlasting uncertainty without expecting to capture it—the listener is challenged to behold this wavering, reflect upon it, and perhaps internalize part of it.

Éliane begins her 2008 essay “The Mysterious Power of the Infinitesimal” by writing:

In the beginning, there was the air’s powerful breath, violent intimidating tornados, deep dark waves emerging in long pulsations from cracks in the earth, joined with shooting fire in a flaming crackling. Surging water, waves streaming into shimmering droplets… Was it already sound when no ear was tuned to this particular register of the wave spectrum in this immense vibrating symphony of the universe? Was there any sound if no ear was there to hear it?

The wind then turns into a breeze, the base of the earth into resonance, the crackling fire into a peaceful source of heat, water, the surf against the bank, cooing like a stream.

Life is there.

Another level, another theme begins.

Each body of work, regardless of form, is an exploration of the nature of the irresolute, an indefinite ontology of sonority. It is anti-improvisatory, systematic, and intimately planned, either in solitude or in intensive, personal collaboration with the musicians for whom the piece was composed (i.e. the entirety of the OCCAM OCEAN cycle). Despite the specious assumption that it is music for meditation, usually based on the deep spirituality of her ‘80s and ‘90s compositions, or as a catalyst for personal reflection, based on its stereotype as static or droning, Éliane’s music is rather a canvas for deep listening, to borrow the term of her fellow-traveler, Pauline Oliveros. The goal is removal of the self from the listening experience.

Many pieces had printed scores; some were meant to evoke journeys through the unfamiliar, the mystical, the intermediate, and through the totality of birth, life, and death. Trilogie de la Mort represents the zenith of Éliane’s melted intersection of path-following and wandering (I am likely showing my bias by continually referring to Trilogie—it is my favorite Radigue piece and, I would argue, her 20th century masterpiece). Each movement guides the roaming listener along its flickering trail.

The first movement, “Kyema,” passes through the six gateways (bardos) of Tibetan thanatology—Life, Dreaming, Meditation, Dying, Dharmata (suchness, or the essence of things as they are), and Rebirth. The second, “Kailasha,” is a chaotic imagined circumnavigation of the titular mountain, a site of pilgrimage in the Gangdise Shan range of the Tibetan plateau and a natural mandala representing the cosmologic connection point between the physical and spiritual worlds, as well as an evocation of paradoxical modern visual art, collapsing volumetric space in upon itself and weaving meta-liminality into the trilogy writ large. The final, “Koume,” is a magnetic tape mimeograph of overcoming death, past form and space. Rooted with one foot in Buddhism and the other in the Catholicism of Éliane’s youth, it proffers sacred harmony as a means of moving beyond Saṃsāra and into eternal liberation.

Death is not an end, it is a passage, a doorway to duck beneath while stepping across the threshold. Despite the outpouring of grief over the last couple of months, there has been a greater celebration of a lifetime spent in dedication, unraveling as much of the Fates’ thread as possible without ever expecting to arrive at some approximation of “understanding” or an “end.”

For all the gold teeth, slab talk, and larger-than-life charisma, the Ghetto Gospel series has become Sauce Walka’s annual reminder that being “the man” mostly means carrying everyone else’s problems. Here, the flexes barely register against an avalanche of family tragedies and impossible responsibilities. His verses read like a prayer list scribbled in the margins of a bill collector’s notice: a daughter battling cancer, a nephew pistol-whipping his own cousin, a father whose health is slipping, dead friends, incarcerated partners, and a child who’s “ten and can’t talk.” The details pile up, they become suffocating.

The most revealing moment comes after rattling off everyone he looks out for: “Every motherfuckin’ Christmas not one gift for me/‘Cause Santa never get no presents, fool, you bought the tree.” It’s a devastating way to describe the loneliness that comes with being the provider. Sauce has always rapped like a Houston folk hero with survivor’s guilt, but “Ghetto Gospel 4” finds him sounding more exhausted than triumphant against the backdrop of everyone else’s problems. When he wonders, “If all the violence stopped, would the world stop spinnin’?” it doesn’t feel rhetorical. It sounds like someone who’s watched so much death that peace has become harder to imagine than war.

Peezy, “First Day Of Summer”

The first day of summer in Detroit feels like a city-wide resurrection. Everyone who spent the winter tucked away grinding is outside again, the girls are out, the streets are moving, and the whole city feels as if it’s been waiting for this moment. Of course, with all that energy comes all the chaos: everybody’s watching, everybody’s outside, and the same day that feels like freedom can turn dangerous fast. The expensive jeans get dusted off, the Rolls Royce hits the streets, and so do the Feds. One wrong move and the first day of summer can be your last.

Peezy captures that tension expertly, balancing the celebration with the paranoia underneath it. His voice has this hypnotic quality, almost like a lullaby playing through a block party where everybody knows something could go wrong. The beat feels built for that contradiction: luxurious, laid-back, and slightly uneasy.

Hopoutso700, “Off Alondra”

To Hopoutso700, Alondra is both a location pin and a warning. It’s a street that cuts right through Compton, yes, but it’s also a trap. Come looking for him off Alondra, and you’ll get slapped with fire. His words, not mine. However, every rap song this side of 1980 is probably either a threat or a warning, so that’s not what actually makes this one interesting. Hopout’s real weapon is presence. In the video, his eyes practically jump through the screen as he stares into the camera. His flow is all sharp edges and sudden turns, making each word feel like it arrives from a different angle.

When he raps, “bounce out on feet... with two feet, kill ’em from two feet,” he turns repetition into percussion. The words stomp forward, locking into that percussive rhythm. The beat is built around a muted bass knock that makes the whole thing feel slightly detached from reality, like Hopout is rapping in a space that shouldn’t exist. He’s been known for the off-kilter flows and lines that bend around the beat rather than follow it, but “Off Alondra” feels like the moment it fully clicks.

And, much to the delight of YouTube commenters, he’s finally rhyming.

Kodak Black, “Prayers Call”

“Prayers Call” opens with one of those lines only Kodak Black could write: “N——s at the prayer call with a knife in they sweater.” Whether everyone is actually out to get Kodak or whether years of fame, prison, addiction, and betrayal have left him seeing enemies in every room hardly even matters anymore. That’s the world he inhabits, and by the time he realizes everyone’s eyes are closed except the one person lining him up, you’re already looking over your shoulder too.

Lefty Gunplay & Jap5, “Where You From”

This is as gangbanging-L.A.-rap as gangbanging L.A. rap gets. Jap5, out of the Hoovers and Lefty Gunplay, out of Baldwin Park, trade verses about, you guessed it, gang banging. The video alternates between Rolls Royce trucks driving through the hood and the two standing in front of Men’s Central, where they’ve both done real time. Jap5 opens his verse, rapping “If I ever go against the gang, you better pop me for it.” The line gets at something essential about L.A. street rap: the matter-of-factness. There isn’t much metaphor because there doesn’t need to be. He’s rapping about asking someone to kill him with the same certainty someone else might use to describe the weather.

Extras

For the past few years, the current, incessant proliferation of rodents in major cities has led the BBC to claim that we’re living under an impending Ratmageddon. Today, according to data gathered by pest control companies, over 3 million rats now scurry through New York City. Maybe the island of Manhattan will be the first metropolis to fall to the great rodent army. But down in Brazil, a new spin on this idea has emerged—that maybe the difference between mice and men is essentially a matter of perspective. It’s been brewing specifically in Recife, where the youth call themselves ratos. These kids sport stylized hair with tails on the sides, popular Brazilian streetwear brands with a surf-inspired vibe, and big chains with reflective Oakley glasses. The emergent culture has been defined by three things: a deeply flawed city; the Bregafunk that’s blasted through soundsystems (referred to in Brazil as paredões) throughout it; and crabs—yes, the crustaceans. We’ll get there. It’s an environment ripe for daring propositions; the ratos choose, fittingly, the many open sewers of the city’s metropolitan area as a place to congregate.

The Brega

The Passinho do Jamal dance exploded on social media, becoming a trend not only in Brazil, but also around the globe, catapulting the Recife genre to international prominence, with FIFA World Cup 2026 star Lamine Yamal, j-hope from BTS and iShowSpeed all getting into the fad. A simple and infectious concoction—a combination of the traditional Brega music of Northeastern Brazil plus elements from Rio de Janeiro’s funk, Angolan Kizomba, and Caribbean Zouk—Bregafunk began taking shape in 2008, and first got notoriety outside of Recife in early 2018, through the breakout single “Envolvimento” from MC Loma and Gêmeas Lacração, which captured a grassroots movement and irreverent spirit of Brazil that resonated with much of the country’s youth.

Shevchenko & Elloco, an act crucial to Bregafunk’s development, would start their tour de force that year too. On hits like “Gera Bactéria,” producer GS O Rei do Beat would start incorporating more elements from São Paulo funk, especially the robotic sound commonly associated with the Southeastern state, which would invert the tracks’ internal logic, putting rhythm and dance as the focus. This worked in symbiosis with the Passinho crews of that era.

From them, Pedro “Eo Chapa” Henrique and Romero “Jamal” Júnior would birth the now internationally famous Passinho do Jamal, which would be recycled and become viral in late 2025. Following Bregafunk’s recipe, a simple instigating move was the only requirement; the more people watched, trained, and posted their attempts at the passinho, the wider the genre writ large spread. All combined, it made the algorithm churn out more Recife-related content at the exact moment an influencer in that Northeastern metropolis was gathering a staggering amount of impressions by jumping into open sewers.

The influencer responsible for starting this is Danilo Silva, who now has over 350,000 followers combined across Instagram and TikTok. He explains the motivation behind the idea, now commonly referred as Rato’s Bar: “Firstly there wasn’t even a Rato’s Bar,” he says in an interview for Terra Brasil, a Brazilian news agency. “It was a favela that was settled close to the sewer, and when there was flooding, water reached around our chests. Since we were children we were used to that, and with Bregafunk on the rise, we wanted an opportunity to pop on the internet, to draw attention somehow. So, me and seven friends, we had the idea to grab a romantic tune, enter the sewer channel, put a table, some chairs, sing and record. We were already sure it would become viral, the first video popped!”

