I’m guilty of using the metaphor in a single way. As a critic, I’ve sometimes referred to works as being xeroxes of other, more original ones. This is not complicated or cryptic—biting, copying, track nine on Cuban Linx, and so on, they’ve always been rightfully derided. It’s not only an aesthetic or formal failure, but a failure of imagination, purpose, even humanity. That may sound extreme, but I’m not talking about artists who are still working through their influences, filtering what they love through their own ideas and experience; I’m talking about those who try to deliver an exact copy of something that already exists, dressed up as their own invention. (I’m talking about J. Cole.)

But in 7 Piano Sketches, the silent short film directed by Graham Mason, starring Andre 3000, and soundtracked by the latter’s EP of the same name, the xerox becomes something else entirely. In an early scene, Andre—carrying a piano on his back like a knapsack, Bugs Bunny studying under Rico Wade—waltzes into a print shop, opens the lid on a copy machine, and makes prints of his fingers in various positions and with various different pressure points, a silent piano played for electrostatic pulses. An employee (Ruby McCollister) looks on curiously; the images print out in black-and-white; Andre folds them carefully, tucks them inside a worn sketchbook, and steps back out into the night.

From there, Sketches is the comic journey of a man on his way to work. Most of the people Andre encounters have nothing on their backs, but the three who do represent, like the finger pads on those printouts, different constellations of friction. There’s a love interest (Mara Brock Akil) who ambles through a park with a matching piano, but there’s also the young woman (Jiaoying Summers), coughing and seemingly in a trance, who’s forced to tote around a casket. Both of those items have obvious semiotic weight. But it’s the first, and least romantically beset character, a man lugging a washing machine (Matthew Maher), who’s wholly unimpressed with Andre. When the two get into a standoff about who should pass through a stretch of sidewalk first, the man smacks the sketchbook out of Andre’s hand, scattering those xeroxes into the wind.

The word sketch connotes a midpoint in the creative process, or a work that never reaches maturity. The 7 Piano Sketches film puts that definition in conversation—and in conflict—with the unique position that Andre 3000 has found himself in for the last two decades. Since the effective end of Outkast, Andre has occasionally drawn ire from rap fans for his comments that rappers of a certain age have little to say; the clamoring for a solo rap LP has all but evaporated. Instead, when the now 51-year-old does appear to the public, it’s with this 15-minute peek into his piano sessions, or a 90-minute exercise in ambient jazz, or simply by playing flute for unsuspecting passersby in Atlanta, or in Philadelphia, or in LAX terminals. Because of the intense interest in his creative output—and because that output has slowed to a drip—the works in progress, the bits of art that would otherwise be seen as part of an ongoing practice, are instead scrutinized as finished pieces. Hence the static images of fingers working out a melody blowing away, no longer his, no longer under his control.

It’s possible that you read that last paragraph with exasperation. But 7 Piano Sketches is not a complaint, and is not defensive. Though Andre’s character is eventually revealed to work as a piano tuner, he is also clearly, taxonomically, an artist. This is work, to be sure, but he knows it’s not exactly the same type of work that the washing machine repairman is forced to perform. After talking shit to a character named Mr. Anthony about the latest Braves game, Andre says that he has to get to work. “You call that work?” Mr. Anthony snaps back. “Yeah, yeah,” Andre replies. “I know, I know.” It might be important to note that in this case, Mr. Anthony is a giant, anthropomorphized ant. Then again, it might not.

That tonal balance, as finely calibrated as the tuning we see Andre fiddle with on a brown baby grand, is a joy: The ant conversation is genuinely funny, the trials of this middle-aged man grave and breezy at once. Where William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops were a study of what time and degradation do to creative work that was allegedly finished long ago, 7 Sketches, like Andre’s late period writ large, suggests work transformed not by material forces, but by scrutiny and runaway celebrity, where not only subtext, but the text itself, is warped by the artist-audience relationship.

Perhaps the overriding sense of calm Andre exudes here comes from the acceptance that the pieces left behind—not only the xeroxes, but the sketches that are temporarily lost, of which we see intermittent flashes throughout the film—can have their own life with critics and audiences precisely because there are always going to be more coming. The artist merely has to get back to work.

7 Piano Sketches is available to stream exclusively on MUBI.

POW is pleased to announce that we’ll be giving away four promotional posters for this film, all of which have been signed by Andre 3000. The “ultra-limited” posters, which were designed by Gabe Drechsler, are 27 inches by 40 inches and come with a letter of authenticity.

To enter the drawing, you must be a paid subscriber to POW and comment on this post.

The drawing will take place At noon Pacific one week from today, on Friday, October 9.

If you are not yet a paid subscriber, sign up between now and then, for only $7 a month or $70 a year.

The first time I saw Cletus Strap perform, in West Oakland, he was touring with the punk band Zulu. For most of his life, he had found himself behind the drums, most recently sitting in with the band Sparker at Lauren Halsey’s Jazz Jam at the Summa Everythang Community Center. Drums are the backbone of a song; the Inglewood native describes drumming as similar to rapping. “[With] drums, you’re finding notes in between the beat,” he says. “You’re trying to fit as many beats in between your time signature. So it’s kinda like that with syllables.” This summer, Cletus stepped from behind the set and into the spotlight, releasing his eighth studio album (and first on Earl Sweatshirt’s Tan Cressida Records), rappers suck. In his music, his relaxed monotone voice guides listeners through the seeming mundanities of life.

Freshly back from a trip to New York, where he performed songs from the new album, Cletus is breaking down and rolling his weed as the Los Angeles sun shines through his apartment window. The songs about his life in L.A. translated beautifully to the New York audience. “I’m not really surprised they fuck with it,” he says. “I always had a bigger picture of getting this shit out to more people.”

This broader listenership has taken Cletus, a naturally shy person, places he never thought possible. As the eldest brother, he was used to facilitating things for those around him get attention, and that bled into his creative life. It wasn’t until he saw the power of being himself in his life and music simultaneously that he realized the potential he had as an artist.

“My life experiences, my feelings, conversations that I’m having,” he says—it all gets filtered through the writing and production of his records. “So, there’s really no masking with the music or the messages I’m conveying.” Cletus’s music is made for people like him. He explores the feeling of being taken for granted, ruminating on unalterable decisions, moving through the world with a cultivated calm between bouts of depression—and COINTELPRO.

Between loads of laundry, rolling up, and an otherwise thoroughly average Monday, Cletus goes into detail about his latest album, how his other musical skills add to his rapping, and his ever-evolving career.

Why do rappers suck?

Rappers don’t really suck. Some do, but it’s funny because a rapper, basketball player, and drug dealer are like the superheroes in our communities.  But also, COINTELPRO and a lot of people can be bought, and some might even do it cheaper than others just to do it.  So there’s that aspect of like It’s like a jock thing in rapping or like in rap music where people think it’s a competitive sport and not so much art.

It’s the artistic side where people are super pretentious. It’s funny. Women overall might say, “Men suck,” right?  And then there’s always that one corny n---- that’s like, “Not all men.” So it’s like, I thought it would be tight to say rappers suck, and then it was inspired by the shirt that said “Ravers Suck” that, like, skateboarders made, ‘cause they’re like making fun of ravers.

And then, the ravers embraced it, and they started wearing the ravers shirt at raves. So I thought that was kinda cool and funny, so I took that and just put rappers. Rappers suck. And you know, I’m a rapper too. I love rap. It’s some shit I grew up with. It’s sacred in our culture. It felt kinda wrong to say—almost.

 It’s like, “Am I saying I suck if I say rappers suck?”

 I could use it on me, ‘cause I might be late for something, and I’ll be like, “Rappers suck.” Or like I might cancel some shit and it’s like some “rappers suck” shit. I might call out of work or something to work on some music. Rappers suck.

Can you talk about the different parts of your musicality? Obviously, you play drums, you produce, you rap, but how do all those things fit together?

I think so, because with drums, you’re finding the notes between the beats. You’re trying to fit as many beats in between your time signature. It’s like that with syllables, the syllables are the notes down there. Knowing the rudiments definitely helped with my timing.

Yeah.

I also heard a lot of drummers end up becoming front men for some reason.

Like of a band?

Yeah, a lot of people who play drums end up on the mic somehow. It’s a phenomenon; the homie Anaya told me about that, and it usually checks out. Like Dave Grohl, Ringo Starr, shit like that.

 Did you ever see yourself as a person who was in front of anything when you began drumming?

Nah, I really didn’t. I’m a really shy person. I love to perform and stuff, but I blank out on stage. I don’t really like attention and shit. I’m the oldest kid in my family, and when my siblings came around, my parents went to tend to them, and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s cool. Imma dip and go do my own thing.” I like being under the radar for the most part. So, I like the pace that my career is going. I didn’t really get into this to be super known or famous.

If you were such a shy person, somebody who was more content with not being the front person, how did you find your voice?

I realized that people fucked with me for who I am. That’s how I was pulling people in, just being the type of person I am. I realized that was my power. It’s just fun to do shit with people, so that’s kinda how I got my voice. People trusted me with it, they kinda got the battery in my back.

Who were some of the people around you who were being like, “Man, you should actually become a little bit more boisterous?”

Definitely my boy Josue, my boy MadMax, my boy Luzine, my boy Greg, Dontae. I always have those people in my corner. Whenever I send them stuff, they be hyped on it and tell me to keep going or they’ll show up in any way to help me. They devote their time, whether it’s shooting a video or making beats for me.

What were the people who encouraged you, seeing in you that you didn’t necessarily see in yourself?

I feel like I’m a pretty self-aware person, and with music, I feel like a lot of people like to hear themselves speak and I thought that could’ve been the same case with me. They gave me their honest feedback and opinions. I had to get past the point of asking them, “Are you fucking with this because you fuck with me? Or is this actually cool?”

Do you feel like who you are as a person comes through in the different music that you make, either with people or by yourself?

Everything about me goes into the music, like the funny name Cletus Strap and shit. At first, people would think it’s an alter ego or something, but it’s really an alias because I didn’t want to burn out my actual name.

There’s no masking with the music or messages I’m conveying. A lot of times, I’m speaking to myself, the person who didn’t know these things before I knew them. I know a lot of people don’t have older homies or big brothers. If dudes are listening to my shit and they’re coming up, I’m trying to put them on some helpful game.

What were you doing before rap?

I was making music the whole time, honestly. I’ve been making music since I was in 9th grade, not trying to be famous or nothing, but it was some shit me and my friends did. I was in marching band, I was in a rock band before, and I got a jazz band going. It’s just one part of it, honestly, that fulfills me.

How does it feel to have a new sense of success in a different way than you’ve had before?

The newfound shit is kinda crazy. First of all, it’s a lot of like-minded individuals who are fucking with my shit. I was already an Earl fan before I even met bro or anything. I’m going to these shows too, like everybody else, and now I’m on the stage, so it’s pretty cool to see. Sometimes people will walk up and be like, “Bro, it’s crazy I’m talking to you right now.” I don’t even know what to say.

We would just be talking at the concert like regular people, but it’s very flattering that people see me in that way now. It feels like we are a whole community at the end of the day. I didn’t really come up in this bitch thinking that I was going to be in this position necessarily.

What did you expect? Obviously, it’s hard to have expectations to something you’re walking into blindly, but did you want to be somebody who people were nervous to talk to?

I didn’t even now that it would come with it. I just feel like I have to grind everything, so I never had high expectations for anything. Especially as music, MIKE, Sideshow and Thebe opened my eyes to what being a touring and performing artist is like. I just thought it was always going to be excruciatingly hard, and I was willing to do that because it makes me happy and fulfilled to make a cool song, then perform it and then people are fucking with it, or if they’re not fucking with it. It’s something guiding me through this and I’m all for it.

It’s a little bit of a destiny thing too, it’s little things that have happened in my life throughout the years where I’m like, “This is probably meant for me.” I basically prepared for this, my whole life.

Looking back, could you be like, “Oh this thing happened, and this is what led me here,” could you pinpoint those things?

One of my earliest memories is my mom or my cousins bringing up little songs I would sing in the bathtub, shit I just made up, like babbling and shit. That shit would stick for years, like so long until where you don’t even remember these type of events. I’m like, “Damn, I was just in the tub freestyling.” I have this memory of watching the Jackson family show.

An American Dream with Jason Weaver?

Yeah. And my dad was kinda an asshole like Joe, so I kinda felt like Michael, lowkey. I had to be like three, real young and I remember he had this trunk too, and I would stand on it like it was a stage and imagine there was a crowd or something and perform on that little thing.

It’s kinda crazy, the things that you don’t know are going to happen in your life. But there are points at the beginning you had the same inclinations or desires.

Yeah. Then I had a drum set in my room and my little brother had a toy guitar and I would try to get him to jam with me. When people came over to the house, I would tell them to watch us. I would hang fucking lights from the ceiling fan and turn the fan on, let that shit spin around. I had a goof imagination as a kid.

Do you think that stuck with you?

Yeah, later on in school I would be like, “Hey let’s start a rap group.” It would never be serious or nothing until my actual effective rap group happened in like eighth grade.

What was y’all rapping about?

It was definitely like tippin’ on my dick, shit like that. We were definitely listening to a lot of Lil D and shit, like vulgar shit for real. It wasn’t good or nothing, but it was just rapping about whatever.

 Everything was just about swag and shit back then. Very unserious stuff. I got in trouble for rapping one time. We were, in school suspension or something. I was, with the homies. I was saying something like, “I don’t give a fuck about bitches on my dick.” And then, like, the teacher, like, locked me up for, like, a week and made me, do standard everyday.

What’s standards?

Like, “I shouldn’t say bitch”

Oh, like lines.

Yeah just writing shit. It was because I said the word bitch. But yeah, I learned. I also learned at that time too, people could be offended by the things you rap about. I don’t even say bitch as much in my music, so it’s definitely had an effect.

Earlier you were talking about the community that you’ve built around being an artist, not only from other artists, but from your friends as well. How has that helped you?

It’s made me look more important in situations. It’s funny, I was dropping music and then friends of friends would find out about it and they fucked with it. It’s like you’re building a fan base, but you don’t want to call them fans because they’re people you could run into at the homie’s party or something and they become your friends. I thought it was dope that real people resonate with it and we would become cool. Turns out, we’re just like minded individuals at the end of the day. Even with Thebe’s music, I’ve been listening to Thebe since I was in middle school. Then I meet him and it’s not hard to be friends with him, you know?

Also, when you become friends with people like that, does it feel like you kind of know them, because you’ve been listening to them for so long?

In a sense, but there’s a lot to learn about people, everybody doesn’t put everything out there. Putting out your art could help you make friends and find likeminded people. This is definitely a vehicle for that.

 How much do you put into your music?

Good days, bad days, lesson I learned. I guess it’s little things you might not expect for real. You can tell by the way [Earl] makes music, like how good it is, that a lot of time and effort has been put into it. I didn’t know he’ll listen to the same beat for like fir days before he even says a word.