The setting is shocking at first glance—which is at least part of the point. Whether connecting with the ghetto or appalling others, it incites a reaction. It’s a collision between the abhorrent and the utterly common. The former is obvious. But the latter comes from the ubiquitous social gatherings mediated by Bregafunk. What the videos show is common throughout the underprivileged areas of the city: the paredões blasting the tracks guiding the passinhos. A carefree blip amidst a crushing economical and social reality.

Recife and its “Crab Mentality”

A crucial component of this phenomenon is Recife’s unique geography. Composed of a set of swamp mangrove islands which are cut through by rivers and channels, the city’s dysfunctional development that necessitated sewer lines in such abundance that it birthed another animalistic moniker, beyond the ratos. “This imagery of animals, connected to the mud and the mangroves, gained a lot of prominence from Chico Science and his idea around crabs, a metaphor he used a lot,” GG Albuquerque, a journalist and music researcher, says, citing the transgressive figure of Brazilian music in the 1990s. Chico Science was largely responsible for the ascension of the Manguebeat movement, its sound characterized by heavy drums from the Maracatu, one of the most ancient Afrobrazilian rhythms, and chords straight out of UK’s post-punk scene, reminiscent of acts like The Smiths and The Cure. The barrage of sound also folded in repetitive progressions influenced by the ritual aspect of the Maracatu and 1980s electronic acts, like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. It, in turn, birthed the Carnavalistic sound that defined Recife toward the end of the 20th century.

They were heavily influenced by the literary work of Josué de Castro, and integrated into their mythos some of his ideas, like the portrayal of Recife’s underprivileged inhabitants as mirrors to the crabs who lived on the mangroves, hungry and covered by mud. Music was the medium through which the crab metaphor was chiefly popularized; Nação Zumbi even sang “Tomar banho de canal quando a maré encher” (Take a bath in the channel when the tide comes in), documenting a commonplace practice nowadays closely connected to the ratos.

The Ratos

The ratos share some aesthetic sensibilities with other Brazilian subcultures, but there are nuances that set them apart. There are the never-changing ‘“👉” or bang-shaped hands, while the most unique tic, by far, is the qui qui qui qui. Spoken in quick succession, the syllables aim to mimic the rat cry that can be heard when the animal expresses distress, and is often heard before the culprit of the cry is spotted. It recalls de Castro’s idea of mimicry, and connects decades of Recife sociocultural development.

Other crucial symbols of the ratos come through fashion, with two brands being most commonly associated with the group: Seaway and Cyclone. Both were, at their parallel 1984 foundings, surfwear brands, the first one is local to Recife, the latter from Rio. Today they are far more recognizable as symbols of Brazilian favela fashion. Ratos rock the long shorts and combine them with regattas and soccer jerseys; they also never go without chains, and the thicker those get, the more cred that comes with them, a similarity with (or homage to) American hip-hop culture.

And then: the hair. By far the most distinct facet of the ratos’ fashion, it is literally derived from the moniker, made to represent the tails of the rats. The longer and crazier the tail is, the more attention it will attract at functions.

This is familiar across cultures and continents: people taking the conditions meant to shunt them out of society and flipping into ingenious music, fashion, and culture. Danilo Silva, the man who recorded himself plunging toward the Earth’s core, carves a new path of ascension from a brutal economic reality. And the youth takes these images as they’re intended to be received: shot through with irreverence and sly humor. In this age, attention is the only near-democratic currency; the ratos have made people look back at the mangrove metropolis with not just horror, but awe. Maybe what Philip the Prudent told the architect of the Escorial encapsulates it best: “Let’s do anything that’ll make the world call us crazy!”

ALIA’s new album, Where the Echoes Bloom, could not have happened without chance. Two chance encounters—which immediately became love-at-first-sound experiences—led the multi-instrumentalist, composer, and dancer to pick up the wildly different instruments she now plays professionally. On a trip to Indonesia she discovered a 20-stringed zither from the Sunda region of West Java called a kacapi and took one home with her. Later, after seeing a live performance of a theremin, she was so captivated that she had to buy one. She studied both instruments deeply, developing her own voice and style. The two are as disparate as could be in their technique, sound, and cultural significance. Yet, the L.A.-based artist has found a way to make them part of the center of her musical identity.

ALIA’s curiosity about the sounds and histories of the kacapi and theremin reflects her diverse range of musical interests. She is at home listening to mid-century Exotica albums and performing Egyptian-style belly dance as she is recording the music of ambient and post-minimalist composer Howard Budd with harpist Nailah Hunter. Her interests extend outward from there to include Arabic music, gamelan, field recordings, and producing beats. On Where the Echoes Bloom, she used all the sounds and inspirations she had on hand to create an evocative, atmospheric, and wholly unique record.

On its first track, “Soul of my Soul,” ALIA plays a series of measured arpeggios on the kacapi that roll over vocalesque theremin and light percussion. She mixes traditional kacapi melodic styles with Western harp-like glissandos on “Crescent Sun.” If not for its fuller-bodied sound and different tuning, the kacapi could be mistaken for a harp. With doses of delay and reverb, ALIA gives the track an ethereal, otherworldly vibe. On “Crescent Sun” her father can be heard playing the West Asian frame drum known as a Daf. ALIA used many of his percussion recordings as samples across the album.

Exotica exerts a strong influence throughout. “Intimate,” “Endless Love,” and “Daughter of the Nile” illuminate what much of Exotica could have been, had it freed itself from the problematic tropes of tiki bars, hula girls, and the racialization of the Other. These tracks all softly breathe and pulsate. Time stretches and slows. A haunting not-quite-human-female-voice wafts over layers of synths, soft percussion, and kacapi. From the sparse, gamelan-tinged beat of “Jogja” to the Arabic percussion and dub elements of “The Thorn and the Carnation,” what comes through while listening to Where the Echoes Bloom is the vision of an artist who is not bound to any kind of musical or stylistic orthodoxy. Rather, ALIA uses the instruments and sounds that she loves—that, and making sure to take full advantage of the opportunities that chance can provide.

I caught up with ALIA over Zoom, where we talked about her journey from the violin and cello of her childhood to the theremin and kacapi, our mutual love of Yma Sumac, how a chance social media message led her to touring with a pop star, and the challenges of making music during the Palestinian genocide.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

So your father is a musician. Was it a sure thing that you were going to be a musician, too?

No, actually, not at all. I grew up playing music. I played violin and cello, but it was something that was so normal for me that I didn’t really think of it as something that I should pursue as an adult. It’s hard to explain. For some reason, I didn’t even think of that as a possibility, even though it’s so obvious. It’s weird, but I thought about it as a normal part of my life though. I got into dance when I was in college, and so that became my main mode of artistic expression. I kind of stopped messing around with music and focused on dance for a long time. In my 20s, I thought “oh, I should take up music. Oh, it’s too late for me. I’m already on this dance trajectory.” And then in my late 30s, I got rid of that conditioning where it’s like, “oh, I’m too old to do it.” It’s so dumb. You know, we’re all so conditioned to think that if you make a certain career decision, you have to stick with that your entire life, you know? But I mean, in reality, dance is part of music. It’s another aspect of it. Once I started doing music, I thought, “oh my God, this it’s so obvious, I’m good at this, it’s in me, why did I never think about pursuing it before?” I think that when you grow up with something and it’s just so normal to you that you don’t think about it in a special way, the way that other people do, I guess.

Do you find that dance shapes your musical expression?

I still do Egyptian-style belly dance, so I got to know all of the various rhythms and Arabic music. I think that one of the ways that it is shaping me as a musician is the performance aspect of it because as a dancer I’m really into the visual part of it as well. I definitely think that plays a role. I’m developing my live show right now and I want it to be visually interesting as well. I think growing up around music I had that ingrained musicality, but dance kind of refined it even more and allowed me to connect to rhythms, especially with the style of dance that I did.

As you’re working on doing the live performance, have you started touring for the record yet?

No, not yet. I have my first gig after the album comes out in August. I will be playing Spacecraft, the small music festival that’s happening in Pioneertown outside of Joshua Tree. I am developing my show for that right now.

Is it just going to be you on stage, or will you have a band?

For now, it’s only me. I would love in the future to have a band, but I’m trying to figure out the best way to do it solo. I want to do more than just play along to a backing track. So I’m using Ableton to kind of build it all out and bring in some drones and do some loops. It’s going to kind of be a mix of improvisation and then playing along to some of the songs from the album and maybe variations of the songs.

One of the things that struck me on the album was the kacapi. I heard it and I was “okay, that’s not a harp, even though it’s being played harp-like. It’s not a guitar…” The sound is very rich. It’s Indonesian, right?

Yes.

How did you start playing it?

I stumbled upon it in my trajectory. My dad teaches world music at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has a summer program that brings kids from the college to Bali to study the music and the dance and the culture. I’ve tagged along with him to Bali and helped out with this program many times. One of the instructors in the program, Ade Suparman, teaches Javanese gamelan and he also plays the kacapi. I was mesmerized by this instrument. When I would see him play kacapi it would hypnotize me. I loved it so much and asked him if he would teach me, and he happened to have another kacapi with him, and he started giving me lessons. I brought one home and he sent me videos on WhatsApp of songs to learn, and then I went to Bali again and got to study with him more.

So when did you start playing the theremin?

It was kind of random. I watched this documentary called Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey that is about the history of theremin. When watched it I thought “wow, this is so cool.” I didn’t really know anything about the instrument. And then shortly after I moved to L.A. and one of the first events I went to was an event where Armen Ra, who later became my teacher, was doing a theremin performance, and I thought, “oh my god, I just saw that documentary and this instrument is amazing, I really want to learn this instrument” because I was really drawn to it. And so I ordered one online but it was so difficult to play. I had it for about a year before I really started to get serious about it because it was so hard. I started watching some YouTube videos and tutorials on techniques and I couldn’t quite get it down. I’m thought, “Oh, God, I suck at this!” I was able to book a lesson with Armen and the way he broke it down for me really helped to wrap my mind around the instrument. It’s not like a traditional instrument where there’s very specific techniques that you use to be able to play. It’s really more intuitive and he told me I was focusing too much on these very specific ways to move my fingers that I need to feel it out and make my own technique; don’t try to follow what someone else is doing exactly, because it might not work for you. And when he explained that to me, I was able to start playing melodies. It’s a very interesting instrument because you’re not grounded to it at all. You’re not touching anything. Playing it is so much by ear rather than—there is a little bit of muscle memory—but so much listening and immediately knowing if you’re on the right note or not and how to slide into the correct note in a way that’s inconspicuous.

The theremin on the song “Aquamarine Dream” is so haunting and evocative. Throughout the album, I kept going to look up who the singer was. I had to remind myself that it was theremin. But it has a rich human sound. How do you get that sound?

So on that song I actually used a talk box connected to the theremin to make it sound more human-like.

Oh! That’s cool.

I think I used it on “Daughter of the Nile” too. The talk box makes it sound more like a human voice, for sure. One of the people that I study for my theremin playing is Yma Sumac, the way that she sings and her vibrato. I try to emulate her vibrato on the theremin to make it sound even more opera-like.

That makes a lot of sense, because I hear the similarities on my Yma Sumac records.

Oh, I love her so much.

Me, too. When you were putting together the album, how did you map out how you were going to use all the sounds and instruments and styles and have them fit together?

You know, I kind of took it on a song-by-song basis. I had in my mind a style of song that I wanted to do and then I thought about what resources do I have that I can make this style of song, you know? I was listening to a lot of old Exotica records that use harp. I thought, “well, I have my kacapi, so I can use it for some of that layer.” And I like rich textures and textures that make you feel like you’re in a place. So when I was in Bali, I took a lot of field recordings of the frogs and the outdoors, and I knew I wanted to use those. That worked really well in “Aquamarine Dream.”

There are a few tracks that really reminded me of some Exotica records I have, even though I’m not crazy about the term.

I know, it’s so outdated.

So was Exotica a big influence on the album?

Totally. I’m very inspired by it. It’s a problematic genre, but the music is so beautiful. I love a lot of old exotic records, but I was listening to a lot of—do you know the album Songs of a Dead Dreamer by DJ Spooky?

I don’t know that album, but I know some of his others.

That album in particular takes you on a whole trip. It’s very vibey. I guess the genre is referred to as illbient. It’s kind of ambient, but there’s hip hop in it: but it’s very trippy with lots of sound effects and dub elements. So I thought it would be cool to bring in some of the old Exotica sounds, but then also bring in some of these psychedelic-like trip-hop, illbient elements as well. For a lot of the songs, that was the vibe I wanted to create.

How would you say that this album kind of represents you as an artist? Does it have all the main ingredients, or could you have made a totally different record and have it still feel like you?

I could have made a whole different record and felt like it was me. Part of the challenge when I decided I wanted to make a record was what direction to take it in, because I have so many inspirations and so many genres of music that I love. I’m actually working on new music now that sounds completely different than this album. It’s more Arabic-focused, and that was what one of my main things I was thinking for this album: “should I make something that is all Arabic sounds, or do this more Exotica style thing?” I tried to bring in some Arabic influences. The bass line on the last song, “The Thorn and the Carnation,” is a traditional Arabic bass line. I have some of my dad’s percussion that is Arabic style percussion. The music that I’m working on now is heavy Arabic beats. It’s not as gentle. It’s really drum and percussion heavy. There are a lot of genres that I would love to explore. There’s so much music that I love that I would love to explore making.

The press release mentioned that it was tough for you to make the record while the genocide is going on in Palestine. How are you able to balance that with making a beautiful record—is it just pushing it aside and telling yourself, “okay, I’m going to focus on the music?”

It was so difficult. I mean, that was probably the hardest part. I’m so consumed by what’s going on and wanting to stay aware. Obviously our devices suck us in and we get into these doom-scrolling loops. It’s been a big part of my life and really changed me as a person. One of the things I’m trying to work out and that I was struggling with, is that I want to reflect the times in my music too. For the most part, this album has such a different feeling than what is going on in the world. I wanted to pay tribute in some type of way. The first song is called “Soul of My Soul,” and I think a lot of people who have been keeping up with what’s going on would get that reference. It was referring to a man, Khaled Nabhan, and his granddaughter, Reem. Toward the beginning of the genocide he was holding her lifeless body in his arms and smiling and kissing her and saying “rouh al-rouh” (روح الروح) which means “soul of my soul” in Arabic. It was a tender and heartbreaking moment, and I think it really made people see, because so many people before October 7th didn’t really know much about what was going on there. They had this idea in their mind about Arab men being aggressive and violent and all of the stereotypes that America tries to socialize people to think. It made people see that Arab men are very tender and very loving and they love their families and they’re like us. That was a big moment. I named that song “Soul of My Soul” because I really thought it kind of encompassed that it’s beautiful, but also sad and melancholic, and it reminded me of them. So I dedicated that song to them. I think the genocide actually exposed so much about the entire world—about the hypocrisies of so-called international law and the brutality of the Western Empire, and the media lying, everything is on full display. It brought out some things about myself, and the ways that I think I fall short, and how I want to be, and seeing how these principled people live their lives, and thinking that, “oh, I need to be more connected and more principled and more dedicated to people and community.”

Did you feel a kind of responsibility or added pressure when making these songs?

I wouldn’t say that I gave myself added pressure, but I did feel a bit of responsibility that I should bring attention in some way to this thing that is happening while I’m making this music. I wanted it to be connected in some way. I didn’t try to force it, but it is something that I wanted to do.

Now turning to something completely different. How did you end up playing with Melanie Martinez?

She doesn’t have theremin on her records, but she had just stumbled across the theremin thought, “Oh, my God! This instrument so cool. I want a theremin player in my band.” So then they found me through social media and brought me on.

That’s wild!

I was not familiar with her and I got a message about the show. I did an audition and got the gig and then I’m playing Lollapalooza in Brazil, wondering what’s happened here? This is crazy. It was totally unexpected and took me on this wild ride that I did not envision for myself before. But it’s really, really fun and really cool.

From the concert videos I’ve seen, her shows are a complete spectacle with the elaborate sets and the costume changes. What is it like playing in such a big dramatic theatrical show to a packed stadium?

It’s a wild experience. I love Melanie because she’s a very conceptual artist. She has a vision for every little detail of the show. She comes up with all the set design and all the visuals and she’s very involved in the whole process and the costuming and everything. And so it’s really cool to be a part of something that’s so thought out in a detailed way and so conceptual. The wildest part is that she has this cult following of fans that are obsessed with her and they’re screaming every word and crying. It’s so crazy to witness. I think her album had come out the day of that show in Lollapalooza and everyone knew all the words already. They’re totally obsessed. It’s really fun and wild to see. I had never done any huge shows like that before. It’s a fun experience for sure.

Are you able to balance being on the road and playing her music with doing your own music?

It is definitely difficult. It’s really hard to focus and be in that mindset when you’re around so many people doing stuff. And then when you finally have time alone it’s hard to switch gears and focus on other work. I had stuff during the last tours that I wanted to work on. It was really hard to focus on the road, so I didn’t start even working on this album until after touring. We had a year off in 2025, I didn’t tour at all with her, and so that’s when I was working on the album. I have a lot of music that I want to do now that I’m in a groove with making things.

Editor’s note: Over the course of this year, we’re publishing a series of essays about the rap albums that defined 2001, both creatively and industrially, and whether they predicted or were abandoned during the quarter-century to follow. See the first installment, on Tech N9ne’s Anghellic, here.

When people say a rapper sounds like the future, it can mean a few different things. It can be “this dude will be the literal face of the genre” (see 50 Cent’s 50 Cent Is The Future). It can be “this dude is doing things that are going to fundamentally change how rap music sounds” (see Nayvadius Wilburn, aka Future). Or it can mean the literal, temporal future, in that it evokes Blade Runner or The Matrix or the William Gibson creative universe. When people said The Cold Vein, the 2001 debut album from the Harlem duo Cannibal Ox, sounded like the future, they meant all three.

The late ‘90s were a pretty good time to be an underground1 rapper. Napster and MP3 sharing were loosening the major labels’ stranglehold on music distribution, while internet message boards were building scenes that transcended geography. Labels like Rhymesayers, Anticon, Solesides, and others were on their way toward moving serious units, getting actual radio play, and doing numbers on tour. This is a very long story, but Rawkus was the first and arguably most successful of these labels. With the backing of James Murdoch (Rupert’s son), they would propel Mos Def and Talib Kweli out of the underground and into the mainstream.

Things did not go so well for other Rawkus artists, including El-P. He signed with the label in 1997-ish as part of Company Flow, the boundary-pushing trio of him, Big Juss, and Mr. Len. The first full-length Rawkus release was CoFlow’s Funcrusher Plus. It was a beefed-up version of the group’s 1995 self-released Funcrusher EP, whose album art somewhat ominously featured the slogan “INDEPENDENT AS FUCK.” But whatever El-P was expecting from an independent rap label, he did not get from Rawkus. He would later rap that he would rather “be mouth-fucked by Nazis unconscious” than work with Rawkus again.

After wriggling out of his deal, El-P started Def Jux, his own label. The first release was two singles packaged together. One record was the official last few songs from Company Flow, a confirmation that the group was (amicably) disbanding. The other was “Iron Galaxy” b/w “Straight Off The D.I.C.,” the lead single from Cannibal Ox, the duo comprised of Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, from New York’s sprawling Atoms Family crew. Their LP would be El’s first project as an auteur executing his vision with complete creative control, on his own label. And that made it the most anticipated album in—or: the future of—this rapidly growing part of the rap landscape.

It’s hard to think of an act whose first song summed up their entire value proposition as well as Can Ox was encapsulated in “Iron Galaxy.” Vordul delivers a series of ephemeral images that flip between shit-talking and world-building. He starts his verse proclaiming “Life’s ill,” which would become the duo’s de facto mantra, and closes with what is probably his most quoted line (“Fuck five, I want 108 mics”). Vast raps more intentionally, coherently, introducing motifs that will be further explored across the full album (“A pigeon can’t drop shit if it never flew”). Together they render a Harlem full of poverty, misery, humanity, and strength, in which they happen to be a couple of rapping superheroes. It is a few stops on the train from Manhattan proper, but might as well be on the moon. It is definitely in outer space. Why else would El-P’s beat sound like it does?

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It’s ironic that Critical Thot was recorded remotely—on opposite sides of the continent, in fact—because each artist’s contribution seems to burrow so deeply into the other’s. The production, fine-tuned in Brooklyn by DJ Haram, is thunderous yet light on its feet; it’s technically dazzling on close study, but you can imagine it being just as mesmerizing on the most bludgeoning, least forgiving speaker system, or rattling the chassis of a passing car. Meanwhile, in the Bay, sha ray cased those beats like a cat burglar, poking around for openings and then moving without hesitation. On “Boudoir,” sha ray’s vocals themselves act as a kick drum; a cymbal crash on “Elixir” seems to coax along the vocals like a matador’s cape.