Can you talk about the differences for you from when you made What Might Happen versus rappers suck?

rappers suck, full off the muscle, independent. I even paid for vinyls to get made.  Very, very passion project driven. I don’t know what in my right mind made me spend so much money on making that project. But, I just was really feeling at that time and, at this particular time with What Might Happen, it’s fair to say I was going through a lot, losing friends.

I lost my job security, so I was able to go all in.  I really wanted to be more vulnerable about the things that I was going through, and  I was doing the rap shit with my homies and shit, but at this point everybody stopped.  I remember me and my homie Greg had a conversation. He was just like, “You gotta be the one to, like, be the example.”

 I like rapping with the homies. I want them to get back rapping and shit too. So if they see that this shit is actually working, maybe they’ll like get back in the studio with me type shit.

What kept you going even after everybody stopped?

Realizing that I only have this time to do with. I’m about to turn 30 in February. Not trying to be ageist or anything, but you don’t have much time to go for broke. Just focus on you and be like Marty Supreme about it, and only care about your dream.

 So I was like, if I’m gonna only, like, care about what I got going on right now I’m just gonna like shamelessly do this shit. I’m just going to because this shit is gonna outlive me and then I could look back on this shit one day. When my mindset shifted, thinking, even if I don’t make it big, I’m still going to do this shit because I love it.

So I went to electrician school, I got into a trade, and while I’m doing electrician school, I started going to the studio with MIKE and Thebe and I didn’t think I’d get super close with them or nothing.  So I was just like I just wanted to be realistic and be able to keep investing in making records and shit like that. So I was like, “I’m gonna need a good job to do this. Let me go be an electrician.”

 So I did the trade school shit, and, shit ended up working out. During the trade school shit, I start going on tour.  I’m telling fools at school, I’m about to do this tour shit, and this is actually the Zulu tour. We driving in my car up the West Coast, I’m doing homework and shit and it was a dream come true.  Getting paid to pull up with the homies and sell our merch and check out these different cities and eat different food. It was tight.

I’m interested in your West Coast rap, before you began rapping. What kind of things were playing in your house? What did your parents like?

I grew up listening to Dogg Pound, 2Pac, Snoop and shit, Tone Loc, a lot of R&B. My dad is a huge R&B head, he’ll walk in the house after work, just singing shit. My mom put me on to hella early hip-hop because she had this idea that I was going to know everything that came before. You know how they say history repeats itself?

Yeah.

She was always big on that. Even before it was a heavy thing, that I would hear a lot. She introduced me to “Rappers’ Delight” and Geto Boys. I found N.W.A randomly at my grandparents’ house. They had Music Choice and you could go through the hip-hop section and choose a group and it would have everyone of their videos. I watched that shit all day.

That’s funny that you found that at your grandparents’ house.

I was surprised too, because my dad’s from Compton but he wasn’t slapping NWA like that. I got into Eazy-E and shit heavy. That being my start helped shape my mentality with it. So I’m thinking, “ I’m trying to be on some Eazy-E shit, you know?”

What do you mean by that?

Ruthless Records, he started his own label, took his money and his CDs and getting his homies to rap with him.

So like the self sufficiency of it all rather than having to be part of this big thing.

Then he’s like, “Fuck you,” too, on some punk shit. I was already into skateboarding and rock shit so that really resonated with me.

Do you ever take any of that punk mentality or sensibility into your music today?

For sure. I feel like that’s how we got here with rappers suck. Hustle culture, that’s so sickening to me. Growing up as a musician, people have convinced me that I need to do things that make you look like an asshole in order to make it. I think betting on yourself, and if you’re willing to back yourself up and make your own records and shit, you fail, that’s on you at the end of the day. I don’t know, you gotta be willing to go for broke, but you cany just be annoying, super annoying with it. And it cant’e be desperation, because people can smell that.

How do you mitigate that, being a try hard?

You got to try at least, to keep shit together, but more so, not even try. I be telling my friends, this started for me when I was in my first studio, but we  always be saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m trying to do this, trying to do that.” You gotta kinda... It sounds cliche, but you gotta erase try from your vocabulary and just do.  So I feel like that mentality has helped me more so, then just trying to see where the playing field is level.

It made me feel like I could do it, because I could make beats and rap. It should go crazy, It’s just a lot of self belief. Some of this stuff does take money, there’s people you do have to pay for certain things to get seen. I thought about doing that, but I swear to God, Im sending DMs to people for promo and shit then I go toYoung World and I don’t even meet Thebe or nothing, but I come back home to L.A., and niggas is doing an interview talking about I’m one of his favorite rappers. I notice my shit go up immediately.

 I’m like, “Whoa, I was just about to pay for this shit.” I was about to pay for Rap Caviar. That shit would’ve cost more, but I was about to pay for some page to be like, “Check this artist out.” And he just did that.

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 also: Tech N9ne’s
Anghellic, Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, and The Coup’s Party Music.

The following is an excerpt from Joseph Rathgeber’s Catch Us Before We Fall Off: a [ch]oral history of anticon, a two-volume oral history and analysis of anticon to be published September 29, 2026 through Caltrops Press. You can purchase a copy here.

For further reading, please see our recent interview with doseone.

Music journalists didn’t know what to make of cLOUDDEAD, so they made everything of cLOUDDEAD. The group’s apartment recordings were let loose into a world itching to narrow them down into niches and assign a name to what they heard. Those music journalists—Eden-dwelling Adams one and all—felt the need to assign a name to every beast of the field. Linnaeus listeners insisting on taxonomy. During a BBC Radio 1 Peel Session in July 2002, doseone altered the lyrics to “Me and People” from his album Circle: “So, Jesus and I go out to dinner, and he won’t stop asking me about what genre I am…” dose once told Robert Geary for San Francisco-based Grooves magazine, “We’ve been trying to think up the genre nickname first but that’s harder than it seems...goth-hop makes me laugh...so does ‘plugged in campfire music’...‘posthop’ seems to offer the most significant description of what we undo.” This was likely the most generous a group member was to the search. “What we undo,” dose teased. But cLOUDDEAD was Unnameable, only named from the mouth of babes—dose’s kid sister, in fact. Every child’s knock-knock joke is a Dadaist mantra, and the punchline of dose’s sister’s was “cloud dead.” “She kinda blurted that out once in the car,” dose told ukhh.com. “It just rang perfect for the way we all feel often—it’s that kinda half-empty, half-full thing that we’re always as humans struggling with.”

Like Samuel Beckett’s narrator in The Unnamable, cLOUDDEAD provoked questions of authorship and the dual search to name and refuse naming. There was no shortage of attempts on their poet-head. A concordance of subgenre coinages from contemporary publications is unflagging, as if to suggest not-naming would risk not-knowing:

art-hoppers
art-rap
atmospheric-hop
avant-hop collage-pop
Dada-hop
dream-hop
drip-hop
psychedelic hip-hop
post-hop
sonic Situationist manifesto
space-rock-hop
un-hop
wall-paper-hop

Press people repeatedly labeled the group schizoid (or some variant thereof), likely a projection of their own discomforts stemming from cLOUDDEAD’s unnameability. cLOUDDEAD refused the definition-death; they were dedicated to an ever-evolution. The music presented “Voices! // multiple and inarticulate,” in William Carlos Williams’ words from Paterson (1946). Voices that are heard “clattering loudly… to / the clouds.”

The name bestowed upon the group by an innocent child was perfectly random and righteous: “cloud dead”—almost clouded, suggestive of “obscured,” which is why we ask for clarification (“cloud dead, who?” says the apprehensive person to the door-knocking solicitor). Clouds dissipate, but do they die? We’re unfamiliar with this phenomenon. But we feel a threat in the consonance of those three, successive, drilling ds. An aggressive knock rapping at our chamber door, yet the stylization of the name—if we could see it—suggests the “all caps” loudness might be diminished to a whisper, if only the other letters could follow the lower-case c’s lead.

Despite the obfuscation, the unconscious intent, the sacred mysteries of randomized word arrangements, one thing is clear: Odd Nosdam’s involvement in cLOUDDEAD was integral. The contribution of his sound is what makes cLOUDDEAD, is what differentiates the group’s work from Greenthink, doseone and Yoni Wolf’s initial collaborative project. “Dave [Odd Nosdam] was the aesthetic master,” Yoni has said. “Dave changed the game for us. He had a totally different aesthetic. Dave was into all kinds of indie rock, all kinds of space rock—moody shit.” Nosdam told Grooves: “I’ve always had the vision of what cLOUDDEAD could be, both sonically and aesthetically…. [T]he ‘cLOUDDEAD sound’ came from inspired eight-track tinkerings in my bedroom, which led to a more serious vocal approach from doseone and Why? [Yoni Wolf], which inspired me to go even further with this ‘sound.’”

Odd Nosdam rises from a long tradition of tinkerers within hip-hop. The knowledge gained by the tinkerers of yore ushered in a revolution of sound. Kool Herc was a sci-fi, hi-fi tinkerer: a sci-hi-fi-entist of the highest order. He altered his father’s soundsystem to fulfill its power potential by hacking speaker wires and channel knobs. Nosdam explored and honed his own sound between 1998 and 1999, evidenced on both his anecdoticselfportrait and Plan 9… Meat Your Hypnotis tapes.

Near the beginning of Watch Me Jumpstart (1995/1998), Banks Tarver’s lo-fi documentary about Guided By Voices, an interview clip with Robert Pollard fades into the next frame: a small American flag flapping in the wind, staked to the front of the hood of a car driving through Dayton, Ohio. For a moment, the flag and Pollard’s face appear in a split-screen. A replica of the ephemeral frame re-emerges on the cover of Plan 9. Under yellow light, Nosdam snaps a photograph of himself in the bathroom mirror of a AAA station in Madison, Wisconsin after traveling to Minneapolis for a New Year’s Eve show as 1998 collapsed into 1999. The image is turned sideways, and an American flag, once hanging downward at the doorway, now defies gravity and flies forward.

YONI WOLF: We played a show at First Ave [in Minneapolis] as Greenthink. I don’t think I actually rapped. I maybe went and played drums for dose. We had just put out Blindfold. That trip was the first time I met Slug.

ODD NOSDAM: When we left Minneapolis that night, we drove to Chicago, which was a fairly long drive. We hit black ice and flew off the fucking highway—nearly hit two trees. Blew out all four tires on Jeff’s [Jel] mom’s car. We got picked up by AAA.

doseone: Jeff swerved real quick on an icy road just for pissing people off for fucking with the radio. We went off the rails and smashed into a tree and should have died but didn’t. I was sitting on the hump with no seatbelt but was fine. It was interesting and bonding. That’s actually how Jeff stopped hating Dave [Odd Nosdam]. I’m going to project and throw that out there. It was spooky and creepy. It unified us. It was a good experience, but it was also intense. To be honest, it was a baby step toward being on tour, which was hard on all of us as people, as individuals, and rewarding as artists.

Nosdam described to Peter Agoston on The House List podcast how significant the accident was to them as a unit. “We had already recorded ‘apt. A (1),’ and Adam already had the name,” he explained. “That night, the three of us were like, Okay, when we get back to Cincinnati, we’re gonna do this cLOUDDEAD thing full-on. This was before Mush [Records]. anticon was still bubbling up as a collective.” Several of the beats that appear on Plan 9 would be utilized on cLOUDDEAD.

Plan 9… opens with an abrasive, flatulent horn. Jugband jammed into Jupiter’s anticyclonic storm. The answering machine screeches: leave a message after the beep. A strange beast cries. The scores of B movies scored into flesh. Muzak run amok. The drums are sandpaper grit rubbed against your daddy’s five o’clock shadow. These drums—filthy, upturned bucket percussion—are a constant. Nosdam would become known for the griminess of his kicks and snares, the bristle and fuzz of his samples. In Hip-Hop Connection magazine, dose explained how Nosdam might “loop something off tape and it won’t be nearly dirty enough, so he’ll dub it twice to another tape.”

ODD NOSDAM: There’s no real secret to my drum sound.

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Stevie Wonder spent the late 1960s and early ‘70s riding a high of unparalleled imagination, pumping out a series of genre-defining and -defying albums like Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness’ First Finale, all driven by his fondness for studio wizardry and expansive, immersive songwriting. Despite his brief contemplation of giving up the music biz altogether in 1975, he entered 1976 with a supercharged musical vision that resulted in what is unanimously his magnum opus, if not the greatest album of all time: Songs In The Key of Life.

Originally titled Let’s See Life The Way It Is, the album’s final name came to Wonder in a dream. It quickly became a mantra for Wonder during his songwriting process, as he pushed his aperture wider and wider. “I challenged myself [to write] as many different things as I could, to cover as many topics as I could, in dealing with the title and representing what it was about,” he said in the Classic Albums documentary special. “The title would give me a challenge, but equally as important as a challenge it would give me an opportunity to express my feelings as a songwriter and as an artist.”

He became a studio rat during the Key Of Life sessions, spending long hours—if not days—non-stop in multiple studios across Southern California and New York. A supporting cast of characters including the likes of Herbie Hancock, Dorothy Ashby, Minnie Riperton, and George Benson aided him in the process, but Stevie kept the songwriting process primarily limited to the music of his own mind.

It’s not entirely clear how many songs Stevie cut during those sessions—he is famously protective of his vaults—but it’s likely in the dozens, if not hundreds. Many songs from that era have only been heard live, or were reworked into altered studio versions during his late period.

Yesterday, on the 50th anniversary of Songs In The Key Of Life, we got a rare peek into those vaults via a four-track EP of songs from the Key Of Life sessions. “We’ve lived with Songs in the Key of Life for 50 years, but there’s still more to hear,” Wonder said in the EP’s press release. “We didn’t add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it. They bring me back to that time in my life, and now they get to become part of yours.”

All four songs were written and produced by Wonder, with Supremes alumni Susaye Green receiving a co-writing credit on “My Life Story Of Love.” John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, the album’s original engineers, returned to the mixing board for the release.

The opener “It’s Easier” features a Sly Stone-reminiscent drum machine beat layered under live percussion and Stevie’s signature keyboard wooze. It’s guided by Nathan Watts’ walking bassline as Stevie slowly ascends into a clerical growl as heard on Songs cuts like “As.”

Following is “My Life Story Of Love,” propelled by a keyboard lead filled with the type of airy magic that only exists in the type of magical ‘70s soul records north of The Isley Brothers. Stevie employs perhaps his greatest songwriting subject, love, singing about the whirlwind of romance in a way that matches the music’s dream-like quality.

Real Wonderheads might recognize “I Can See The Sun In Late December,” which was a live-only Stevie cut that he sparsely performed in the 70s, most famously on the German television program “Musikladen” in 1974. The song would appear sung by Roberta Flack on her 1975 album in a sprawling 12-minute version arranged by keyboardist Harry Whitaker and Flack herself.