While Critical Thot, which was released last week by Backwoodz Studioz, is technically sha ray’s debut album, it reveals a rapper so expert as to have moved beyond the need to demonstrate technique for its own sake—each choice is in service of theme and rhythm.

To mark the album’s release, DJ Haram and sha ray have very kindly created a 45-minute mix exclusively for POW. Mixed by Haram and curated one-third by her and two-thirds by sha ray, it’s a collection of music that inspired and echoes Critical Thot, hypnotic until it decides to shake you awake.

People tend to talk about Tierra Whack in terms of her being withholding. The Philadelphia native raps sparingly, in terms of the sheer size of her catalog and the brevity of her early songs; WHACK’S MUSEUM, her overwhelmingly poised new album, occasionally makes this scarcity its subject. But where her initial buzz rested partly on inference, here the concision is a sign of mastery. Listening to WHACK’S MUSEUM often feels like watching a superb rapper run through a tightly rehearsed set near the end of her tour, the syllables snapping just so, the disdain deeply considered but no less acidic. Recommended if you like: Pasting Beanie Sigel acapellas onto the instrumentals from Mach-Hommy albums.

Further listening

student 1, truant: The slyly chameleonic Minneapolis artist moves between chasms of introspection and relentless pulse. RIYL: Imagining what Kanye West might have been making circa 2012 if he were suspended in post-808s & Heartbreak animation and was trying to shake more complex neuroses.

Chris Crack, Don’t Go In the Women’s Bathroom: People rightly give Chris Crack credit for his outre humor (as evidenced by his now-widely imitated song titles), but his latest, frenetic album is also a master class in dense, athletic rapping. RIYL: Boosie but also women.

Shaudie Man, SUMN B4 THE TAPE II: Thoughts of a Outlaw: I’m sneaking this in despite it dropping a couple weeks ago; . RIYL: Early-mid period Young Thug, the clip of Stephen A. Smith talking about the Kwame Brown-for-Pau Gasol trade.

In the unfettered chaos of 2026, it actually feels right that one of the first contenders for Song of the Summer is a Smiths pastiche released by a member of Shoreline Mafia that, according to widespread speculation, may actually be the product of generative AI. On June 5, rapper Fenix Flexin released “Rubberz,” a collaboration with 808 Mafia producer Purps on the Beat that quickly went viral for its unique mix of street rap lyrics and British new wave production. Atop Oberheim DMX-style drum tones, Fenix adopts an English-ish accent and sings in a wounded tenor about “Swipin’ cards and stackin’ chips” and “Plastic smiles on Sunset Boulevard.”

“Rubberz” is a deeply weird song, but it quickly caught on with fans—and just as quickly became the subject of scrutiny around potential AI use. With generative AI improving at freakish speeds, many people are on high alert for established artists using the technology to cut creative corners. (Kanye West earned criticism for his use of vocal deepfaking on the scrapped album Cuck, and Timbaland has faced backlash for his partnership with the popular AI music app Suno).

Taylor Gang producer/artist 6AM has been perhaps the loudest voice pushing back against “Rubberz” specifically, as well as the potential danger of widespread AI in mainstream music. He’s used his Instagram stories as a platform to dissect the song and highlight the slippery slope it could lead to if the track is truly passing off generative AI as human creativity.

“This opens up the floodgates for fucking anybody with no talent to just put out a song and say, ‘Yeah, this is me right here. This is my art,’” he told POW. “This is Pandora’s box.”

All the musicians POW spoke to believe Fenix Flexin used AI on “Rubberz,” though each had different opinions on the level of generative technology at play.

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Samara Cyn channels the high-pitched range of Ghanaian artist Amaraee for “BUSHWICK,” where the Murfreesboro, Tennessee rapper promises that she “knows some guys” there in case you got a problem. In the 1970s, the Brooklyn neighborhood was the location of one of the most famous mafia hits in history, when Bonanno crime family boss and heroin impresario Carmine Galante was blown away by three masked gunmen who shot him to death in the backyard of an Italian restaurant. Pictures of Galante riddled with bullets still clutching his cigar between his teeth as he lay dead in a pile of blood—and what I’m assuming is some sort of red sauce—are some of the most iconic crime scene photos ever released. Today, Bushwick is less known for its mafia stronghold and more as a partially-gentrified haven for artists, reformed hipsters, and the queers, gays, and theys who’ve claimed it as their own.

But this isn’t to say Bushwick has lost its grit. There’s still much to fear, and much to celebrate about the infamous Brooklyn neighborhood, as Ovrkast briefly and stylishly explains in half a verse at the end of the track.

Tierra Whack, “WAX PAPER”

Tierra Whack seems to be an artist I get extremely excited about once every two years. The first time she rang my bell was with Whack World, an album of glorified snippets with accompanying videos that were both wildly creative and charmingly low-budget. I always wished she had re-released Whack World with fully fleshed-out versions of the tracks, but obviously that was never the point. Since then, she’s sporadically released music ranging from very good to forgettable, collaborating with artists like Beyoncé and working on the Lion King soundtrack. But Tierra Whack always sounds best when she’s by herself, a distinctly modern mix of Missy Elliot and Junglepussy.

“Wax Paper” is the type of ‘90s boom-bap revamp that Schoolboy Q loves to hop on when he’s in album mode. This is a no-frills rap beat with a haunting backdrop, which Tierra matches with an unpredictably aggressive flow, as if she has some pent-up rage to get out after years of semi-silence. One of her most unique qualities is her ability to shape-shift, but there’s always been an undertone of angsty displeasure at the way things are, whether she’s addressing it head-on, like with “Wax Paper,” or creating whole new worlds to thrive in with Whack World. It’s this gift that will always make Tierra Whack an artist to press play on, because you never know quite what to expect other than that it’ll be well produced and conceptually considered.

Maxo Kream, “Time Out”

My favorite thing JPEGMAFIA has done in recent memory has to be this frenetic production for Maxo Kream’s “Time Out,” which has the Texas-raised rapper continuing his career-long meditation on his African roots. The percussion here reminds me of head-spinning drum circles I witnessed in Accra, adding a memorable bounce to the hypnotic keyboard-led beat. Maxo Kream is best when burrowing deep into his own family history, exploring what it took for them to escape their social standing. “If I start talking amphetamines, I might go back to downers, I’m getting sick of Houston, city filled with out-of-owners.” Lines like this express a specificity that lets keen listeners know that Maxo has been through it himself, knowing that if he indulges in cocaine or meth for one night, he’ll relapse on his actual drugs of choice—opiates or benzodiazepines—just to make it through the hellish comedown. It’s a vicious cycle we’re all trying to avoid, getting on one drug as a way to get off another, except the only thing is: the drugs are so strong today, quitting them cold turkey could be dangerous, so much so that you could die. Talk about a death drive.

Mike Sherm, “Wrong Idea”

I can’t remember the last time Mike Sherm missed. He’s more than the Bay’s answer to Tyga. He’s single-handedly keeping alive a mutation of hyphy that he could arguably be described as the best evolution of it yet. Every song seems to be sub-three minutes of pure turn-up fodder, meant to offend anybody over 50 and signal to everyone else that it’s time to party, and to leave the morality at the door. “Wrong Idea” follows the Mike Sherm formula: two verses and a chorus meant to be repeated enough times to have it memorized by the end of the first listen. It harks back to the early 2010s days of West Coast hits that could be both danceable club records and music to ride along to, whether you’re with a car full of girls or with your boys heading to the beach.

Extras

The best music history is being written under YouTube videos. Not too long ago, I came across a comment from an old New Yorker about how the mixing of many early rap records was optimized for Ed Koch topography: boomboxes turned up to their limits, the sound ricocheting off buildings and down alleys and skyward from basketball courts. “Audophilia” has always been a scam; yes, you can perfect a mix in hermetic studios on astronomically expensive speakers, but that’s not how anyone else is going to hear the song. The sounds waves will inevitably be scrambled and reconstituted through phone speakers, by DJs, bent onto radio and compressed a half-dozen times. And still, the truly immortal beats are the ones you can recognize three blocks over.

Earlier this year, our own Matthew Ritchie wrote about the struggle, during his college baseball career, to land on the perfect walkup song. His early attempts came out muddled or grey on the tinny speakers of Division 3 stadiums. But then: Tay Keith. The Memphis producer’s track for Key Glock’s “Russian Cream” was not only instantly recognizable, but instantly immersive, even when reduced to its core elements. There are the drums; there is the sense you’re in one of those Pokemon towns where you try to catch ghosts. That’s it. Put another way: there’s no mistaking it for anything, or anyone else.

Yesterday, Tay Keith was found dead in his Nashville apartment by police conducting a welfare check. He was 29 years old. Born Brytavious Lakeith Chambers in Memphis, he carried that city’s hip-hop lineage—rooted in club culture, thunderous yet playful—to its delirious endpoint. The year he turned 22, he became one of the biggest and most imitated producers of his generation. He was already among its most innovative.

A Tay Keith beat could be as spare as a few piano notes. His work with BlocBoy JB is designed to be felt not just in your head and your shoulders but your feet; it’s dance music. Sometimes he flipped slasher movie scores into ass-shaking anthems, other times he mutated turn-of-the-century soul sampling into something more fucked up and more harrowing. Just look at how MCs can’t help but shuffle and hop around in the videos for his tracks.

In that breakout year of 2018, Keith produced the third and final movement of Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” one of the canonical rap songs of the 2010s. At the time, Travis and Drake, who contributes two guest verses, were two of the three or four biggest rappers alive, Drake being perhaps the most famous artist on the planet. And still, when Keith’s production comes in, it recalibrates the entire record. It helps that it’s announced by his producer tag (“Tay Keith, fuck these n----s up!”), so profane that it couldn’t be played in full on the radio. It didn’t matter—you knew.

Keith, who graduated from Middle Tennessee State and partnered with non-profits to outfit schools with instruments and software, often spoke about his desire to become a college professor. He will not get that chance. But his work will live on and, surely, be studied by generations of producers to come. And when someone puts on one of his beats, you’ll know it’s him.

AZ can remember a time where entire sections of his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood were still populated by drug dealers. Today many of those same corners have been replaced by boutique coffee shops where yuppie influencers film themselves dining out. Near where he used to see The Notorious B.I.G. (who cameoed alongside him in Jay-Z’s “Dead Presidents” video) loitering around, there’s now a Whole Foods Market.

In a rare phone interview, the 54-year-old rap veteran born Anthony Cruz explained this forever-shifting landscape in New York City:.“Everything is just an illusion: here today, gone tomorrow,” he says. “The tides are constantly changing. Places can become unrecognizable, and people you never thought you’d lose suddenly disappear. I guess I miss the days [before gentrification]… back when the New York streets still had that edge to them. It was more exciting back then, because everyone wasn’t recording on their iPhones.”

The passing of time is at the very core of AZ’s new album, Doe or Die III, which is one of the year’s surprising rap highlights due to the way its lead rapper grapples with getting older, while revisiting familiar dance steps in a manner that’s fresh rather than staid. ““Still Jackie” continues the storytelling of “Ho Happy Jackie” with a similar, lilting, Sunday afternoon soul groove. However, the familiar female voices, who are repeating a motif from the original Doe or Die, are now much more matriarchal, one of them joking: “AZ, you know he’s my childhood crush!” Familiar yet weathered, there’s a refreshing self-awareness that AZ is no longer a young man, and this makes Doe or Die III a warm, relatable listen.

On the velvet-smooth highlight “No Need For Lactose”—a reference to a bar on 1995’s “Uncut Raw” and also a technique for cooking crack—a dejected AZ raps about how “what was once a playground is now just a place to pee.” He also yearns for a return to the days when the Big Apple subways still felt “spooky.”

These observations nail the crushing disappointment of returning to a home that’s been compromised by capitalism, and subsequently made unrecognizable. The fascination with overcoming dark generational cycles, and connecting the concrete hustle to some sort of spiritual realm, also represents a satisfying throughline all the way to his 1994 guest verse on Nas’s “Life’s A Bitch”—an eternally sage boom-bap anthem, where old-soul AZ steals the show with a dazzling verse that debates the limitations of actuality and what really happens after we “expire and turn to vapors.”

Raised in Brooklyn, AZ tells me his fascination with words started at a young age. He liked how smart the block’s elders looked, sitting on their stoops reading the New York Times every morning. Before he was riding bikes, he was reading the daily broadsheets cover-to-cover, his vocabulary rapidly expanding in the process. With a slightly husky voice and a head shot-precise use of inner rhyming multis, AZ the rapper almost instantly sounded like Frank Vincent with a Kool G Rap flow. Many—including this author—consider his 1995 debut, Doe or Die, an enduring classic.

However, I also believe what made AZ rather unique among his mafioso rap peers was all the philosophical lyrical musings about looming disease outbreaks and Mayor Giuliani being part of the illuminati. AZ was among the first street rappers to talk frequently about ideas like spiritual elevation and meditation on wax, which meant a golden era AZ song was just as likely to reference shootouts as it was being on “a higher plane than the Hebrews.” This prescient eye and an embrace of out-there concepts only sharpened with criminally underrated 1998 follow up, Pieces Of A Man, particularly via the nihilistic and the RZA-produced “Whatever Happened (The Birth).”

This is a song where AZ channels the energy of the rebellious slave leader Nat Turner (more on this later), and plunges down to murky horrorcore depths. Credit should also go to the 2005 deep cut, “Bedtime Story.” This was a staple on my teenage iPod and a far jollier rap song where AZ cleverly turned all his East vs West run-ins into a Disneyfied, Peter Pan-esque fable for his child son.

Across a 30-plus-year career, AZ has had notable flirtations with mainstream success thanks to being part of the Dr. Dre-led, platinum-selling Black Goodfellas of a supergroup, The Firm; embracing an R&B sound with minor hits like the simmering “Sugar Hill”; and also popping up as a guest on D’Angelo’s coldest ever remix.

But it’s also fair to say that his steely raps have never really been the most marketable thing in the world, either. While Nas (whose Mass Appeal label is releasing Doe or Die III) leveled up with raucous Diddy-guested singles and a rising celebrity profile, AZ always seemed more preoccupied with making things more gutter sonically; an uneasy passenger within the major label system.

Today, he tells me he’s happy to be independent and no longer connected to a major label. And, on the new album, he repeatedly toasts to never becoming an industry “slave.” All these career lessons are on full display across Doe or Die III, with AZ’s trademark alliteration-heavy passages and slightly irritated snarl both intact despite the advancing years. “Uniqueness” sees AZ trading bars with a heartbroken, howling Bobby Womack-like soul singer, unsure whether to do a prosecco clink to better days, or give a nearby enemy a death stare.

“I rhyme for the streets/Never those who line up their peeps” is the song’s anti-snitching rallying cry—and also displays classic AZ bar structure, where verbs are used like joists to hold up and support the punchlines. This same song celebrates AZ’s sobriety. Often rap sequels can feel like retreading old steps and just a chance to scrape more money out of a calcified IP. Yet AZ moving on from a do or die mindset to being a sober, high-functioning adult, feels like genuine growth.

Yes, the new album has a few dips, but for the most part it’s a breezy return to form for a Don who has actually made it to brighter pastures. Further proof that being 50-plus only sharpens your pen. By having a near-billionaire like Nas as an executive producer, Doe or Die III has also enjoyed a charged-up marketing campaign across the last month or so. This has included a high-profile appearance alongside Esco on Jimmy Fallon, where they performed the new song “No Surprises” with The Roots.

Their duets over the years have often been imbued with a Versace suit-wearing, Cuban-smoking vibe that can be engrossing, but also cloud efforts to fully absorb the underlying messages. From “Mo Money Mo Murder” to “The Essence,” AZ welcomes my suggestion that all these generational team-ups are proof that it’s about time we finally got a full-length collaborative LP between the pair. One where AZ and Nas are back-to-back on the cover like Lethal Weapon.

“The culture needs it!” AZ said hopefully. “A Nas and AZ album is what the people want. I want it, too, so hopefully it happens. It is like red wine; the best rappers only get better with age.” AZ is somewhat of an enigma compared to a lot of his more podcast-hosting, outspoken golden era rap peers. He tends to create from the shadows and remain humble despite his cult fame. Many of my New York friends tell me stories of seeing him around the city doing everyday shit.

Still, an elusiveness remains during our interview: my phone conversation with AZ doesn’t quite hit 30 minutes due to him having a stacked day of podcast interviews, disappearing just before I could ask him about D’Angelo’s aura. His mystery remains. Regardless, we had an illuminating conversation, touching on subjects including the enduring qualities of Sosa from Scarface, surviving the so-called East vs. West beef, and the concept of redemption.

The interview has been lightly condensed for clarity.

The original “Ho Happy Jackie” might have the most enchanting, analogue-era charm of any boom-bap beat I’ve ever heard. What made you want to revisit this material on Doe or Die III? And, where do you think Jackie would be in 2026?

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If you’re reading this magazine, you’re probably just as much of a music sicko as I am, which means that those of you who live in the same cities will likely end up congregating at the same handful of venues. In my four years here, I’ve seen places come and go, from hole-in-the-wall spots like Bushwick Public House to massive venues like the ill-fated Brooklyn Mirage. I’ve set out to provide a rough guide of what to expect at those Brooklyn venues that have survived or recently opened: the highlights, lowlights, whether or not to have a few drinks BEFORE getting there (every single one of them, buddy, we’re in New York). But I also want to hold these places accountable on points beyond exorbitant drink prices: poorly imagined entrance layouts, shitty sound systems, and IKEA-core design principles. It feels as if these venues can do whatever they want and get away with it. I’m hoping that, even from my tenuous perch here at POW, these words could have some impact on getting that Modelo tall boy down from $16 to somewhere closer to $10.

Public Records

My concerts: Actress, Anycia Kim x Tony Seltzer, Loukeman/Vegyn, Peanut Butter Wolf

Train stop: Hoyt-Shemerhorn (A/C, G)

Come if you: are an audiophile, like cocktails

Four words or less: Tasteful Gentrification-Core

An all-around great venue, despite its high ceilings, industrial feel, and general gentrify-design aesthetics. The upstairs bar is for food and cocktails and vinyl DJs, or stopping in for a drink with friends (gulp—prices). Their outdoor space is the Atrium, ideal for daytime performances when the subterranean sound room feels too nocturnal. This is their newest addition, and I’m a fan; it’s where I saw Vegyn and Loukeman sets last summer (Loukeman killed it; I love Vegyn’s music dearly, but his DJ sets have felt uncharacteristically pandering). The crown jewel here is the Sound Room; the system itself is incredible, and the layout feels designed with the acoustics as a priority. Dimly lit in red and heavy on fog, the moody aesthetics fuse with that sound into a singularly intoxicating sensory experience.

Its location in Gowanus speaks to the area’s shifting demographics, the trickle of gentrification that started in the ‘90s becoming a flood post-Covid. It sits on an otherwise industrial block, surrounded by lots that are in the midst of being converted into high rises. This is not a shocking development (pun intended): it’s only a few blocks away from the stroller- dog owner-frequented Park Slope. It slots in neatly with the slew of luxury buildings, breweries, and nightclubs meant to appeal to the “new,” post-Canal cleanup (but still active Superfund site) Gowanus.

Report card

Drinks: C+

Great if slightly too-fancy cocktails, but insane prices for Threes Brewing cans. I remember it being $16 for Vliet pilsner/Logical Conclusion tallboys at some point (egregious), but it’s since changed to $12 for a 12 oz can (feels better but just as egregious). I’ll give them credit for carrying a local brewery, at least. That, coupled with the quality cocktails, balances this score out. But beer drinkers beware—just stop at Wild East or one of the other breweries around here before the show.

Sound: A+ (Sound Room)

The best one on this list, it sounds incredible even when loud. There was a moment during UK legend Actress’s set when he was playing with the low-end EQ on a particularly bass-heavy track, and it felt like the whole ceiling was shaking. Definitely loud as shit, but considering the room itself was being moved by the low frequencies, it never reached true ear-damage decibel levels. Versatile, but ideal for electronic genres like dub techno or house that rely on subtle shifts in EQ or filtering. Even the most minute twist of a CDJ frequency knob is noticeable on this beast of a setup.