Wonder performed the song for the first time in over 40 years at Flack’s memorial service in 2025, stating “This is a song that Roberta sang that I wrote. But it really is, today, a statement to the world. The world needs to open up their eyes and see. Let’s celebrate the God that we serve, the spiritual God.”

At four and a half minutes, Wonder’s original version is less dramatic but every bit as pleasant. There’s a baroque quality in the breakdown that brings to mind Stevie’s medieval epic “Pastime Paradise,” but with a decidedly more acoustic quality. It’s a blessing to hear one of his prior live favorites in a fully realized studio form for what is surely a rare occasion.

The EP closes with its funkiest joint, “I’m Into Livin’.” The song is overloaded with synths and an unimaginably fat Moog bass played by Greg Phillinganes, whose similarly funky Moog you can hear on Michael Jackson’s “Baby Be Mine.” Though as captivating as anything else on the EP, it’s probably the record that would have felt most out of place on Songs In The Key Of Life. You can hear the indication of Stevie’s synth obsession that he would dive into headfirst three years later on the controversial-but-slept-on odyssey Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants.

While there are rumors of some kind of anniversary deluxe, if these four songs are all we get, they shouldn’t taken for granted. It is a gift to glimpse deeper into the mind of history’s great geniuses, nonetheless in works from his golden age.

Stevie Wonder is embarking on a Songs In The Key Of Life 50th anniversary tour beginning this October, playing the album in full across 18 dates. He has announced his 24th studio album, Through The Eyes Of Wonder, to be issued some time in 2027.

As you walk toward the check-in desk, you notice how unsettlingly quiet the lobby is. It’s late, but not late enough for a hotel to be this deathly empty. No sound but that of your own footsteps on cheap tile and the buzz of that one fluorescent lightbulb struggling to stay on. For a few seconds, you wonder if this place even has a front desk clerk or if you’ll be left to wait here until your bones rot.

Slowly, creakily, he emerges from the back office, doesn’t bother to say hello or even make eye contact. Bedraggled and beaten down, he looks like the kind of person who’s always hung over, even if he hasn’t touched a drop in weeks. “Welcome back to the dream of a rotten mind,” he says. His voice sounds like he regularly chews asbestos. “The rooms are half empty, the hallways are where you’ll survive.”

He throws a shiny keycard at you and you start your long plod down the hallway to your room. You think the lightbulb’s buzzing is getting louder, giving way to the harsh sound of static. You can hear the clerk shouting after you—barking, really. “The difference this time is you’re gagging for it. The difference this time is your appetite for hate.” The static takes on a pounding, punishing rhythm, like having your head held next to a mistreated amplifier. You thought you knew how brutal it could get. You didn’t.

So much for the excess that might have greeted you in this most American of hotels 50 years ago. Back then there was a brightness to lure you in before the dark side came. But this isn’t the Hotel California. Now it’s all dark side. Welcome to the Hotel Usona…

Protomartyr have never shied away from a good concept. Joe Casey’s dark-deadpan, often surreal lyrics have drawn comparisons with the late Mark E. Smith if the Fall frontman were working with the stuff of Midwest America rather than the North of England. Match his pessimistic penchant for cock-eyed satire with the intricate pummel of Greg Ahee’s guitar work, Bonham-esque drums of Alex Leonard, and Scott Davidson’s concrete mixer bass playing, and you have a very original and brutally apt sonic channel of what the smarter among us might call “the late capitalist unconscious.”

Watching the video for “Sounds We Cannot Hear,” Hotel Usona’s first single, it’s clear that Protomartyr is deepening its exploration of this niche. The song itself veers between calm contemplation—helped along by the inclusion of brass, xylophone, and harmonium—and a punishing wall of sound accentuated by screaming keyboards. As for the video, it’s a tongue-in-cheek exercise in toxic masculine cringe. While we listen to Casey drone about 81 dead since dawn, poets jumping overboard, and how doomscrolling “deforms the day,” we watch a grown man driven to a temper tantrum in a hibachi restaurant because he can’t catch a shrimp in his mouth.

It’s all trademark Protomartyr. But Hotel Usona leans into the construct of the concept album to a degree the group never really has before. In the run-up to its release, the band revamped its website to resemble that of a real hotel. Click on the Guest Rooms option and you’ll be taken to a wide array of room choices, complete with cryptic descriptions and underwhelming, vaguely threatening pictures of the Hotel Usona’s amenities. “Sounds We Cannot Hear” next to a dingy bathroom and a cheap microwave, “Exalted Eagles” accompanied by dusty, aging shag carpet, “The Knife Dream” with wrinkled, damp-looking pillows. The description for the “Third Country” room reads:

Less a suite, more of an experience. A bespoke holding area for those you might deem unworthy. Why be beholden to certain regulations of our blessed country when you can “stay-tricate” or “fun-port” somewhere else?

Yes, we get it. Hotel Usona is a metaphor for America. The cover artwork—a bald eagle sternly surveying an unseen landscape—hits the device home. Even the name of the fictional hotel, “Usona,” references an outdated acronym for “United States of North America.” And yes, the room names are actually song titles. Each song takes on a different aspect of a bleak contemporary life, peppered with vague allusions to the strings—or hallways, as it were—that join them all together. The aforementioned “Third Country” sounds like elevator music tired of playing itself as it digs up the salacious cruelties of ICE deportations (“A third country/behind wrought iron and razorwire/for the favor of a distant power/cages hold beaten souls”) before being overwhelmed by an inevitable wave of cacophony. “Converts,” a tune whose rock conventions stumble and trip their way through trumpet and strings, asks what it must be like for someone strongly implied to be JD Vance to look himself in the mirror (“Can a God be found in such self-regard?”).

It’s all a bit on the nose, but then, this century of American embarrassment isn’t exactly subtle. It’s doddering, punch drunk, excessively blunt, full of arrogant bluster and capable of doing real damage. An America that rattles its saber about owning Greenland and renaming bodies of water, that sends masked men to abduct and disappear your loved ones, is also one that has figured out how to compartmentalize.

What’s more, it’s clear that, musically and thematically, Protomartyr are broadening their oeuvre. Not only is there a greater sonic variety on display—more shifts between soft and loud, contemplative and unhinged, more incorporation of jazz-tinged brass and woodwind—Casey seems to be searching for the existential edge in all of his subject matter, where previous efforts found his “social” and “personal” songs, deliberately or not, discretely segmented from each other.

Fast forward to the video for Hotel Usona’s second single, “Feed the Sewer.” Screech-buzz-pound instrumentals, barks comparing the light of a mobile device to the slit of light that comes through a prison window, and our insecure, aggro-addled protagonist returns. This time, he’s paying someone through Venmo to go to a motel room and watch—through a network of hidden cameras—what everyone else is doing in their motel room. One guest sleepwalks in the nude. Another livestreams himself unboxing a revolver, while still another ransacks her own room looking for some unspecified item before finding the hidden camera. Quick flashes of the band playing in a storage closet somewhere in the motel. All isolated and cut off, but inexorably drawn together in a ghoulish panopticon.

It’s an uncomfortable watch. Partly because it seems so familiar, so exhausting, and yet so titillating. By now none of us need reminding how doomscrolling “deforms our days,” how the algorithm forces a particular cognitive map on all of us, exposed and vulnerable but egged on to implicate everyone else, a faint cry of actual community echoing in the backs of our skulls.

We know our ways of thinking are fucked, how our attention is daily fractured between images of a bombed-out girls’ school in Iran, then a cat video, then a flood in Nepal caught on video, then a recipe for Dubai chocolate cookies. We know the feeling of being a begrudging part of the spectacle. If Protomartyr have rendered it better than they ever have, then it bears asking why we need this kind of reminder from our music.

In fact, while Hotel Usona is denying us escape, it still manages to provide a very specific kind of catharsis. A good amount of the publicity for the album has been dedicated to the glowing approval Protomartyr have received from fellow Detroiter and proto-punk legend Iggy Pop. Speaking of the new record, Iggy writes, “It is highly themed and symphonic in its reach. I could call it a kind of drive-through Sgt. Peppers, but that would miss the mark. This record is Wagnerian, it reminds me very much of the Opera Tristan and Isolde (by Richard Wagner)... To their everlasting credit, you will not hear any recycled Led Zeppelin or Country Blues music here. This is thoroughly modern storytelling.”

High praise, for sure. It also reminds, against the tide of places and times our culture is constantly jumbling into one, that Protomartyr come from a specific place, with a very specific history in a rock music lineage that used to know how to evolve. Before the cancelled futures, before the commodification of everything in sight. Before the hippies and radical students started slapping Deadhead stickers on their Cadillacs and became the fucking Eagles, lamenting the failures of their youth and the decadence of the present without doing much about it because we all not-so-secretly enjoy it. It was this lineage that Iggy and a bunch of other misfits from Detroit and other cities were trying to revitalize. It’s a mantle that plenty of rap and hip-hop and electro has been carrying well the past several years. Not so much rock, though.

With that in mind, there’s something to be said about the particular way rock music can show you life how it is, though not in the way it’s normally shown to you. The way it’s willing to be dirty and nasty, standing in the knee-deep shit of history with clear eyes. Hotel Usona’s closing track, the laconic and aptly titled “Checking Out,” sees Casey ruminating on what it means to become a father in a volatile world with an uncertain future.

The misery dogs are barking
But don’t you be afraid
We are all out in the fog, reaching
Stumbling between immensities
When you were born
You carried a light with you
And when you found me
You found a wretch
Who needed desperately needed to ahead

It’s not an uncommon anxiety nowadays (including, recently, for this author). Folded in is a paradoxical realization that seeing another human—actually seeing them, not regarding them behind the exploitive safety of a screen—means having a future forced on you. And who knows? You might just find that future giving you something to hope for, even more so in the midst of all the fucking wreckage.

Hope, in the view of the Protomartyr of 2026, is a precious resource. It can’t be clumsily superimposed on the devastations of the present, but it can be mined in the cracks of daily life, clutched fiercely but never jealously. Right now, even with all the investments and entanglements we have in this dismal establishment, there’s a non-zero chance it’s right outside. If only we can find the exit.

There’s something endearing about JRedie acting as his own hype man. The Westmont rapper enters his verse on “Rich V8 Music PT1” with a little “ooh,” then keeps repeating it throughout the song, as if his own bars are catching him by surprise. He sounds like he should be voicing an animated cat. It doesn’t hurt that he wears a permanent grin, like he’s always one punchline away from breaking into a truly hysterical fit of laughter.

Redie’s toolkit might come straight from a funhouse, but that doesn’t mean his rapping isn’t serious. He has one of the most distinctive flows in L.A., somewhere between the conversational looseness of the sub-Drakeo school and Blueface’s off-kilter delivery, but with a steady, almost hypnotic bounce that’s entirely his own. He casually tosses out lines like “His blower dirty, I’m begging bro to get rid of that,” and “I’m rapping now but in the day, used to take things/Your b---- replied when I said hi, that’s a damn shame,” sounding thoroughly amused with himself the entire time. All that levity is counterbalanced by a bassline that sounds like it was mined from the center of the Earth. And in between the jokes, threats, and self-congratulatory ad-libs, Redie wants to make one thing abundantly clear: He doesn’t give a fuck what anybody thinks of him. He has three daughters, a fact he brings up multiple times, and considerably more important things to worry about than anyone else’s opinion. Like making sure his daughter gets her Takis.

50Droppin, “Glass Fee”

There’s been a new sound developing in the rap underground over the last few years, much of it courtesy of 313 Mafia, a loose, 15-deep collective of producers and rappers who have turned Discord into a virtual recording studio. In a recent interview with Alphonse Pierre, producer Trapboy3k explains how the crew shares screens, trades ideas, and builds beats together in real time. The result is a strain of ominous, post-drill production that’s hazier, more minimal, and somehow more naturalistic than its predecessors. Their beats sound like a sinister weather pattern developing over an abandoned industrial plant.

Detroit’s 50Droppin is one of the most captivating rappers working in this ecosystem, taking full advantage of the negative space in these instrumentals. On “Glass Fee,” he never settles into a single flow, instead apparating in and out of the beat, stretching syllables, abruptly switching cadences, and firing off random one-liners or half-muttered thoughts when you least expect them. One moment, he’s casually dispensing prison workout advice (“Do some burpees, n----, fuck them jumping jacks”); the next, he’s recalling shootouts, dead friends, and recurring nightmares about losing his brother. By the time he starts stuttering through the song’s closing bars, his flow sounds like it’s short-circuiting, threatening to disappear into the fog of the production altogether.

Sayy Datt, “Drake Em Down”

Another cut out of Detroit, Sayy Datt works with a sped-up flip of Boosie’s “Wipe Me Down,” though there are no producer credits to speak of. He shreds the beat with a flurry of punchlines and one-liners that require multiple playbacks to catch, barking threatening flexes and disses at seemingly anybody within earshot. At one point, he boasts about taking a blick from “him and him and him and him and him,” rattling off enemies like he’s running through a grocery list. Elsewhere, he squeezes in a chess metaphor and a Michael Jackson punchline, turning one of the most recognizable party anthems of the 2000s into a breathless barrage of shit-talking.

RealStasher50K, “Im Back”

It’s been almost four years since we last heard from RealStasher50K. The Milwaukee rapper was released from prison this month, returning to a world that looks considerably different from the one he left behind. When he went away, Generative AI was a phrase only nerds had heard, Roe v. Wade was still in effect, and Milwaukee had one of the hottest rap scenes in the country. Now, he’s back with a chance to reignite the city’s flame.

At the height of Milwaukee’s rap explosion, RealStasher was one of its most charismatic figures, a rapper whose outlandish slang, cartoonish delivery, and impeccable swag made him impossible to confuse with anyone else. When asked about growing up on the south side of the city, an area that very few rappers come from, he responded, “I ain’t gonna lie, I built a crackin’ ass phone, on feet,” which is actually a pretty solid encapsulation of his parlance.

But a lot has changed in his absence. Maybe Milwaukee’s rappers stagnated, maybe too many of its brightest stars wound up in jail or worse, maybe the media focused on the wrong rappers to garner larger outside attention, or maybe the city simply fell victim to the attention economy moving on to its next obsession. Whatever the reason, the promise of a Milwaukee rap superstar, and a thriving industry to go along with it, has largely faded from the national conversation.

On “I’m Back,” RealStasher sounds as sharp as ever. He’s still shaking blenders, chasing birds, making fun of “slumming ass jacks,” and rapping like he has years of catching up to do. Even when he was ahead of the curve, he still rapped like he was behind. He reminisces about how he was just walking the prison yard and now, he’s doing club walk-throughs for 10K a pop.

In the video, he looks like a kid on Christmas morning, except every present under the tree is a stack of cash. He swims in it, hugs it, compulsively adds more bills to his pile, and dances on top of it with his signature Milwaukee dance, which makes him look like a pigeon trying to remember how its knees work. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please watch this or just google “Milwaukee pointing dance.”