Verdict: A-

New-build vibes be damned, this is a sick venue that while lacking in DIY charm, makes up for it with an excellent sound system and multiple spaces. There’s a “Public Record,” of no relation, shockingly close by. Take note, Uberers.

Elsewhere

My concerts: YHWH Nailgun + DJ E, Misogi, Lunice

Train stop: Jefferson St. (L)

Come if you: Follow Hyperpopdaily and/or read Pitchfork

Four words or less: Well-Curated, Quasi-DIY

If an artist is popular online, they’re probably playing here when they stop through on tour. The curation is consistent, if occasionally hypebeasty, and seems to take its cues from social media buzz. Despite being a legit independent music venue (i.e.- not owned by Live Nation), there’s something decidedly pseudo-DIY about this place. To buy drinks, you scan your credit card onto a wristband, and tap your wrist (human ApplePay) to complete the purchase. It feels Ticket Masterish at best and, at worst, designed to take advantage of the drunken masses by fostering a more mindless drinking experience.

Like Public Records, your concertgoing experience here depends on which stage you choose. I’ve seen most shows in their Zone one, which is smaller and tends to highlight underground artists like Misogi, or up-and-comers like Projectile (fka Kid Smoko). The main hall is for headliners, often artists fresh off a favorable Pitchfork review and/or general industry hype. I saw the neo-postpunk three-piece YHWH Nailgun headline here, preceded by a set from Andean mashup maestro DJ E/Chuquimamani-Condori. The rooftop might be my favorite space of theirs, and is perfect for DJ sets during warmer weather. Seeing Lunice up there spinning Hudson Mohawke songs brought joy to my heart, and spoke to my teenage TNGHT-obsessed self.

Report card

Drinks: C+

The aforementioned wristband thing is an automatic turn-off for me. If they think people not scanning their credit card will make them buy more drinks, they’re probably right. But there’s something off-putting, even vaguely dystopian about it, and makes me feel like this place is purely a money-making venture. Maybe I need to get over my romantic notions of art x capitalism though, I get that these places need to keep the doors open.

Smoking Area: A-

Decently sized little patio area downstairs, to the left of zone one. Room for mingling, or plenty of space if you’re out there to smoke a solitary spliff. Kind of close to the entrance, can occasionally get hectic.

Verdict: B+

This place does a good job of keeping its finger on the wavering, digitally mediated pulse. Its smartly curated programming elevates it above its oddly commercial trappings.

99 Scott

My concerts: Magdalena Bay (DJ set), Loidis/Skee Mask

Train stop: Jefferson St. (L)

Come if you: like raves, going out to dance

Four words or less: Bushwickian Warehouse

This description is as much a reference to its geographical location in the heart of the Bush (“where some people dare to dream that they can learn to skateboard at 39 years old”), as it is to the venue’s demographic. I’m not here to do the whole Bushwick-patchwork-tattoo shtick, I’ll leave that to the Instagram sketch comedy community. But “Bushwickian” feels like a good catch-all for this venue, even if it might be impossible to encapsulate all of Bushwickia into a single archetype. It’s right next to Elsewhere, so the crowds overlap.

Sound: F+

Mid. Actually, worse than mid: butt cheeks. Unclear whether the sound setup itself is the issue, or more likely, the cavernous space makes it impossible to control resonance. Either way, boy, does this place sound like shit. I first saw Magdalena Bay do a DJ set here and wrote it off as a one-night issue. But then I saw Loidis and Skee Mask—both renowned for their sound design—and their set was reduced to a blurred, pounding mess.

If I hadn’t seen Skee Mask at Public Records and been blown away, I might be less critical. I’d never seen Loidis and was fiending to hear some One Day-adjacent microhouse/dub techno played extremely loud. But the sound was so bad that I had to leave after an hour and a half and way too many smoke breaks. Even earplugs (paid for at the bar 😐) weren’t enough to make a difference. The only reason I’m refraining from full F is that I understand it’s impossible to control sound in a massive warehouse setting with glass windows. But there has to be some way to set things up so we hear more than just throbbing, overpowering bass and piercing hi-hats.

Drinks: D+

Terrible prices but nothing out of the ordinary. Aforementioned $16 Modelo tallboys to try and soothe my head from the horrendous sound.

Outdoor space/smoking area: A

I’ll give them credit for a spacious, pleasant smoking section out back. Cigarette possessors beware: someone is guaranteed to ask you for one. A refuge from the barrage of ear damage-inducing 909 kicks in the main room.

Bathrooms: A+

So many bathrooms downstairs, seemingly all gender-neutral. I don’t remember the last time I walked into a semi-empty bathroom during one of these events; the merch line was longer than the bathroom line. Shoutout to them for at least having that side of things figured out.

Verdict: D

This is the venue I’ve attended the least on this list, so maybe I caught them on a bad night(s). But to put it kindly: I will not be racing back here for a show. Not going full F due to the interesting-looking room, spacious outdoor area, and plenty of bathrooms, and I’m giving them a slight break on sound due to the nature of the structure. Still, I would avoid this if the sound of the music itself is a priority on your night out.

Market Hotel

My concerts: Shlohmo, Ryan Hemsworth + Umru etc. (Umru Capacity Series), Ovlov/Anamanaguchi

Train stop: Myrtle-Broadway (J, M)

Come if you: like 2slimey/YhappoJJ and/or Heated Rivalry

Four words or less: Myrtle-Broadway in Venue Form

You can literally hear the J train rattle by outside the window. Beyond the venue’s proximity to the station, it has a lot of overlapping qualities: gritty, loud, diverse, constantly changing. It feels like a microcosm of Myrtle-Broadway, and not in the liminal space-fantasy meme sense that the Dunkin-Checkers-Popeyes lineup has come to represent on the internet. That now-infamous string of fast food chains is celebrated online as an endearing eyesore that gives recent transplants the illusion of existing in an authentic, REAL New York; some vision of a Velvet Underground bohemia-in-rundown-neighborhood scene. The reality is more complicated. Longtime residents view the chains as a residual sign of a grimmer former reality, a reminder of when the intersection’s gritty feel extended beyond a chic in-joke. The venue and station both foreground this jarring collision of transplants in their 20s and 30s and Brooklyn lifers that can only come from an interchange station like M-B.

This notion of the venue-as-station extends even to the shows. The calendar is an eclectic mix of rap (2slimey and YhappoJJ), a rotating series of queer events like 2024’s endless brat-themed parties and, more recently, Heated Rivalry functions (my personal favorite name of these is “Aphex Twinks”), all the way to bands like Ovlov or Greet Death. Most of these shows appeal to the same demographic: young people, and mostly young people who just moved to the city. But then you look at the calendar and see a Berner show, and it’s clear their programming casts a wide net.

Report card

Sound: A-

Very solid. Shlohmo’s REPULSOR and its shoegaze future-bass sounded incredible here when matched with his signature wall projections. Got the job done without familiar issues for loud-ass shows.

Getting inside: C

If there’s one frustrating indication of the venue’s diversity of shows, it’s the intense and oddly touchy security at the door. That coat check/merch area at the entrance can be a brutal bottleneck before or after shows.

Verdict: A-

Endearingly gritty and DIY, without sacrificing a professional setup. Cozy but not tiny, perfectly sized for what it is. Definitely one of my overall favorites in the borough.

Baby’s All Right

My concerts: TAGABOW, Vegyn, Glixen

Train stop: Marcy Av. (J, M)

Come if you: like shoegaze and/or find new music through Spotify

Four words or less: Burgh Box Bar

This is the most difficult one to separate from the pack. Nothing stands out, and that’s mostly a good thing. It’s cozy, but not a shoebox. Big enough that TAGABOW can do their Boiler Room, perform-at-the-same-level-as-the-audience thing and there’s still enough space for the crowd around them (to do their head-nod, barely emotive shoegaze concert thing). It tends to skew toward rock/pop/guitar music shows, in my experience, but I also saw Vegyn here. There’s always a bunch of artists I’ve never heard of on their calendar, and I get the sense this is because their programming leans a bit millennial.

The additional bar and booth-seating area also makes it well suited for events, like Pitchfork’s Bladee zine launch. There’s one bar near the entrance, but keep walking past that one and the stage is in the back, along with another bar on the other side. It doubles as a non-venue bar more effectively than any other spot on here besides Public Records. The calendar is a mix of established artists and newer acts, especially loud guitar-pedal bands (looking for a shoegaze synonym.. anybody?). It’s easy to get to from Brooklyn/Queens off the J or M trains, and right over the bridge if you’re coming from Manhattan (good for you).

Nothing here subtracts from the concertgoing experience, besides that damn ramp placement. To be clear: shoutout to them for being wheelchair accessible. But standing there mid-show and having to constantly move out of people’s way is a nightmarish routine. Maybe that’s just my fault for always ending up in that spot. This is the important shit, people: where NOT to stand at the show.

Report card

Bathrooms: A

i. Easily accessible from the side/booth area (where the merch usually is) down the stairs. I don’t know if it’s because the venue is relatively small, or the bathrooms are kind of hidden from view, but there never seems to be a line. Like 99 Scott, gender-neutral.

Stage lighting/setup: A-

The lights behind the stage are a nice touch, and give photos taken here an immediately identifiable back-lit look. I also like the general stage layout, specifically the way it’s tucked behind the two bars.

Verdict: B+

I have less to say about this one, and that’s not a bad thing—it almost seems to be by design. Their programming doesn’t always speak to me, but overall they do a good job.

In 2026, when hundreds of streams pay artists pennies, it’s more important than ever to support local venues. Lifespans are short for these places; if Brooklyn Mirage is any indication, one (or more) of the spots on this list might be closed in three years. Maybe another becomes legendary, synonymous with a certain scene or era, and 20 years from now someone will look back at this article as a historical document (slow down slow down).

Go check out these spots for yourself, while they’re still here. These are just my thoughts on the venues, after all. You could go on a different night, with a different group of friends, for a different show, with a different special someone, and have a completely different experience. There’s only one way to find out.

February 1990 — Ian Dench and his bandmates from EMF are flying from London to L.A. to clear a sample for “Unbelievable,” the lead single off their debut, Shubert Dip. From the moment they recorded it, they knew the song had appeal and felt it’d be well received. What the British band didn’t know was that a slight by comedian Andrew Dice Clay, and a fleeting Rick Rubin meetup, would lead to one of the ‘90s’ most massive hits.

“Unbelievable” arrived at the perfect cultural moment—a sweet spot in the early 90s’ when rap really broke into the mainstream—where “Ice Ice Baby” wasn’t yet a laughingstock, and we’re a few years away from Kris Kross’s backwards fashion statement, and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s ode to protruding features. It was this era of openness, this innocent interim where the band emerged. They were huge fans of rap, so having to clear a sample directly from Def Jam (on behalf of EMI) wasn’t a burden—it was exciting.

Dench, the group’s principal songwriter, explains the musical landscape in Britain at the time: “The indie disco clubs in the ‘90s’ played whatever cool records were coming through, a mixture of British bands like The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen and breakthrough hip-hop like Public Enemy, De La [Soul], and Cypress Hill.”

“Unbelievable” begins with drums not unlike what was on many late ‘80s and early ‘90s cuts, a loop plucked from a Beats Breaks and Scratches record. Dench explains the anchoring sample’s origin and usage: Originally it was from The Soul Searchers “Ashley’s Roachclip” that was first used on Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full” and went on to be used in many ‘90s tunes, including PM Dawn’s “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss.”

As for the vocals, Dench famously wrote the lyrics and hummed the tune while attempting to ride his bike one morning, hungover and heavy-hearted from a recent breakup.

Before the fateful L.A. trip, the group performed “Unbelievable” on Jukebox Jury, a British talent show where the decision was evenly split between the audience and celebrity judges. The audience loved it, but the judges (one of whom was notably The Cure’s Robert Smith) did not. The band stuck with their intuition and finished the album in hopes of getting a record deal. “Unbelievable” was the last song they recorded for Shubert Dip, and the first take is the one we’ve come to know.

In L.A., Dench and crew were met with surreal interactions that cemented the song’s fate. The song contains a sample of comedian Andrew Dice Clay’s trademark “Oh!” that punctuates the chorus. “[My bandmates] Zac and Derry saw Andrew Dice Clay driving away from the Comedy Store. They tried to talk to him,” Dench says, letting out a laugh, before adding: ”He just flipped them off and rolled the window up.”

The next day, they went into The Rainbow on Sunset to grab a bite, and there was Rick Rubin, having lunch. Dench remembers a casual chat. “So I politely explained the situation in between gushing about his brilliant records.”

Rubin told them to send a fax to his office in the morning. “He cleared the sample the following day,” says Dench. “A lovely man.”

Dench fondly recalls L.A. as a heyday when they felt like they were “driving into their dreams.” Clearly, they did so because anyone who is of a certain age will no doubt remember “Unbelievable’s” inescapable ubiquity.

Here, through earnest anecdotes, the original bandmates remember the late Zac Foley, their bassist responsible for the song’s standout bassline, and detail the song’s making. A lifetime later, Dench and the group’s frontman, James Atkin, recall the internal joy of a young band on the rise.

Let’s start by talking a bit about Zac and the song’s bassline. Do you recall Zac coming up with his part? Tell us a bit about him.

IAN DENCH: “Unbelievable” started with the phrase “The things you say, your purple prose just gives you away, the things you say, you’re unbelievable” and the riff which Zac and I played in unison. We were into the West Coast bands who absorbed hip-hop into their live sound, like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More. And Zac loved to pank his bass. Zac was a prince amongst men; a naughty, wickedly funny, rebellious prince, like a cross between Prince Hans of the Southern Isles and Aron Stark. He was our best friend, and we miss him dearly.

The song was a bigger hit in the States than it was in the UK. Tell us about the moment when you got the news.

JAMES ATKIN: Yes. It hit the top spot in the U.S., which was magical, but it didn’t quite reach number one in the U.K. We were held off by that Brian Adams song from the Robin Hood film, which was massive and seemed to stay in the charts forever that year.

JA: The most wonderful memory was crossing the border in our tour bus from Canada back into the States. We had heard the news a couple of hours earlier and, as you can imagine, we started the celebrations big time. The border officers were a little unamused at our partying antics and, for a moment, were considering not letting us back in as we were very intoxicated.

ID: It felt… unbelievable! More indescribable, but I’ll try. When you pick up a guitar and start playing in a band and hear all the stories of bands taking off in the U.S., of musical euphoria, adoration, and excess, you dream of it happening to you but don’t really believe it will. So as we drove into the US that night that James described, with a six-week sold-out tour ahead of us, it was like driving into our dreams.

How did the song change your lives? As cliché as it is, it must’ve felt overnight.

JA: The shows became bigger very quickly. Only months earlier, we’d been in a transit van staying in very cheap hotels.

ID: James and I wrote Schubert Dip entirely, and the band had its own joy, which is why the music had something. Success was as if we were letting the whole world in on that. It’s difficult to let the world join your band. It has very big opinions, and it messed with our internal peace. It has taken years for James and me to find that again.

Is it true that Ian came up with the song’s melody and words while riding his bike? Please give us the full story on that happenstance of a moment..

ID: Yup. All the songs on Schubert Dip were about the girl who had just dumped me. We had been less-than-honest with each other, and I was looking for lyrical concepts when it struck me that the word ‘unbelievable’ meant both that she was wonderful and less-than-honest.

The guitar riff and the verses just popped out in a moment. James wrote the amazing rap, and there you have it. To this day, I have lyrical concepts and musical energies constantly swimming around my head. It is just a way of ‘being’ which sort of tortures me, but which I love when moments like that happen.

JA: Ian arrived at a rehearsal with the song and riff buzzing around his head. There is an early home demo that we recorded one night. You can hear our friends chatting and larking about in the background.

Were you guys aware of Def Jam and its history?

JA: We adored hip-hop, along with the dance music that was coming through at that point. We came from an indie guitar background originally, but embraced all genres. Hip-hop was so fresh and cool. There were a few big UK hip-hop records we listened to non-stop: Buffalo Stance by Nene Cherry and 20 Seconds to Comply by Silver Bullet. Our producer, Ralph Jezzard, had just done the Strychnine Remix of the Silver Bullet track. I think this is one of the reasons we chose to work with Ralph. You can hear hip-hop influences in “Unbelievable.”

We also loved the electro sound that morphed into hip-hop, acid house, and Soul 2 Soul, and how they absorbed hip-hop in a very British way. The EMF sound was a response to all these influences. It made our lives when Afrika Bambaataa remixed “Unbelievable.” It is still my favorite remix.

The song contains great samples. Tell us a bit about the Gylan Kain one and how you guys came across it. Tell us about the drums, too.

ID: Ralph Jezzard had a drum sample, which I programmed on top and gave the drums a rocky edge. Ralph bought most of the source material for the samples on vinyl and old cassettes with random recordings from the radio. We went through it all together, sampling and dropping them into the track. This was a new way of working. We were trying to emulate the hip-hop pioneers in New York. We loved how you could make random connections and how it made our quirky British songs sound cool and American. It just felt right the moment we heard it, and it is part of all the things that fell into place naturally.

Take us into the recording process and what you remember about that day.

ID: We recorded “Unbelievable” in Gooseberry Studios in Tulse Hill in South London because they let us sleep on the floor to save money. Derry tried to cook an egg in the microwave, and it exploded, so the whole place stank, but we didn’t care. We had just signed a record deal, and we were on top of the world. The drums were programmed as I mentioned, Zac and I played our guitar and bass parts. I had already programmed the synth on a Yamaha CS-10 and piano on the Casio FZ-1, as we used these as part of our live sound. We played around with the samples, and then it came to the vocal. We wanted to capture the easy energy the song had live, so we got a couple of beers, and James went into the vocal booth with Derry so he wouldn’t feel so on the spot. He only did two takes; we used the first one.

What comes to mind when you hear or play the song these days?

ID: People ask, ‘Aren’t you fed up with playing “Unbelievable?”’ but we never tire of it because the audience always goes crazy. Watching folks grooving away with smiles on their faces is what this is all about. And I think James and I found our joy again. We have loved writing new material. The band is better than it has ever been with new bassist Stevey Marsh and drummer Aid Todd. Even though we’re older, our live shows are more beautiful and chaotic than ever.

JA It’s a song that never seems to fade away. We are so lucky to have it in our arsenal.

The idea, Serengeti says, was to be normal. The legendary avant-garde rapper from Chicago had been urged by MC Paul Barman to approach producers Messiah Muzik and Steel Tipped Dove about making a record together, and when Geti did so, the intention was maximum legibility. “I was going to just try to do an album with some hooks in it, a regular sort of record with hooks and raps, real clean,” he says. What came out instead was KENNYV, the latest in a series of albums and EPs Geti has made from the perspective of Kenny Dennis, a late-middle aged former white rapper from greater Chicago who’s obsessed with sports, top heavy from a preposterous mustache, and, in recent installments, using streetwear drops and livestreaming as a palliative for his fractured psychological state.

But KENNYV is a departure from other KD installments in many ways, including its process: Geti built most of the songs from their cadences outward, a technique he witnessed during his brief foray into the sync-music world. When he went in to flesh out the lyrics—and realized that Kenny was ranting about old White Sox utilities players in his subconscious—he did so with typically disorienting detail. Trying to bone up on his foreign-film knowledge to impress another character in the universe Geti’s created, Kenny speculates that a staircase on screen might represent fear. “I’m getting cerebral this year,” he says, proudly.

KENNYV comes just weeks after symphony of psalms, a full-length collaboration with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, and in the wake of brilliant, barely-promoted albums like last year’s universe, in which two husbands rue the capoeira instructor-slash-spiritual leader, named Universe and voiced by Geti, who lured their wives to a tropical island. We spoke by phone about his new music, his unorthodox approach to recording, and the world of professional arm wrestling.

Earlier this year I was at a ceviche place in L.A. with billy woods and Kenny Segal. Ajai came up, and both those guys were like, “Man, we never know when he’s recording, the process is such a mystery.” And then a day later, we’re on an email chain about the universe album: “Did you even know about this?” I guess my question, before we get to the substance of the music, is: It seems like you’re just rolling these things out with no warning. What’s driving that?

I just like to make stuff. I’ll catch a little buzz of an idea and I can do it pretty quickly. And then I’m like, well, what am I waiting for? Sit on it? I’ll just put it up. I’m not about to hire press people; it just doesn’t seem worth it. It’s so much money, and you might have a press campaign and it still gets [no attention]. It’s not the best idea to do it like this, probably, but this has been par for my whole thing. I was backed up on projects ever since I started, so I just wanted to get it all out.