It’s the kind of over-the-top, regionally specific shit that made Milwaukee so much fun to watch in the first place. Whether 50K can help bring the spotlight back to his hometown remains to be seen. For now, he’s packing 4 years worth of money hugging and pigeon dancing into as short a period as possible.

T9ine, “Appreciate”

Tampa Bay rapper T9ine has this rambling, smooth-talking style that is wholly singular. He doesn’t drop that often, and each single is usually unceremoniously released with a fit pic as the YouTube cover. I try to cover every one because he really could be the best rapper alive if he were more consistent with his releases. His latest, “Appreciation,” actually leaked seven years ago, but is finally getting an official release, and this time, with an actual cover.

It’s a love song, though T9ine approaches romance with the same wary, analytical mind that runs through so much of his music. He’s enamored with a girl but suspicious of her intentions, offering to go half on the loyalty while wondering whether her pretty smile is concealing a plot to get even with him. All of this comes spilling out in his signature unhurried drawl, with thoughts bleeding into one another like he’s figuring out his feelings in real time. He can sound completely vulnerable without ever dropping his conversational cool. It’s funny, tender, occasionally horny, and full of the contradictions that make his writing feel so human. The fact that this has been sitting around for seven years makes me wonder how many more songs like it he has stashed away.

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet” — William Shakespeare, sometime between 1591 and 1595

“Shawn Carter to ‘Jay-Z’? / Damn, you on Jaz’ dick” — Nas, sometime between Summer Jam and December 4, 2001

When Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton met, they were rivals. The cafeteria of Tri-Cities High School in East Point was the arena for innumerable battles between the two. But if you’re 16 years old and realize you’re a generationally gifted rapper, you might subsequently realize that the guy who keeps hemming you up between the chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes is one, too, and your time would be better spent collaborating. So they formed a group. They called themselves 2 Shades Deep, which stuck only long enough for someone to point out that there was already a group kicking around called 4 Shades Deep. Andre and Antwan settled on another name: Outkast.

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In 1906, San Francisco was hit by the deadliest earthquake in American history, which destroyed more than 80 percent of the city. Having prior to the disaster established itself as the “gateway to the Pacific,” the commercial capital of the West Coast then ceded its growth to Los Angeles. But it was eager to recover and rebuild. By 1909, San Francisco needed to make an announcement for its comeback—that the city was open for visitors to experience everything it still had to offer. This led to the first Portola Festival, a five-day celebration named after the Spanish explorer who discovered (for Europeans) the region in the 1700s. Through a series of parades and local celebrations likened to Mardi Gras, the city touted its rebirth to the world.

A century later, San Francisco was once again on its back foot. The Covid pandemic, which sank economies around the globe, had smeared my city in particular with a “doom loop” narrative of being abandoned and full of despair. Despite the abundance of local evidence to the contrary, it was the perfect time for a new Portola Festival to emerge and remind the world of San Francisco’s deep cultural footprint. This time, instead of military demonstrations and fireworks, we had The Chemical Brothers and Charli XCX.

Every September since 2022, the Portola Music Festival takes over the unassuming shipping yard of Pier 80 in the Dogpatch neighborhood, transforming the site’s warehouses and skyward cranes into a playground of four stages showcasing the best of contemporary electronic(ish) music. This is in addition to a full “Portola Week” of shows leading up to the festival, surfacing in venues across the city the spirit of San Francisco’s underground rave scene. Produced by Goldenvoice, the SoCal promoter behind Coachella, Portola is an annual 45,000-person party that balances its parent company’s pedigree with a distinctly homegrown playfulness.

The visionary behind it all is Danny Bell, who has shaped San Francisco’s live music culture over the last decade since Goldenvoice hired him as its head talent buyer in the Bay. He first crossed paths with the company when he went to Coachella to see Rage Against the Machine as a high school senior. He knew from that experience that he wanted to put on events for a living, and went on to work behind the scenes for the folks at HARD Summer. After a couple of years, Goldenvoice hired him to book for local venues like the Regency Ballroom and Great American Music Hall, as well as festivals like Porter Robinson’s Second Sky. Portola, however, is his life’s work, the product of a mid-20s Eurosummer soaking in the continent’s mature dance music culture and dreaming to bring it back to his own city.

In the five years since the inaugural edition, Portola has given San Francisco something more substantial than a momentary resurgence; it’s helped reaffirm the city as one of the world’s great music capitals. For a weekend, the festival harnesses the dizzying assortment of clubs and promoters who bring in innovators in dance music on rotation year round, reflecting it back for a marathon that this year includes both path-breaking newcomers like Ear and MGNA Crrrta and legends like Soulwax, Fatboy Slim, and Skrillex and Boyz Noise’s first performance as Dog Blood since 2019.

But as with the subsequent weekend’s Hardly Strictly Music Festival, Portola has ambitions beyond its original genre inspirations, and each year finds new ways to widen what fits under its umbrella. From dusty hip-hop originators like 2024’s Deltron 3030 to this year’s DJ Shadow—or hyperpop shooting stars like Ninajirachi and underscores—the festival reflects an unbound adventurousness. Where some festivals open up their bookings to a hodge podge that dilutes their point of view, Portola has only sharpened theirs through a wider inclusion that proves the rigor of their tastes. Name one other festival where you can see a Beastie Boy and a Spice Girl in the same day, let alone the same stage?

Ahead of the festival this weekend, I spoke with Bell about how he’s cultivated such a strong identity for his festival in a world of corporate slop competitors, cultivating a reputation as a place artists’ want to play year after year, and being a good neighbor to the rest of San Francisco.

I always like to ask organizers if they actually get to have fun attending their own festivals, or if the reality of the day-to-day makes the weekend more focused on the logistics and operations.

I’m very lucky in that the team we have in-house at Goldenvoice is amazing. Everyone is way more experienced and better at running their departments than I would be, so all I would do if something comes up is go to one of the experts. I personally have a blast, but it’s a different thing when I’m attending a festival as a guest—and get to have fun, have some drinks, hang with friends, go see some music—than at Portola where I’m hosting. It’s a really big operation, and the artists and the artist camps are friends of mine, so that’s what I get out of it more than anything. I really enjoy working with these artists and giving them a platform to have a big show and a great moment. I try to watch most of the acts of the festival, either walking through or driving around on my golf cart to see snippets of every act throughout the day that I can.

What sets Portola apart for me is its strong sense of world building each year. The booking philosophy feels intentional beyond what is momentarily trendy, and despite only being around five years, you already have acts who have played several times. Tell me more about your relationship as a booker with those folks who keep coming back like Four Tet or Soulwax?

There’s a few artists that I love to have play whenever they’re available. Soulwax, they’re my favorites—they’re the reason why I got into dance music. 2ManyDJs live or DJing, Soulwax live, Despacio: any opportunity I ever have to present them, I will. A lot of it is just out of fandom and how much I love them and want to support them and just how great they are.

Four Tet is such a special artist, and such a great guy. He’s so versatile, and he just approaches things with such care and intention. He played the first year with Floating Points, then the third year we had him back to DJ. His team approached me last year before the festival and said, “Hey, he has this new show. He wants to do it in the warehouse at Portola.” I said, “Absolutely, let’s do it.” That’s honestly one of the more exciting things, to get calls like that and those opportunities. Like Four Tet has played three times, but they’re three completely different shows, between the back to back with Floating Points, the solo DJ set, and now him doing this new light show.

On the production side, you’ve name checked in other interviews the importance of your relationship with Dave Rat of Rat Sound Systems. What are the sound design challenges that you two think through for a venue like Pier 80?

We always just try to do a little better than we did the year before. I’m a stickler with sound, to Dave’s love and dismay. But he’s amazing, and it’s really enjoyable walking around with him and pointing things out. Year one just didn’t have the right rig in the Warehouse. Year two it got better, but there wasn’t enough bass going through the crowds. Then year three we added super subs in a cardioid setup along the side of the warehouse with each delay, which was great but they were ten- to 15-foot dead zones.

What Dave was telling me was the way they were able to set up the rig was based on there being these different “clubs,” and what unfortunately happened was the last ten to 15 feet of each “club”—which in reality is one set of delays to the next delays—wasn’t covered. I said, “Oh, let’s just add another delay and move it up more.” So that’s what we did last year and I think we did a way better job at it. Then this year, we’re just expanding off of that with a few extra subs.

I actually have a really great sound engineer named George Stavro. He’s from Australia, and he’s an unbelievable tuner for dance music in particular. I actually brought him in to collaborate with Dave to work on tuning the rig that they designed together this year. So every year just try to do a little bit better, because sound is everything, especially at a festival like this. That’s the difference between the fans feeling it and connecting and the artist having a good set versus not.

Dave and George are those folks behind the scenes and beyond the poster who touch everything—artists might play a 30 to 90 minute set, but these people are thinking about the music all day and are shaping every sound you hear from every speaker. How do you balance the tension of sound design for a residential area—trying to make this as immersive and loud as possible but being a good neighbor with the city?

Our relationship is amazing with the city. They really could not be more supportive and more excited about the event. But a large part of it is because we take that obligation very seriously. I mean, the PA setup is tricky for outdoor stages. But the amazing thing with modern sound design technology is you can really concentrate the sound – you could literally set up these boxes where there’s no blowback, where you could be right behind the speakers and not hear much.

It’s funny, we talked to Dave and said, “This frequency last year was a problem, it was traveling too far.” He was like, “Let me delay these subs by one millisecond to the other subs, and adjust the position by a few inches,” and all these little things that might feel completely arbitrary. But it’s very important having a guy like him on board who has so much experience and knows all these tricks and the science behind sound design—it’s a constant game of adjusting, and we have all these teams that are monitoring the sound in various locations at all times. It’s a very hard balance, that it needs to be loud and be impactful on site while not upsetting and ruining the days and weekends of all the neighbors around us.

Goldenvoice has invested in several festivals over the last few years with their own distinct programming identities, such as Just Like Heaven and Cruel World. Since Portola began in 2022, has your booking strategy been informed at all by the larger Goldenvoice ecosystem?

I am Goldenvoice San Francisco, so there isn’t a separation. All of our festival properties, we fully develop and book them ourselves internally. We have about five of us festival bookers, but [president and CEO] Paul Tollett is the boss. He’s the founder and owner of Coachella and he makes every decision, and is very much a proponent of the bookers having the vision and being able to produce their festivals their own way as far as talent goes. They’re all completely independent—there is no “you get this, you get that,” because the reality is the way we like to book is truly about curating an experience. Each thing is so separate and individual.

As an example with the Prodigy, for them to play Portola versus Coachell— it’s a completely different stage setup, during completely different time periods, at completely different scales—Portola is one weekend when Coachella is two, so you have two shows to amortize it against. The point is they are just such different conversations that they really are not connected. We all share which artists we’re excited about and which ones we want to book, but it really is up to each festival booker and curator to have their own conversations and do things the way they want to do it.

That’s one of the things I really love about Goldenvoice. It’s a company where we really focus on each individual project as a standalone. We don’t sit there and say “these artists are hot, let’s figure out six, seven different plays for them to box other people out.” It’s always about, “How does this artist fit into our show? Is it the right fit?” Like I said, it really all starts with just the overall concept of the show, and then we’re left on our own to go fill it in. That’s honestly the most fun part of the job for me. I really love curating and listening to new music and finding new bands and helping them grow and also building just a really great 10 hours of program a day.

Beyond the realm of music Portola is known for, you also always throw in some very fun surprises each year. Compared to previous lineups, pop music and particularly Swedish pop music has really taken center stage this time around. I’m curious at what point in the booking process does that thread emerge? Is that something that’s intentional you set out to pursue, or is it a happy accident?

For us it starts with the headliners. I’ve been trying to get Robyn since the first Portola, and I was told this was the year for her and I was like thank God. And then I’ve been trying to get Tove Lo for years, and this is the year she happened to be touring off of a new album, right? The fun thing with Tove and her husband Charlie is that they are friends, and they’ve come to the festival just to party. But for pop music, a lot of it is all about being on cycle and having a new show ready. And this is just how the timing worked out for them.

And then same with Zara Larsson. I got a call from her agents last year saying they wanted me to consider her for the festival. And I’m very glad I did, because she’s on fire right now! It’s unbelievable. But for all of them, it was one of those things where we booked each individually and then I looked at it and I was like, “Oh my god, we have Swedish pop royalty on this show!” Same thing with Swedish House Mafia, where this was just the year where they were looking to play as well. There were all acts I definitely wanted to put together, but once it came together I saw the story.

There are other instances where I intentionally put together stories like that—last year, the story I was putting together was about having five absolute pioneer legends on the festival between Moby and Underworld and the Chemical Brothers and LCD Soundsystem and the Prodigy. I was like, those five in one festival is very cool and it tells a great story about the history of this music.

I spoke to Dave P of Making Time last year, and I heard a really similar ethos, where every name on the bill reflects in some way his individual taste and vision, but he also gets excited about the threads he unlocks as he’s booking the lineup.

I love Dave P, he’s the best. He’s such a character. Me and him, we see eye to eye. He’s a real music head, and that’s what we talk about—what we like, what we don’t like, what we like about the things we like, what we don’t like about the things we don’t like. It’s fun! This is us doing a dream job, getting to curate what we curate.

I know every booker has dreams each year—you said this year’s the year Robyn finally materialized. If you’re willing to talk about it, was there anything that you really shot for this year that didn’t happen?

Of course there’s artists I want that I can’t get, but that’s what’s fun—you got to shoot for the stars, because it’s not going to happen unless you try. But it’s a tricky thing, because these artists are human beings and they have their own plans and identities and their own focuses and desires for what they want to do. So first and foremost, they have to want to play it, right? It’s not necessarily even the festival. It’s like they just want to have to play at all.

A lot of these artists don’t want to once they make it. Touring is brutal. It’s very hard. It’s a tough life. Is it fun? When you’re young, it’s really fun. When you’re older, it’s tough. You’re away from your family. You’re away from your friends. You’re staying in a different hotel every day. You’re on a plane every day or on a bus. It’s not an easy life. And as for these really big pie in the sky artists that I want—it’s really up to them for when they want to perform. I’m going to keep sending offers every year and they’ll keep sitting on it, and hopefully one day I’ll get a call saying, “Okay, they’re ready. This is the year.” But that’s really all we could do because you don’t want to force anyone to play. You want them to be inspired. You want them to bring a show.

Outside of “What’s the biggest paycheck? What logistically works with a tour?” I imagine there are artists who love the festival and are excited to get the chance in their career to perform at it.

Yeah, like Rufus attended the second year and loved it. Then the following year I sent them an offer and they were like, “Let’s do this. This would be a great place to kick off our cycle.” It definitely adds to it when the artists love the festival themselves. And a lot of artists that aren’t even performing that have played before are coming back just to hang.

Compared to any other festival, you all have way more of an abundance of post festival programming, and spend a lot of time really curating a slate of after parties that feels intentional. What distinguishes booking those lineups from what you set out to do with the main fest?

First off, the festival being in San Francisco is great, because you’re in San Francisco and there’s a lot to do. But with this festival and this particular type of music, people come in and they want to party. They want to be out all weekend. So I try to activate the right amount of spaces so there’s enough to do before and after the event. With the afterparties, it’s a good opportunity to come up with unique interesting pairings and just fun evenings—like the Underworld and Brutalism 3000 set last year, what made it special is that they were both in town the same day and they were excited to do it.

I was a big festival kid when I was younger, and my favorite part was seeing 10 to 20 acts in a day—some in snippets, others as longer sets. But I know not everyone likes to consume music that way at a festival and prefer full sets. And having this “Portola Week” program is also a way to give people two opportunities to see the artist they want to see. If there’s a conflict with one artist they want to see at the festival, they could go see them the night before or after instead and be able to see both. So that’s really where it all stems from, and it’s really just to create a really fun weekend for people to have in the city of San Francisco and trying to make it way more palatable for people to see the artist they want to see.

I also wanted to ask you about marketing, because most music festivals have incredibly boring corporate promo. But you have made an entire brand identity around this satisfyingly brilliant shit posting. How did you land on that as an identity for the festival, and how has that identity evolved in the last 5 years?

I’ve been doing this for 17 years now. I started as a marketer at Hard Summer, and it was three employees. I was 23 years old running the marketing for this company with full autonomy. And I learned so much by doing that. So when it was time to start Portola, I immediately said, “I want this festival to have a personality.” I like to laugh, I like to make jokes and I just want to be funny. I wanted it to be a good follow more than anything.

One of the general philosophies of Portola is that if things can be made more fun, make it more fun. And the two examples I’ll give is, if you have to print something, instead of printing it on a piece of white paper, why not print it on a piece of yellow paper—because it’s more fun? And instead of using the word bathrooms to point to the bathrooms on site, use the words “pee pee poo poo.” If you can make people smile or chuckle for the little things, just do it.

For our socials, it’s a team of five of us and some have been with us since the very beginning. We’ve had a couple new people come in, and actually a dear friend of mine who is a comedy writer for sitcoms and late night shows is part of the team too. It’s the most fun call every week, where we are just laughing the whole time and coming up with crazy ideas. We have a very active group chat.

You’re a 5-year-old festival, which is longer than a lot of festivals make it, but also very young still. What I’ve noticed, as a San Francisco resident especially, is that people have built up these inside jokes and a lore around Portola. And I feel like you all are aware of it and join in on that conversation. Comparing that to a property like Coachella, where there is also plenty of attendee lore, but the main Coachella Instagram page is never going to make allusions to it or get in on the fun. So for a festival that has a sizable financial footprint, it still feels local and approachable, which is a hard thing to achieve on social media where most things make you want to dissociate.

That’s a part of our rule: Would another festival post it? We just want to be different, and we want to have fun with it. We want to have a personality. We want everything to just make you chuckle. In the third year where Natasha Bedingfield was a surprise, a week before we announced her we posted a video of a rat dancing in the rain to “Unwritten.” And the week before that too, we had a slideshow and there was a hot dog with mustard and the mustard read “the future is unwritten”. It was something funny someone sent, like “ how funny would this be if we put “Unwritten” over this video?” That’s literally how we do it. It’s that simple.

Our Nicole Kidman letter came from a friend of mine. She was like, “Hey, wouldn’t this be funny?” And I was like, “Oh my god, this is brilliant. Can I post this?” She said, “Yeah.” I sent it to the group.

You never know what might happen. I feel like that’s the power and magic of the internet that we no longer romanticize as much, that literally anything could happen. You post something, you slide in someone’s DMs, and all of a sudden this amazing thing materializes!

Who knows? But it’s just more fun either way. Like we’ve been cracking up finding all these great Nicole Kidman tidbits about her raving and partying. And so we just want to have a little fun with it because, based on what we see of her personality, we would assume she would think it’s funny. We’re just trying to make her smile too.

Before John Coltrane experienced the divine touch of God, he felt the fists of Miles Davis. It was right before Halloween in 1956, and the man who birthed cool was characteristically hot. For the last few months, the star tenor saxophonist in his fabled quintet had been showing up to work late in rumpled clothing, picking his nose distractedly, and nodding off on the bandstand. Frequently strung out on heroin, Coltrane compounded the disarray by drinking heavily whenever he couldn’t score.

The tension exploded backstage at Café Bohemia in the Village. In an incident recounted in Davis’s autobiography, the pugilistic bandleader slapped Coltrane upside the head and socked him in the gut. Whether it was the effects of narcotic sedation or a matter of natural pacifism, Coltrane barely flinched. Davis said that he “sat there like a big baby” while Thelonious Monk watched in disgust. After criticizing Davis for his aggression, Monk told Coltrane that he could come play for his band anytime.

Desperation seized Coltrane, who was born a century ago today. Only a year prior, Davis had replaced Sonny Rollins with the journeyman sax player, elevating him from relative anonymity to the upper echelon of young jazz giants. The newfound security allowed the 29-year-old to get married and start a family. But the needle wrought more damage. After a few more sporadic gigs with Davis, the mercurial trumpeter fired Coltrane for his “junkie shit.” By April 1957, he found himself back home in Philadelphia, living with his wife and adopted daughter, locked inside his room, waging a life-or-death battle to quit cold turkey.

If Coltrane ever told anyone what he weathered during that gruesome sickness, it was never reported. His daughter later described her awareness of his pain and suffering, but the humble and plain-spoken Coltrane declined to talk at length about his visions. After all, orphic revelations cannot be accurately translated. They are an out-of-body leap, lightning bolt illuminations electrifying the infinite darkness, apparitions communicating in alien dialects only accessible to the recipient.

These holy transmissions are best transmuted into towering Sistine Chapels of sound or iridian stanzas of poetry. Expressing them in the dreary shadow of plain speech can make them feel like a greasy “I can see the light” sermon. Coltrane must have understood this. That’s why we have A Love Supreme, the jazz analogue to the Torah, the Vedas, or the Tripitaka, sacred hymns summoned from Coltrane’s own Cave of Hira (a four-bedroom brick and wood-frame house on Long Island).

Released in 1965, it is the diamond sutra of spiritual jazz, a touchstone of the peace and civil rights movements, a soul and spinal influence on everyone from The Grateful Dead to Carlos Santana, Patti Smith to U2, Steely Dan to Earth, Wind & Fire, Bootsy Collins to Rick James. You can hear it in the beatific miniature symphonies of J Dilla and Madlib, the modern jazz reveries of Shabaka Hutchings and Kamasi Washington, the lunar futurism of Alice Coltrane’s grandnephew Flying Lotus and in Kendrick Lamar’s jazz-cracked, triple-timed revolutions of sound. In its universalist quest for harmony and physical transcendence, A Love Supreme feels like a healing balm. It is a heaven-sent communique to repair earthly sins. The Sagrada Familia as psalm. A prayer answered every time you press play.

In the liner notes written to accompany the album, Coltrane directly referred to its genesis:

During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.

It was the resurrection of original faith. Coltrane was born in 1926 in a North Carolina town so small it was literally named Hamlet. Shortly thereafter, the family relocated to nearby High Point, a heavily segregated hub of the southern furniture industry. Both grandfathers were ministers in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and Coltrane described a religious family that “planted the seeds in me.” Faith was intrinsically bound to the idea of a meaningful existence. His father was a tailor whose true passion was the violin; blessed with a beautiful voice, his mother dreamed of being a concert singer, but her preacher father refused to allow the pursuit.

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I’m in New York and doseone is at his home in Santa Fe and we’re talking about Sumerian tablets over a wifi connection so clean it sounds as if the 49-year-old avant-garde rap legend is sitting right across from me. “Upright apes have been thinking about this shit for so long,” he says, referencing specifically a poem whose sentiments recur throughout sighting, his new album with Louisianan musicians Wino Willy and Zetroc, and generally our impulse to make sense of the Big Bang, original sin, and all its tiny, violent reverberations.

It’s been 30 years since the man born Adam Drucker co-founded anticon.; across those three decades he’s released roughly 30 records on his own and as part of various groups, all of which push rap into odder shapes and more uncertain territory. The son of artists, Drucker grew up mostly in New Jersey and Philadelphia; last decade he moved to the Southwest in part to pursue a career scoring video games. But this move into middle age has, if anything, more intuitive and less rote with his creative process. sighting, as he describes it, is in part an exercise in becoming a conduit for the ideas and images that might move through you, as if a jolt of electricity or a paranormal chill.

At times, the new album—scaffolded by Wino Willy’s drums and Zetroc’s audacious instrumentation—is uncomfortably dark, but it is never universally so. “My dad could tell I was really mining my darkness and trauma to make art,” Drucker recalls of a period in his adolescence. “And he was like, ‘Hey man, you got to take all these grays, these darks, you got to make a new white. You can’t be like Rothko and kill yourself beautifully on the floor. You can’t use you all up. That is not what the art wants. That’s not what anyone wants.’”

And so sighting seems to come out of the same ether that birthed folk tales and indigenous art in the region going back centuries. The aperture is open and the work ethic anchors it. “I do not experiment for experiment’s sake,” Drucker says, “but I make music for music’s sake, and that means I work on the fringe. And with the fringe, there is always another day of work.”

Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I’m also from another part of the country, but I live in L.A. now, and I love the desert—it has a real romantic appeal, but it also feels like you’re on another planet.

Yeah, you could see how someone came up with all that skinwalker shit. You pull it from the turf. And that’s a big theme for sighting—the sighting thing came as I went to make art about the record. These days I finish the very last song and then I start making the art, and then I title it. Generally in that order. So I just was listening to all this dark music we made and I was like, “Oh man, I want to do… not really Bigfoot sightings, but these dark wendigo kind of watchery things. And then that brought me to sighting, and thinking about how the whole thing is being a vessel, really allowing imagery to develop and not be fettered by me or my personal politics or the world’s politics. I’ve always loved the occult. I listened to fucking Coast to Coast on tour. Late at night, you would throw in George Noory and all that shit. It skews kind of Christy for some reason these days, but all of that anomalous information is way more interesting to me than who won the World Series in 1957. [Ed.- The Milwaukee Braves beat the Yankees in seven games.]

It’s interesting to talk about that tension between feeling like a vessel for things and actually exerting your own politics or worldview. When do you feel that divide coming up in your writing?

Well, so when I do channel the world per se through me, it is still these days very imagery-forward. I think sometimes I’m doing language things, like if these words are playing well, but it took a lot of concerted effort to move past ideas starting in my head, and getting a gut feeling about something, things actually hitting me, where I stop in my tracks and start the writing there. And that was this dedication to figuring things out: not being a factory, listening to whatever signals I pick up. I’m certainly not a hippie, but I’m picking up fucking signals. And it’s all sorts of things, whether it’s from Twitter and the wrong side of history, something will trigger me, you know what I mean? Something that I’m truly intrigued by and inspired by, whether that’s a peer and something they made, or skinwalker tales about the Southwest, whatever the fuck it’s going to be. On this record, it’s very distinct images of going through.

I had a cancer scare. Everyone who worked on this record had something non-positive in their life while we were working on this. I got a colonoscopy; I did this home test thing, came back full-blown positive. So they put me in this litany of shit. And then lo and behold, I had nothing. Because I live in a place that is swollen with the elderly, I had to sit for six months and just be with my mortality. I didn’t have cancer, so there’s a worse version of the story. But also [Zetroc], his whole apartment burnt down. So there’s quite a few nasty sonnets about health insurance and being priced out of your existence, and then that being woven very tightly with more brutal depictions of a Kodiak bear mauling you in the open night, and letting all those things touch.

So for me, the joy is to abandon the reality and go into imagery and then do vice-versa. So the whole record is. The cool thing is it’s doing it within the songs. I don’t think that—not to bag on Hamilton—but I don’t need a fucking plot. I don’t need a plan to really paint with what it is that comes to me and comes through me. And then, when I’m in the vocal booth, I’m just channeling the music. So it’s a fun process. And then both Zet and Willie are just brilliant, man. My favorite artists pretty much are ones who are naturals. They have the gift. Everyone has to do the thousand hours, but both of them really have a way of being completely original without forcing anything or trying to do something. And this record became a bed for all of us to do something we haven’t done before.

Maybe this is different for you being the child of artists, but when I was a kid and I would read interviews where artists would talk about theme or structure emerging from their subconscious during the process, and I though they were lying. And then you start making art and you go, “No, that is kind of how it happens.” Do you feel that you’re significantly better at allowing that process to happen now than, say, 15 or 20 years ago?

Yes. So that is the long arc. That is not musculature that develops. It is really this. This kind of comes from [the poet] Galway Kinnell, but actually comes from my lived experience. Galway Kinnell had this documentary thing where they’re like, “Why do you break your lines so weird or uniquely?” And he’s like, “Well, there’s a cat and if the cat scratches the back of my hand, I break the line. And I don’t control the cat.” I always thought about that. And then I realized that actually getting out of the way and allowing an amazing poem to take place because you’re running the pen is more like how you see people who are good around animals. There is a way in which you’re not trying to disturb what inspires you or whip out your phone and fucking scan it. Literally, you can scare the moment away.

And the thing I learned over all these years, which took a million repetitions, is that just knowing when I have a really good poem in me and when I have just the head or tail of a line or stanza, just a node. And when you have a really good poem, you just get this feeling like, I’m fucking up if I don’t stop and sit and let it happen. And that has been the secret to my success. There’s a real getting out of the way of—especially with rap—not only just all the tropes, not only all the people who have rhymed every word in the universe before you, but really all the things you’ve done before. And it’s hard. I don’t got to tell you, being a shadow of your former self is the number-one killer of good art.

We’re talking a lot about being conduits and being the person holding the pen and whatnot, but there is a formal intervention into the impulses you feel and the signals you receive. When you’re writing this record, did you feel like on a technical level, anything was going particularly well?

I felt the pull to this darkness thing, like this is going to be a work of darks and that’s okay. I’m not really here to give people song progressions anymore, and I’m also not here to give you good-mood music. So it’s really what we were making, what we kept bringing one stone after the other with the color of the music we were making. So I just followed that and let that happen. And then the other thing was—this is kind of tacky—but a long time ago on Twitter, I think it was Ghostface, but somebody was talking about nobody does storytelling in rap anymore. And I love Ghostface. But I literally was like, “Man, what is storytelling in music besides a book on tape,” all this stuff.