Even then, the proximity of releases is crazy. You just put out the new Kenny record; I was texting my friend about it, we exchanged three or four messages, and then realized we were talking about different albums. She was still on symphony of psalms. What was the genesis of that record?

Greg had sent me some beats probably—I don’t know—a year ago? And I just would drag ‘em over and record without even hearing them, just drag ‘em in and just go. That’s the way I have fun doing music, to not preview the beats, it’s like a surprise.

Wait, what? You’ll just have Logic open on your computer and drop in a file you’ve never listened to?

Yeah, yeah. That’s how I do it. That’s how Ajai was made. I’d never listened to those Kenny beats. I would drag them up and have fun. It’s super fun. You know what I’m saying? Just to keep going, work for an hour—but it’s a very productive hour. You might get 20 things done and then shut it down, don’t listen to it, and then record again the next day. And after about a week, you see what you got.

Are you writing in the moment, are you freestyling?

OK, so with Ajai, I had written a lot [beforehand]. I was in a fit of fun. It was so much fun to write all that stuff. So I have all these rhymes. Kenny sent me a pack of 20 beats or something, so I just have ‘em up and load it up and record without hearing the beat, but I got all the rhymes. It makes it more fun to adapt to a beat you haven’t heard before.

Would you have written those rhymes to other beats, or do you write acapella?

I never write to beats. I just write.

This latest record sounds a little different in that regard.

Yeah, it started as a freestyle. I didn’t intend to make it a Kenny record. I was shooting for something else. And then when I was trying this different process where I was going to do some topline over some beats—because I’d never really done that before. So I had done a little topline. And then once I went back in to listen to what I did, I had my headphones on and I clicked record, and this Kenny stuff came out. I had no intentions of doing this record, but I was like, “Oh, that’s what it is.”

The topline tracks just being cadences, flows, finding pockets?

Yeah, for sure. I had been with some people doing that while doing that sync world stuff, but I had never done that over my shit, you know what I’m saying? So I was trying something different. And then when I pulled it up, the KD just came out. It was that first song, “STINGER,” and I was like, “Oh, yes, this is it. I figured it out. So much fun.” Then two days later, I pretty much got the thing, man.

What can you tell me about that sync world? I​’m so interested in how people make music for that. What was surprising about those sessions to be in?

Well, at first, I had no idea that that world even existed at all. I just met this guy at this bar. He happened to be the main guy, and I got summoned, went over there, did this song, and then it sold, and they’re like, for this much, and I’m like, are you for real? I couldn’t believe it, you know what I’m saying? I wouldn’t do those topline takes [myself] because I’m flying in for these sessions. So I would just have about 30 different verses written, just all ready for any type of situation. Like, yo, this is money. I need to be prepared. So I never had that freedom to just being there just fucking around. A lot of times I would get a brief prior to going to the session.

What was it like to write from a brief like that?

It was great. It changed how I thought of things. The indie world can be sort of snobby and have you thinking, “Oh, people that are going for American Idol-type shit, that’s not real music.” And then you get out there, you work with these people, and you’re so humbled—who am I to say anything about these people who want to write the next Bruno Mars smash hit? You know what I’m saying? It really humbled me. I was like, “Wow, there’s no difference between music people.”

Me writing songs in the past, everything’s sad or something. And then to get these songs where everything’s about the future and don’t stop now, come on, you can do it, and tonight’s the night—happy stuff. And it’s like, yo, that’s the best shit. Who wants to hear something about sadness? It was like, man, this shit is actually good. You can play it for your grandmother. You don’t have to explain anything. Just put it on: nieces, nephews, aunts, come on down, let’s have a good time. It’s super fun.

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When So It Goes dropped in 2014, it seemed to augur a new kind of synthesis for New York rap: of noise- and beat scene-influenced production and classicist MCing, of obsessive lineage tracing and futurism, of the Upper West Side and everywhere else. Since Ratking’s dissolution, though, Wiki has worked meticulously, in increments, deepening his technique and inching toward personal insights in various directions. Ancient History, his new LP, is gorgeous, blooming, centered on his beloved city’s park benches and creeping flora. Recommended if you like: Walking in the sun but scowling a little bit, Nas in between financial crises.

Further listening

Fly Anakin, (The) Forever Dream: Night Shift: The Richmond rapper flips deluxe-edition streaming gamesmanship into actual artistic delineation. RIYL: Quelle Chris, Blu.

B0YG1RL & Novagang, EXIT 2B: Experimental sound collage from South Florida rendered in Kreyol. RIYL: A GameBoy Color possessed by a demon.

Zelooperz & Black Noi$e, Pin Breakers: A collection of 11 songs, once thought lost, from 2019, circa the sessions for Dyn-o-mite. Inimitable bounce. RIYL: Danny Brown, Earl Sweatshirt when he’s rapping about Liz Claiborne.

Picture a bedroom with a couple of white teens slouched around it. Bags of chips litter the side tables, ragged AE 2s hang off a shoe rack, someone is shirtless for no reason, another hits a vape until the room resembles a gas chamber. Together they’re watching YouTube on a wall-mounted TV. A new Vince Staples video shows up on the homepage. They’re fans of his Crip raps and stonefaced jokes in interviews because that’s what breaks through to their timelines. They might’ve heard his songs in Into The Spider-Verse and seen his Sprite commercials, but really “Norf Norf” and “Yeah Right” is their shit. They’ve heard the chatter online of a genre flip. “I heard he made a rock album, man. Put it on!” “Hell yeah, what an artist,” they say, waiting for the “White Flag” video to load.

Whether based in the paranoia caused by being a black artist relying on a purchasing audience of mostly white people to pay his bills, Vince sees most of the fans engaging with his work in this light. What’s been missing from these teen’s timelines is Vince channeling the spirit of Dick Gregory when he speaks on a suffocatingly parasitic entertainment industry, or the music videos poking fun at these very fans. To force them into watching a black man whitewashing an American flag just to shoot holes through it with a semi-automatic weapon is to scare them into questioning their own safety for the first time. Their fragile alternate reality within America’s growing walls. Visually, Vince has never missed the mark. Musically, he’s almost never missed either. But for however blunt, timely, and easy to hum along to the lyrics on Cry Baby are, the rock-ish production has taken over the conversation around this continued radical subversion of his image. I say “-ish” because he’s still rapping a great deal and the instrumentation in question is so nondescript that if it got mixed in with your Black Keys playlist you’d wonder where all the energy went.

For an artist with a catalog you can stack against every West Coast great to make an album that subverts every preconceived notion about him is a level of control that’s rare for any creative to possess. For all the intention past and present to define Vince’s music, I see the genre classification as “alternative” and the bleached music as purposeful; a left hand middle finger to Def Jam, a right hand bird to whites and “their” music, and a final trap pulling in all those kids thinking rappers just make violent music for their enjoyment.

RealYungPhil f/ Kwes E & Kare, “Sold Out Shows”

RealYungPhil is bringing a healthier intercontinental flow of ideas than the World Cup. There’s a magic that happens when East Coasters dive into sounds from across the pond (e.g.- Pop Smoke’s early catalog, RX Papi’s all-timer Foreign Exchange, all the Drain Gang indebted ambient trap beats coming out of the DMV right now), and Connecticut’s RealYungPhil is keeping the pipeline humming across his spacey new album until something changes.

Freestyled without much apparent thought, Phil’s bars are simple quotes. Comparable to something you’d see on a cheap T-shirt ironically worn by thrifty college kids (“if I had a penny for every fuck I gave I’d probably be broker than you” or “shut up and listen the golden rule”), the words tumble out with a matching dead-eyed mumble. The blank, ash grey canvas he chooses to stitch his words to for “Sold Out Shows” was produced by Swedish cloud rap producers Woesum and Stacey, creating the atmospheric fog perfect for a couple of London rappers to hop on board. British rappers kwes e and kare fit right in among the foggy hues, flexing and frolicking with glee to pick up Phil’s unwaveringly low heart rate.

Cash Cobain, “I Wanna Rock”

Slizzy Season is upon us. It’s 90 degrees every day in NYC. Every hospital from Plattsburg to North Philly is about to be filled with newborns named Jalen, Karl, and Ogugua. To top it all off, the Barry White of the South Bronx has returned with the after-the-after-party jam to keep the temperature rising. Flexing his might as the King Of Sample Drill, Cash scrambles the late Rob Base’s “It Takes Two,” Usher’s “Lovers & Friends,” and Uncle Luke’s “I Wanna Rock” into Bomb Squad-level sound collage for the Clase Azul era of club goers. For generations, sampling laws have relegated these mash-ups to rich interpolation addicted pop stars, but Cobain is too indebted to his New York roots (and based on the chain he has on in this video, in a high enough tax bracket) to let them slow him down anymore.

509BMG, “Too Young To Understand”

I never know what to expect from 509BMG. He’ll rap for 11 minutes on a reggae record just to turn around and channel Flockaveli to thank Jesus. His unpredictable streak continues on “Too Young To Understand,” a grinding feardorian-produced record about seeing his first dead body as a young teen. Hushed as if he fears reawakening the corpse, he skips around over an obliterated sample of Tyler The Creator’s “Treehome95” recounting the helplessness and confusion of his innocence fading away in. The nightmares keep him up at night. He wonders what the police are around for (an evergreen thought) if they’re going to respond so slowly. In the moment, face to face with the eternal nap, he can’t rip his eyes from the body, but is still unwilling to make too big a fuss about it. “I don’t know what the n---- might have did to deserve it/Far as I know a n---- could have been a pervert.” It’s just the way it is sometimes.

Flo Milli, “She Da Shyt Freestyle”

Flo Milli, Alabama’s Bratz doll turned rap star can’t help but hate everything about everyone at all times. Coming back to the hustle and bustle of music right after maternity leave has her rocketing out barbs; “Let me admit I don’t like none of you bitches/I wish your Mom swallowed all of you bitches.” Every serrated put down she pulls from her glitter covered sleeves cuts deeper than the last. “Miss thought she was cute in whatever that shit is” is the kind of soul splitting put down crafted by a girl who spent years doing her make up in class fantasizing that day someone would try her. Don’t let it be today.

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