So I started thinking about that, and then I started writing these fables, and they generally sit inside me as one image until there’s a second image, and then I started writing them. And that was something I let out on this record for the first time. I’ve written a few on another piece that isn’t out yet, but this came out first, and honestly, people are reacting really well to “Born With Thorns” and “Shadow As Bread.” I’m definitely not making any punchlines about modern basketball players or anything to latch onto. You got to follow me and buy what I’m selling. And then those weirder beats that Willie was giving me, I was like—not that I felt like he was challenging me to do it because he didn’t know that I was thinking about these things—but it just kind of came out of me. Then when Zet stepped in and started adding more musical analog, non-repeating layers, I was like, “Oh, this is perfect for a fable that grows in intensity and is musical, but isn’t a lecture.” I don’t know, trying stuff. I think that mixed with the other things the record does, which the fables also do, is be brutal, almost violent, dark, but not tacky or whatever. It’s not horrorcore. It’s not intentional like that. It’s actually painting in swaths, and then going back and adding deliberate stitching between things.

What you were saying earlier did also remind me of Lynch though—specifically his fixation on forgetting ideas that you neglect to write down, which he always insisted would make you want to kill yourself.

When Willie sent me these first few beats, before Zet was on board, two of them were set to Eraserhead scenes. He was thinking about sending them to Sharif, and it never happened. And then there were more beats, and when he gave them to me, I went to Seattle—I’ve been to all the original locations for Twin Peaks. I’m a fucking dork for that. Anyway, I saw the Eraserhead clips and I was like, “Yeah, this is my man. I can’t go anywhere near Lynch.” And he dies while we’re doing it. I kept it in my palm; it’s not like if you listen to a song in reverse, it’s all the words in the Lost Highway script. I can’t do it, but I love him. He is what we were talking about earlier, “Get yourself out of the way.”

So in what aspects of the process—I’m talking big-picture process, on a career level as much as a song level—do you most want to insert yourself?

I learned from Steel Tipped Dove when I did All Portrait, No Chorus. He said “If you’re not making lifelong friendships while you’re making albums, you are sadly doing it wrong.” Because AI can do that album, man. If your gig was just the part that can be farmed out, what are you doing? Grow, find your people. I think there’s this thing in indie music that when done poorly, it’s disgusting. Some of the Kanye stuff where he’s like, “Fly in all the young talent and let me drink their blood and then kick them out and I’m going to be better”—that’s really bad. But opening up to a bunch of people you’ve never met because you love their art and then having the balls to get in the room no matter what generation or era or zip code you’re from and make stuff is best thing in the world.

“The Atomic bomb! No one asked us what we thought about it. Everyone is in an uproar, for none of our officials know anything about this. All the gambling people are furious, for, naturally, they fear that people will no longer come here…The first atomic bomb was exploded on January 27 at 5 in the morning…[There was no warning!] However, we all felt it. It shook us awake with the most terrific blast.” Georgia Lewis in Las Vegas…The Way It Was: Diary of a Pioneer Las Vegas Woman

The federal government favored Las Vegas for the same reason as the mob: It was a place where one could get away with anything. Maybe the molten heat of the Mojave lends a touch of absolution. More than three decades before Bugsy Siegel imported his first pink flamingo, Nevada became the last Western state to ban gambling—only to reinstitute it 21 years later during the economic hardships of the Great Depression.

A professional poker player told me that one of the reasons he liked living here was that the natural chaos offered a perverse comfort. “The thing about Vegas is that no matter what you do here, there’s always someone doing something far more depraved,” he said. “Everything is relative.”

About 75 years and 65 miles northwest of here, the Atomic Energy Commission established the Nevada Proving Ground, where a cluster of scientists, Air Force pilots, and small-time bureaucrats once detonated some of the most powerful bombs known to man. The United States found itself locked in an Eastern Slavic squat dance with the Soviet Union, which required brinksmanship. It meant upping the annihilation ante. Initially, the government decided to test its nuclear royal flush in the turquoise blue waters of obscure Micronesian atolls, but soon added a more convenient and cost-effective option. As Harry S. Truman said: “Vegas, baby!”

Anger directed at Washington D.C. quickly subsided. It was true that during the Eisenhower years shifting winds occasionally carried the radioactive clouds outside the test site, scattering nuclear fallout across Mormon towns, Native reservations, and rural villages. But it was a small price to pay for entertainment. The tests soon became the only thing that could compete with I Love Lucy. Tourists headed east from Los Angeles on the old Highway 91 to see what guide books described as “dazzling fireballs—brighter than the sun!”

The heaviest thermonuclear experiments remained in the Central Pacific, where 7,000 square miles of oceanic contamination were merely the cost of doing business. Nevada was for the domesticated bombs, a matinee apocalypse to be ritualistically timed and ticketed. The chamber of commerce even issued a dedicated tourist calendar. And so between the legalized gambling and the tens of millions that the Pentagon poured into the test site and test site-related mischief, Vegas became a boom town. Mushroom clouds popped up on gift shop souvenirs at McCarran Field. The atomic cocktail became a regional delight.

On one of my weekends in Vegas, in between the courtroom drama of the 2Pac murder trial, I nursed a tequila sunrise at Atomic Liquors, ruminating on how the last 30 years of legal inertia led to urban legend and apocrypha. At the oldest freestanding bar in town, the walls are adorned with pictures of hellish aerial fireballs. Its roof once offered a panoramic view of the blasts at dawn. Maybe it’s a peculiar thing to turn the looming threat of nuclear holocaust into kitsch, but that’s the story of the city itself.

In a show full of them, Las Vegas was the most (un)natural setting in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. What other rightful shadow realm was there for an artist fascinated with Manichean duality, indigenous portals to the spirit world, and wicked interdimensional entities subsuming physical forms. Agent Cooper’s lobotomized tulpa needed a nice little suburban tract home located just outside of a deathless neon strip lined with plaster simulacrums of the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and ancient Rome. And so competitively priced!

The city’s fundamental business plan was to construct vortexes where time and space were stripped of meaning. A matrix constructed atop the same Precambrian sands that still contain ghost towns and the numinous vibrations of Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard’s failed experiments to summon the Whore of Babylon, and where atomic physicists ripped asunder the very molecules at the essence of life itself.

In The Return’s eighth episode, Lynch resituates Pandora’s Box—the source of all the evil and turpitude from the last seven decades of American life—at the Trinity Test that once inflamed the skies across New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto. The moment when human civilization realized once and for all that the devil was real. It was a modern destruction myth, an Aristotelian peripeteia: The weapon built to end the war was the thing that made total obliteration possible. And as eerie as the vision was, something in it made you nod your head.

The central fear of Lynch’s mid-century childhood may have been nuclear incineration, but the constant threat has been absorbed into our amygdala. The most recent Iran War began with stealth bombers and drones pummeling Iranian military targets. The government explained it as a necessity to ward off nuclear armageddon, but predictably turned it into a shipping war about oil.

One of this month’s top news stories was about an ex-Anthropic whistleblower alerting the world to the possibility that self-improving superintelligence could cause total societal ruin. Elon Musk immediately called it a psyop, but himself has long fretted about our extinction from rogue AI agents “launching a nuke.” Anthropic’s alignment science lead claimed that there’s a greater than ten percent chance of us going bust in the next decade, which is perhaps the best advertisement for recklessly attacking the craps table. How much of this you believe is up to you, but it’s inarguable that The Bomb was an eschatological turning point in human history—the first time we created something with the power to end it all.

These doomsday fears were the original stocking stuffer for big pharma; they now seem quaint in a digital world suffused with ambient dread. As information overload and the brain rot bot singularity beckons, the more we turn to myths and sibilant conspiracies to futilely re-order the world. Over the last 30 years, the moments that hastened our collective freefall are rarely disputed: the media deregulation and monopolies that followed the telecommunications act; 9/11; the Iraq War; the federal government’s failures during Hurricane Katrina; Citizens United; social media becoming algorithmically gamed; and our vertical video descent into an Amusing Ourselves to Death celebritocracy. Each generation has their own moment to map the misfires that led us into this psychological cul-de-sac.

The first time that I personally understood that we had crossed the Styx was when Britney Spears, the American dream incarnate, shaved her head in a nervous breakdown partially incited by our ravenous appetite to watch the strip tease unravel. But when I reminisce on that event, it was a symptom of a deeper psychic dislocation. Sitting in trial for most of the last month, it became clear that we have been bodysurfing the abyss since 2Pac died 30 years ago.

When Pac was killed in September ’96, Vegas was undergoing a secular baptism. The original gilded palaces of sin had either become rubble or were becoming passé. This was now the city lamented in the epilogue of Casino, which had only come out ten months earlier—the Disneyland where the kids play cardboard pirates and their parents lose their mortgage payments and college savings on the poker slots. The film was an arrivederci to the old Vegas, which I never witnessed. Vegas was the place my family frugally vacationed. No need to fly, and it was free to watch the Mirage volcano erupt, and the buccaneers attempting to sink a British frigate in the tepid bay in front of Treasure Island. We dined at the all-you-can-eat buffet in the same imitation Arthurian castle where Orlando Anderson slept the night that he allegedly killed Pac—after first being jumped inside a fake Emerald City filled with animatronic Munchkins.

Shortly after Pac’s death, the Vegas oligarchs decided that a high-profile, months-long spectacle revolving around a gang-related homicide would not be ideal PR for a place attempting the Big Rebrand. The pirates had to be cardboard, not actual Pirus in Pirates hats. And during the actual trial itself, three decades later, the indefensible delays in solving the murder were blamed on the apathetic Vegas cops, politicians, and prosecutors who did their best Lance Burton and made the investigation go poof.

Every few years, some journalist wrote an article reminding the world about the unsolved crime, but it quickly blew over or became invalidated by factual inaccuracies. The government officials blamed the inaction on cross-jurisdictional misdirection between the Los Angeles law enforcement and Las Vegas Metro. That or the omerta that often accompanies gang violence. Either way, no significant headway occurred until the feds took an interest in the case around 2008—and only then after a wrongful death lawsuit from Biggie’s mom threatened to bankrupt the city of Los Angeles, and forced them to investigate the connections between the two crimes.

The 30 years between murder and verdict allowed for the seeds of our self-delusion to germinate. It’s probably a total coincidence that Alex Jones launched his Austin radio show The Final Edition in 1996, but hardly surprising. One of the most prominent early guests on Jones’s cabal-a-thons was William Cooper, author of Behold a Pale Horse, which became a bible for Illuminati believers after being circulated through the New York prison system. And you can’t entirely discount Cooper—if nothing else for inspiring Prodigy’s wildest third-eye visions, Goodie Mob’s “Cell Therapy,” and the entire Killarmy corpus. He also predicted the rise of school shootings. Conversely, he swore that JFK was killed by the powers that be because he was about to inform the world that extraterrestrials were about to take over Earth. And besides, everyone knows that the mob and the CIA did that shit.

The last sentence may be a joke. It might not be. And this is how the conspiracy theorists get you. Genuine revelations often alternate with patent insanity. It’s much easier to become a true believer or a disaffected skeptic than to have to wade into the Sargasso Sea of exaggeration, hyperbole, and deranged wisdom. I have been to the Texas School Book Depository and stood beside the sixth-floor corner window where Oswald fired the bullet that allegedly killed Kennedy. And it was startlingly obvious that unless good ol’ Lee Harvey was the greatest marksman this side of that Turkish Olympic sharpshooter, there had to be a second killer. But when Oliver Stone released JFK in 1991, the grassy knoll became synonymous with tin foil paranoiacs. The film forced Congress into declassifying thousands of documents, but simultaneously ingrained the second gunman as the stuff of Seinfeld parody.

2Pac’s became the first unsolved celebrity murder at the dawn of the internet. Never before had humanity experienced such hospitable terrain for the dissemination of lies, half-truths, and innuendo. The technological impact dislodged something primitive and fixed in the human mind. Rapid scientific discovery and an interconnected world should have led to a lucid rationalism, but it had a paradoxical effect. Spurred by this supreme agent of chaos and propaganda, we gradually turned to the extraordinary and irrational to explain what was obvious before our very eyes. But that was the thing—what we witnessed was mediated through an easily manipulated filter. We learned to be skeptical of the mainstream web but astonishingly credulous towards esoteric knowledge available on Angelfire pages—which midwifed YouTube “documentarians”—and TikTok edutainers.

If an arrest had been made in those first few months, or even years, the speculation would have been largely snuffed out. But when authorities didn’t indict anyone connected to the MGM melee, it only fueled the rumors—especially for those not from Southern California and/or terminally online. Whodunit theories proliferated. Suge had set it all up. It was the FBI. The CIA. Crooked LAPD cops. That is, if 2Pac hadn’t faked the whole thing.

The symbolism and numerology from The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory convinced a generation that Pac was toying with us all. But in one of his last interviews, the late Makaveli mocked the notion of the “secret society trying to keep their eye on me.” He dismissed the New World Order as a plot to lower Black people’s self-esteem, and distract them from the very real systemic oppression cementing racial inequality.

Maybe Pac was still furious about “Drop a Gem On ‘Em,” but he was more likely too aware of the ramifications of the federally funded plots to surveil, infiltrate, and disrupt the lives of the Black Panthers who raised him. The artist who once said that Black Power was a childhood lullaby was born one month after his 24-year-old mother successfully defended herself in the Panther 21 trial, the then-longest and costliest in New York state history. Afeni Shakur faced 300 years on charges of conspiracy to bomb everything from police precincts to subway stations to Abercrombie & Fitch. After the trial, one of the jurors, a 53-year-old insurance clerk, declared that she had previously been “a little afraid of the Panthers and not as afraid of the police. Now I’m a little more afraid of the police than I am of the Panthers.”

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Gio Escobar, bandleader of Standing On The Corner, has done everything in his power to work around the vampiric systems in place set to suck the commodifiable arts from the Black and Brown youth who created it. For the last year, the band’s newest album, Standing On The Corner II, has existed as a physical disc with an accompanying visual album, only available for purchase in a few ways: on September 11th 2025, in Times Square from someone in a Mickey Mouse costume; at a concert at the Sugar Hill Restaurant & Supper Club with SOTC and Styles P headlining; or at the Taino Needle Science Institute shows featuring the band’s forays into drone music. It’s been a game of keep away that’s led all in search of the record to what few sacred grounds of a bygone New York City left standing.

Though the streaming version of the album is now free in the world, it has been edited and adjusted to fit the financial and legal limitations of their partners, XL Recordings. Some cultural totems have been washed away, but it remains a dense exhibit, bucking against all rules of modern commercial music. Genres are acknowledged only as much as they have cultural roots to nod to, history is blurred and blended, voices are buried behind sound collage rich enough to parse for a lifetime. “Man May Not Last” is a sterling example of this, capturing the multicultural soundbombing of New York old with the anxiety and clarity of what we’re up against as common folk in New York today. Styles P plays the straight man in this whirlwind, slow flowing lines like “school fucked up/and the food fucked up/what would you do if everyone you knew was fucked up?”

Ovrkast., “KNOCK” f/ Samara Cyn & Mavi

Shrinking is the pocket of rappers that have a following outside of the indie rap Bandcamp sphere that are willing to speak candidly about the industrial complex they work within. With swagger and clear eyed observation, Ovrkast., Samara Cyn and Mavi choose different paths to push this dying style forward. Ovrkast. takes the lead, intertwining “the pressure of the past and the present with its info” by warping classic quotables to fit alongside uncomfortable truths of being a modern major label rapper. With her nasally timbre Samara Cyn spills an anecdote, reading every line of fine print in his binding legal contracts before warily playing the industry game with goalpost movers. It all leads to Mavi, batting last as all the giants of rap history do, wielding black humor as he sees his own career playing out in a modern minstrel show, selling his personhood for a percentage of his own creations.

Scarface, Ghostface Killah, and Kool G Rap, “Red Bull Spiral Freestyle”

Rappers never retire. Rather their careers creak into the sunset one of four ways.

1. You pass away, and even then you better pray you set a good password on your Dropbox.

2. They trickle out guest verses every few years so good you wonder why they haven’t released something proper in a while. Scarface, despite threatening to trade in his mic for a sterling silver watch a half dozen times, is always good to ride out a bassline every few years.

3. The fans retire them. They may keep pushing new music but there isn’t a soul outside of their estate telling them dropping music is a good idea. We’ll always have Fischscale right?

4. The industry passes them by. G Rap has always had a machine behind him in some way; Cold Chillin’, Warner Brothers, Koch. Now that the tides have shifted and being underground requires either a boutique label or customized management team needs to be put in place to get his ageless lisp in front of his fans. Fingers crossed this is the dawn of that new day, cause the Godfather still got it.

zayALLCAPS, Heno., Kwame Adu, and MyFavoriteColor, “No Headliners”

Armed with Steve Harvey suits and the power of friendship the cross country collective are bringing their variety show to a town near you. While traversing the East Coast on their No Headliners Tour, the in-need-of-a-barbershop quartet enter the rare club of OnTheRadar guests willing to prove they don’t need a backing track to keep their performances high energy. With a bouncy flip of Gap Band’s “Outstanding” keeping a speedy pace, the crew cracks Aaron Hernandez and iCarly jokes as they weave amongst one another like a choreographed Motown troupe.

Pac Div, “All Gas”

The Blog Era nostalgia tour is sweeping down so hard it raised the L.A. trio of Like, Mibbs, and BeYoung from their slumber. Shaking the rust off and keeping the brand strong with a rumbling Pharrell-meets-Chuck Inglish-type beat from Huss, the trio flexes pinky rings and retro J’s like the calendar froze in time after their departure. Or, maybe real swag never goes out of style.

Extras

As is fitting for the last weeks of summer, many of August’s finest sets went slow, languid, and stretched-out, prizing haze over anything too sharp. Melbourne selector DJ Sure went deep on sun-baked rock-and-roll and slow-rolling electronics for their Space’d entry, and Voidal went wider still, reaching for all manner of funk, pop, and jangled-up who-knows-whats. New York selector Enayet turned in a masterful sort-of-opening session that ran a million gamuts, and Nick Boyd turned in a peak-time set that was nevertheless downright delirious. Parisian DJ Duane explored the lines between dub and dubstep in a lights-out special, and Carl Luis turned in a far blearier session of dub and reggae tools for Good Morning Tapes. Vladimir Ivkovic and Chez de Milo imagined high-energy club tools as something far woozier, and Marylou turned in a straight-up horrible trip of ambient music and UK club idioms. SnPLO, DJ Frog & roadkill’s b5b presents tech-house at its trippiest, and batida power-trio O Ghettão took the rough-and-tumble drum music to a space that felt outright incantatory.

It’s not all so sludgy, though. Yu Su’s Gop Tun Festival offering is a masterclass in head-spinning techno and breaks, and DJ Land Reform went full-bore on a Rolodex of trance records, to winning effect. A minivan’s worth of DJs flooded the Pacific Northwest with all manner of club (and non-club!) sounds from this year’s Lodge festival, making for some of the most essential (and ungoogleable) listening you’ll find this year. Drum scientist upsammy pushed her craft ever further at Parameter Festival, and DJ Plead and Baby Leo turned in one of this year’s most madcap back-to-back sessions yet at the same event. Angus Mills’ Drip mix shows off the everything-goes energy that makes the mix series essential, while Hank Jackson’s naffcast is electrifying, white-hot, and a bit maddening. boxofbox turned in their once-a-year marathoner of a session, whipping between old-school R&B, Euro house, and new jack swing; elsewhere still, DJ Possum nodded towards the new season with a mix of starry-eyed dance music.

Here are some of the best DJ sets August had to offer.

Angus Mills, Drip.mix 004 // Hank Jackson, naffcast022

Though Peanut’s Drip series is relatively new—at time of writing, it’s four deep after six months—it’s left a marked impression. If you’re keen to cast one, the series’ first three offerings suggest a mold: here, the Sydney DJ has curated a killer selection of strung-out tech-house and breaks, all shades-on club music with unknowable IDs. 004, courtesy of fellow Australian Angus Mills, is a bit different, but just a bit. Scan through the set and you’ll catch on quickly: it’s appealingly loose-limbed and playful, never losing track of the dance floor but always willing to toss a curveball. That feels like the idea when Mills slides into full-throttle trance midway through; it’s there when everything cuts out except for a reverb-soaked spoken-word sample; it’s downright unmissable when he slides into some straight-up nu-jazz early on. For all the left turns, though, this one’s obviously aimed at the floor, and it’s the better for it: This is top-notch dance-music mixing where the detours feel like the point.

In case you’re keen for a bit more yes-and mixing, it’s worth taking a trip to Montreal for your next night out. On naffcast022, NYC mainstay Hank Jackson goes deep on that attitude, making something that’s at once delirious and hyper-focused, pitch-black and wild-eyed. If the Angus Mills set is the warm-up, consider this peak-time. It’s neither stronger or weaker than the other, but calibrated for a sweat-drenched dance floor rather than one that’s filling up. Not coincidentally, the best bits of this set are when Jackson gets speedy or off-kilter, like the breakbeat belter he pulls out halfway through, the freaked-out acid-techno run he goes on not long after, or the eleventh-hour dive into trance-slash-two-step. (Or something like that.) As the set runs on, Jackson locks in harder and gets more audacious, backflipping between styles without losing the floor along the way. Call it a one-two punch.

boxofbox, Mountainous Migrations of Lovelonging Hermits // DJ Possum, Butterfly Wings (Libra Mix)

A few years ago, boxofbox, a.k.a. Durham selector Johnathan Lyon, summarized their yearly long-form mix series as such: “fun-focused, long, car-ride-optimized, tracky, improvised.” No kidding. boxofbox has a habit of going long, and Mountainous Migrations of Lovelonging Hermits, clocking in at just over five hours, is no exception to the rule (if anything, it’s a little short), but it’s the rest of that sentence—the joy, the looseness, the play—that makes their sets worth sticking around for. Here, Lyon goes deep on vintage-flavored dance tracks, leaning hard on vocal cuts of all stripes: horn-slammed hip-hop, no-shit new-jack swing, lovelorn R&B, head-spinning breakbeats, piano-house stompers, and a million other styles besides. At its best, it’s up there with Lyon’s finest work, a hi-def ode to the kind of jubilee that dance floors have promised for generations. The whole thing feels like a best-case scenario for a dust-covered CD you’d find in the attic: yesteryear’s dance music pushed into the present thanks to canny mixing and unmistakable joy.

If Lovelonging Hermits is about finding ecstasy in a time capsule, then Butterfly Wings is about a particular set of items in that collection: breakbeats and house records. Over the course of about two hours, DJ Possum stretches out and slows down, finding a million flavors of unrushed joy along the way. The throughline, here, comes in the Melbourne selector’s tendency towards headsy club tunes, all kicks and dancing synthesizers, but there’s so much to do with that template: jazz-inflected deep-house rollers, techno cuts where the basslines eat everything else on site, breakbeats as heard through a payphone, tracky acid, piano-slammed trance tunes that wouldn’t sound out of place on her home turf’s contemporary club circuit. As the set runs on, it becomes clear that DJ Possum is using sunshine as a springboard, building a veritable kaleidoscope of blissed-out club tracks along the way.

Carl Luis, In Session // Duane, Live at Slow Roast

Maybe it’s trite to say, but it’s true: It all comes back to dub. It’s worth knowing about the style’s contours if you’re into any corner of contemporary dance music, as it’s likely touched just about any genre you can think of. But it’s also worth digging into for a much simpler reason—it’s also fantastic served straight. Carl Luis shows as much on In Session, a can’t-miss limited-edition mix (sorry!) released via Good Morning Tapes. Luis spends the A-side focused on dub and reggae records that feel a bit out-of-time—no, really, listen hard and you can hear about three tempi at once here—and, on the flip, cranks the smoke machines up and ratchets down the BPM, making something that’s both heavier and a bit zanier. It’s a laser-tight session, one that takes dub’s million histories seriously, making the implicit argument for the sound as one of dance music’s finest exports along the way.

Elsewhere, Parisian selector Duane went deep on the same kind of material, using it as a springboard towards all manner of other styles in the process. (“Perfect for inner travels, sunny afternoons or cloudy days alike,” they write, showing the sheer range already encapsulated in the best dub records.) For about the first hour, it feels like a nice extension of In Session, but, over time, Live at Slow Roast moves towards something else: the drums turn digital, the synths a bit more prominent, the basslines a touch eerier. It never turns to a full-on DMZ set, but it’s undeniably dubstep, with all the skitter and wobble implied. It helps that Duane is a preeminently clean mixer; throughout the set, they move patiently and carefully, blending without so much as a scuffed bar, prizing gradual motion over anything even slightly abrupt. The result is a neat historiography of sorts, a celebration of dub’s past and future rolled into one.

Diego, Diego’s Lounge Lizard Lodge Afters 2026 // Market Failure & Pyramid Scheme, Lodge 2026 // ‘nohup’, Lodge 2026 // Riki Healing & Diego, ᘖꝊᘖᑳ “ᏝᎧᎴᎶᏋ” 𝕃𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖 𝕭𝖑𝖎𝖟𝖟𝖆𝖗𝖉 ͓̽T͓͓̽̽i͓̽ë͓̽s͓͓̽̽t͓͓̽̽o͓̽ B₂B ΔŘΜƗŇ VΔŇ βỮỮŘ€Ň (҉A҉҉v҉҉B҉’҉s҉ ҉S҉҉a҉҉l҉҉t҉҉y҉ ҉R҉҉u҉҉n҉҉b҉҉a҉҉c҉҉k҉ ҉W҉҉o҉҉r҉҉l҉҉d҉ ҉C҉҉u҉҉p҉ ҉C҉҉o҉҉m҉҉e҉҉d҉҉o҉҉w҉҉n҉ ҉M҉҉i҉҉x҉) // Tabitha, Lodge 2026 // Xminus1, Lodge 2026

The best parties are the ones nobody tells you about. They’re the ones for the people who already know, the ones passed around by word-of-mouth and little else, the ones that turn into hyperlocal traditions. That seems to be the case with Lodge, an annual get-together that seems to take the Pacific Northwest by storm every year. (‘nohup’, one of the area’s finest DJs, called it their “favorite party in the world.” ) Here, we’ve got a selection of some of this year’s dispatches, at least four of which were actually recorded at the event.

First, and perhaps most unusually, there’s Diego’s solo offering. Lounge Lizard Lodge Afters is aptly named: the Seattle selector stretches out here, cooking up a loose-and-playful three-or-so hours where truly anything goes, ranging from humid dub to turn-of-the-century pop belters and—surprise!—Bill Evans. It feels like a platonic ideal of the cool-down set; in case you’ve got three hours to kill between the rave and getting home, this is more or less perfect. By contrast, you’ve got Diego’s team-up with Riki Healing, where the two claim to be Tiesto & Armin van Buuren before going all in on the slow build, moving from lighter-than-air downtempo to trance and electro pumpers.

Then, you’ve got the four that seem to have been actually recorded at the festival, rather than after it in some capacity. Seattle mainstay Xminus1’s “dinner set” gives any tired-out ravers plenty of time to kick back, with piles of funk and soul eventually giving way to more tripped-out fare. Tabitha, by contrast, went straight for the jugular, spending ninety minutes piling acid and breaks and pumping techno into something that feels unforgettable. Market Failure’s offering is heavier still, a pitch-black screamer that leans hard on EBM, industrial, and head-scrambling drum tools. Lastly, there’s the aforementioned ‘nohup’, who sprinted through histories on their set, whipping up electro, million-rhythm percussion tracks, freaked-out freestyle, a pair of remarkable Rockwell flips, and piles more besides.

DJ Land Reform, 8.24.2026

Given their association with the seemingly defunct (but still dearly beloved) 140+, it should come as little surprise that DJ Land Reform’s latest JEROME FM special is quick on its feet. Here, the Washington, D.C. disc jockey looks towards the gritted-teeth end of trance, blending vintage goa, acid, and psytrance with an obvious delight. The most striking thing, here, is perhaps the simplest: Even with the nearly thirty-year spread they’re working with, it sounds strikingly modern, all strobe-blasted synths and piledriving kicks you might expect to hear at a proper peak time set. (Not all of them, mind, but enough.) As the set runs on, DJ Land Reform puts a brick on the gas pedal; eventually, it’s an out-and-out torrent of arpeggi and four-four slammers, with every new track daring any would-be dancers to move just a bit faster. It’s an exhilarating ride through one of dance music’s wildest corners, mixed with a veteran’s grace and a young buck’s panache.

DJ Sure, Space’d Guest 052 // Voidal, inis:eto

Often, the finest mix series exist on the fringes: The podcasts aimed at the footwork freaks, the curdled-ambient aficionados, the left-of-left-field UK dance-music lifers. These present the DJ mix as a specialist’s session, letting the selector go deep into a highly particular field rather than aiming to cast a wider net. That’s the case with Space’d, too: It’s one of the finest home-listening series out there right now, and DJ Sure’s entry makes as good a case as any. On Space’d Guest 052, Bryn Dickson goes all in on low-slung chill-out tools, blending soft-rock noodlers, Balearic head-nodders, zero-grav R&B, and plenty more styles besides, making a point of never breaking a sweat. In truth, it’s easy to overlook the sheer breadth on display if you’re listening to this straight through—Dickson mixes unobtrusively, letting tracks play out, prizing melody and rhythm over anything too showy. By the end, though, he’s gone through an entire universe of low-slung listening-bar fare, grabbing armfuls of dust-covered records and making something quietly beautiful. No wonder he caps it all off with a guitar solo—he’s earned it.

Speaking of out-there mix series: inis:eto is one of the finest currently running. Since 2018, the series, whose SoundCloud page describes it as a “deep listening party,” has been approaching that mantle deadly seriously, paying host to all manner of DJs and giving them space to tunnel into highly particular modes. (Kaity Fox’s entry, from June of this year, is a critical entry in the canon in large part because of just how far afield it ventures.) inis:eto is a space for sound collagery, for house music, for dub, for techno, for drone—though rarely all at once. Given that pedigree and curatorial approach, Voidal’s entry into these halls is as out-three as you might expect: by and large, they lean into jumbled-up guitar records, reaching into their bag and pulling out billion-limbed new wave, frenetic post-punk, and surf-rock screamers. But even that feels limited: This is a set about the blind alleys, about sudden swerves into starry-eyed pop records, about the way disco and ‘90s R&B talk to each other, about the joys of friction-forward blends. If this is, as the liner notes claims, music for the afters, it must have been one hell of a party.

Enayet, Enayet’s Ragg ‘n’ Roll

There’s a joy to the warm-up set: in hearing the way a DJ takes a floor, as Enayet puts it here, “from laying around horizontal” to “moving around vertical.” It’s tempting to conceptualize Ragg ‘n’ Roll, a live recording in which the New York DJ does just that, as a one-two punch—one half “ambient,” the other half “club.” But the far more interesting approach is to look at it as a gradient: as the set progresses, Enayet takes what starts as a relatively serene affair and sneaks in more and more drums, inching the floor towards something more mobile by the measure. The raga exercises up top might be downright dreamy, but what about the spiritual-jazz freakouts, or the too-intimate trip-hop, or the guitar-feedback breakbeat duets, or the zero-BPM goa-trance exercises? At some point, this thing turns into dance music, and the point in question will change from dancer to dancer. But it’s that uncertainty that makes it fun: Ragg ‘n’ Roll sees a seasoned selector constructing a universe out of blind alleys, building a maze that ultimately leads to a full-bore party. It’s up to the listener to find their way through.

Marylou, The Cycles Special

In the notes for The Cycles Special, Marylou frames their set as a tone poem of sorts: “Ode to the infinite, the unpermanence,” they write. “They are the eternal driving force.” Such language suggests something mystical, left-field, and a bit out there—or, to put it another way, it suggests a Marylou set. As was the case with her previous set in these pages, this one starts out as deep-space ambience, all blissed-out synth blurs and folk-music idioms cast far afield. Slowly, though, she cranks on the BPM and tightens the snares. The first indication that she’s up to something comes roughly halfway in, when the warm synth tones of Gūsū’s “发芽 Fāyá” start bouncing off the walls—but don’t mistake that for a full-on admittance to the dance floor, as her headlong dive into devotional musics underlines just a few minutes later. Eventually, she puts a thumb on the scale and moves deeper into dance music, including a head-spinning gqom tunneler in the back third, but don’t get too comfortable: here, Marylou makes good on her writing’s promise, making something that doubles back on itself and never fully settles into a given groove. It’s all the better for it.

Nick Boyd, SORRMIX44: Live in Pittsburgh from 1 to 3am // Vladimir Ivkovic & Chez de Milo, The Love Inn // Vladimir Ivkovic, Selecters Mix 001

Brooklyn DJ and BOYDZONE boss Nick Boyd has a long history of curveballs. His tracklists frequently feature all manner of house and disco classics, sure, but you’ll find just about everything else if you look, too, ranging from screwball techno to left-field breaks, with room for TikTok rips and classic rock, too. Even among such a varied body of work, SORRYMIX44 stands out: To put it bluntly, Boyd has never been this sludgy. On this remarkable live rip, he goes slow and low for a downright delirious two hours, blasting the dance floor with rickety kick drums and smog in equal measure. Here, just about anything goes as long as it’s sufficiently zonked-out: dubbed-up Rolling Stones Z-sides, trance-inducing James Brown reimaginings, terrible-trip house records, screwface hand-drum rollers, post-post-post dubstep, and so much more. Throughout the set, Boyd works with a kind of lucid-dream logic, making something that’s both dance floor-ready and slyly confrontational, pushing slow-burn mixing into ever stranger territories all the while.

Of course, if you’re talking about low-BPM live mixing, Vladimir Ivkovic is never far behind. The Offen Music head made his name on the stuff—his sets are routinely playful, off-kilter, and flecked with mud, packed with screwed-up trance, new wave, ambient, spoken word and far beyond. He teamed up with Bristol party-starter Chez de Milo for a recent long-form excursion, and the results are typically outré while still remaining pitched towards the floor: scan around and you’ll find bleary-eyed acid, body-jacking breaks, pitched-down tri-tom workouts, abyssal two-step, and all manner of rabbit holes, every successive track sounding like a dare. It’s appealingly tough to find any gaps between Ivkovic & Milo’s styles here; with both DJs unerringly focused on tripped-out dance records. The result is a club recording aimed at the stargazers, full of rug-pulls and left hooks: a million histories tossed into a rock tumbler and polished into something that feels altogether new.

If you’re looking to make it a hat trick, Ivkovic’s got you covered. Selecters Mix 001, recorded live from BAR Inc in Osaka, sees the selector going deeper still, blasting the floor with incantatory club tools, prizing zero-BPM chuggers over all else. This one’s all about the little details that emerge from the muck: the way a snare promises to snap your neck in two, the way a talkbox-flavored vocal bounces between stereo channels, the way a properly pitched drum track can move in four tempi at once. It helps that the whole thing is mixed with Ivkovic’s trademark flair and finesse; it’s packed with careful and confident blends, moving between all manner of styles without so much as a scuffed rhythm. Eventually, he’s moved towards a kind of blissed-out jubilee, making a set that feels like the second wind during a long night out: energized, up for anything, and just a bit groggy.

O Ghettão, RA.1050

About 50 minutes into RA.1050, O Ghettão accomplish something remarkable. By this point, the Lisbon trio have long since established their mode: this is a set of whirlwinding batida, all carefully laid drums racing laps around each other until it’s downright Ouroborosian. In other words, disorientation is par for the course. But about halfway through the set, they take just a few elements—handclaps, hand percussion, a piano, a disarmingly mournful string line—and, at an imperceptibly slow pace, flip the script from 4/4 to 3/4, reorienting the track around the handclaps until they’re the new center of gravity, reframing everything else without missing a beat. It’s all the more impressive because this is far from the only brain-bending spot in the session. Throughout the mix, recorded live from Waking Life, the batida power trio pull off all manner of technical and theoretical flexes without ever coming off like they’re peacocking. The set is far more elemental than that, in truth: This is about chasing drums down whatever rabbit holes they offer, about leaning so hard into minimalism that it turns to its own kind of whirlwind. Batida is one of the most exciting dance-music idioms on the planet, and O Ghettão’s latest offering—a slow-motion haze that nevertheless invites constant movement—shows why.

SnPLO, DJ Frog & roadkill, Tripping Joints

Sometimes, the joy of a back-to-back lies in hearing the friction: any two selectors, no matter how similar, are likely to butt heads productively given enough time. But sometimes it’s just the opposite: a real meeting-of-the-minds type of event, with DJs’ crates and attitudes lining up so closely that it might as well be one person. Tripping Joints, a remarkable back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back session performed ahead of a boat party that added a sixth DJ, is the latter. The order of the hour, here, is no-bullshit techno and breaks, all elliptical and minimal and dubbed-out. The drum programming here is both heads-down—the set is a veritable mountain of four-fours—and spaced-out; it routinely sounds like half the channels are muted or like they’re broadcasting live from the bottom of a well. The most remarkable thing about the session, though, isn’t any particular track: It’s the sheer flow of the thing, which sees five DJs moving as one, blending a tremendous amount of zero-gravity dance music until it feels like the whole thing’s levitating.

DJ Plead & Baby Leo, Parameter Festival 2026 // upsammy, Parameter Festival 2026

Don’t let Please, DJ Plead’s remarkable album from this year, fool you: Jarred Beeler knows how to turn a rave inside out. When he’s at his best behind a pair of CDJs, he leans towards omnidirectional club sounds, making mixes that flip between techno, dubstep, breaks, and bass of all stripes. That description, happily, applies just as neatly to San Francisco selector Baby Leo, making any time the two meet up utterly electric. (No wonder Leo’s got a playlist documenting just that.) Their latest team-up is a downright pugilistic affair: you can practically see the screwed-up grins and popped eyes as they flip between tracks, whether that’s livewire drum-and-bass, drum-line screamers, minimalistic electro, or zero-gravity hyphy. Throughout the set, the two selectors get more and more wild-eyed, pushing each other ever further out-there, egging the dance floor on to winning effect. These aren’t blends; they’re gut punches.

upsammy’s set from Parameter 2026, on the other hand, is most remarkable for how narrowly it moves. The Dutch selector has earned a reputation for searching and heady IDM, but her club sets are a different beast entirely, sort of. Parameter is a good idea of where her sticks are at right now: She’s still playing dazzlingly complex electronic music, all constellations of synthesizers and spiderwebbing drum patterns, but there’s an unmissable focus on weight and speed throughout. Here, she uses that idea—lickety-split dance music pushed to some kind of logical extreme—and stuffs the decks with rocket fuel, blasting the floor with billion-ton techno, triple-time dubstep, junglisms that’ll blow your hair back. The set is, functionally, one hundred percent drums, but that’s hardly a complaint; indeed, upsammy is one of the finest DJs alive precisely due to how deliberately she drills down into a single idiom before blowing it open. Parameter Festival 2026 is one of her most explosive displays yet.

Yu Su, Gop Tun Festival 2026

When London selector Yu Su was last in these pages—in just last month’s edition of this column, in fact—it was for her live recording from Horst Festival 2026, a two-hour techno-et-cetera slammer that took an awfully intuitive approach to the dance floor. Given that context, Gop Tun Festival 2026 looks eerily familiar. Here, the bié Records head goes deep on heads-down techno, electro, and breaks, slowly tightening the ratchet as the set runs on. But that similarity’s hardly a bad thing. Taken from another angle, this is the sound of a dance floor don further tightening their craft, honing in on the intersection of floor-slamming tools and head-spinning experimentalism. There’s a telling bit about forty minutes in where she moves from steamrolling techno to turntablist house records, and then into something that feels like a breakbeat-inflected MPB edit: in Gop Tun Festival 2026, it’s all fair game.

Contrary to every “market force” or piece of ill advice, Curly Castro has learned not to rush. For the last decade and a half, the Brooklyn-born, Philadelphia-based rapper has channeled the lineages of those two cities (and those of his West Indies roots) into muscular, conceptually daring hip-hop, both as a solo artist and in a variety of collaborations, most recently with fellow Philadelphian PremRock as ShrapKnel. Yet despite his seeming everpresence, YAPHET, which is due out tomorrow via Backwoodz Studioz, is his first album as headliner in half a decade.

Some of this is explained through the sheer volume of personal hardship Castro has faced. In the intervening years, he’s undergone major surgery and been given a cancer diagnosis; he suffered the death of not only his father, but his infant daughter. And even once these periods have been weathered, there’s the uncertainty about whether they will ever yield art that feels formally complete and appropriately cathartic. “It takes me a while to crystallize personal, actual autobiographical things to go into my music,” Castro says. “So a lot of these songs—especially some of the real emotional ones—I actually did try to write other songs.” But the subconscious bleeds through: the failing respiration on “I Couldn’t Breathe, If I Wanted To…” and the doling out of his Earthly possessions on “Last Good Will” sound as if they bubbled up, magmalike, from deep underground.

Yet YAPHET, which takes its name from the Blaxploitation icon Yaphet Kotto, is almost uniformly high-energy. Produced entirely by Milwaukee’s Locust, it spans decades, styles, and corners of the globe, tethering scraps of autobiography and shards of cultural ephemera to irrepressible drums.

Our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Can you tell me about how you arrived at the title—not only naming it after Yaphet Kotto, but reducing it to his first name in all caps?

I’ve always admired Yaphet Kotto. I just thought, who could be Blacker than that? You know what I’m saying? So he’s big, he’s Black, he got a nice booming voice. And so I make my own superheroes. Some people like The Hulk, I like Yaphet Kotto. I always felt like I could name something [after him] and it’d have nice overarching idea, have little Blaxploitation hints, and just live as an idea from the time period I come from. And I just think it’s an imposing word.

When I think about Blaxploitation filtered into music, I think about the stuff RZA was sampling for Ghost. But I hit play on this album and was just bowled over by the drums.

Now the music was always important with Blaxploitation films. Music was in there. And I think it’s a matter of, even if it was serious, there was a little dash of fun, like in the Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby joints. I think also I had to do some reverse engineering. When I grew up, I took the term too literally: I saw Blaxploitation, I just kept seeing exploitation, exploitation, exploitation. So I skipped them. I remember not liking Dolemite. I was just like, “They’re making fun of us.” I didn’t know these were our Black superheroes in the ‘70s, real live heroes that we had on alternative media. It wasn’t super mainstream. This is underground. I’m in the underground now. That’s what it was. And so I had to reconfigure thinking about it and really appreciating them and going back to watch them and see them for the gems they are and the stars who emerged from that, whether that be Richard Roundtree, Pam Grier, and the like. I had a whole methodology for this record: The plan was watch a Blaxploitation film, listen to one of the beats Locust sent me, and write the song. That didn’t work out. I was sitting there, I was four movies deep, I had no bars whatsoever. I said, OK, this is enough. Let’s just make some songs. And I think I made “SuperDOPE” and “Cheese N Bread Riddum,” and then that got me rolling.

And then when I rounded it out, when I finally had the full plate, I was like, “Oh, there’s still Blaxploitation elements in there.” There’s still attempts to be a superhero. I always grew up wanting to be that. I always felt like I was a mutant. My mom would agree [laughs]. You know what I’m saying? And so I just went with that. And then also doing that, my facets got facets. I’m multifaceted. I started revealing some personal items and personal issues and things. And so I think it gives a good glimpse. If you want to know what Castro’s about, this tells you a little bit about my childhood, my adolescence, my adulthood, and possibly my afterlife.

You cited “SuperDOPE” and “Cheese N Bread Riddum,” which are the second and third tracks. So that’s setting the tone really early. But there are not many albums where someone sequences a posse cut as the first song. Thematically, “Black Don’t Crack” [which features Fatboi Sharif, Blueprint, Brian Ennals, SKECH185, AJ Suede, and billy woods] does such a good job setting the table, but it’s still an unusual move.

Well, there were two reasons for it. The first one is that last record, Little Robert Hutton, begins with three, three-and-a-half minutes where you don’t hear my voice at all. There’s scratching, and then there’s some vocal stylings from my partner and his friend and things of that nature. And then I come in rapping. And I remember some of the reviews would make a note to that. They was like, “Oh, that’s so bold,” or whatever. And I read that and thought, “Oh, that’s cool.” And it wasn’t purposeful to be that long before you heard my voice, but I said, “This record, no, we doing something.”

As soon as it starts, boom, you hear me rap. And then the song evolved into the posse cut. We were doing old school call outs and things of that nature. There’s a lot of sonic callbacks in the record, so people like that type of stuff. I wanted to start with a bang as opposed to last time where I kind of creeped up on you. And then—this is Locust’s genius—the record is sequenced chronologically, sonically, in the sense that you hear the old-school drums in the beginning, then you hear ‘90s stuff, then the futuristic sounds toward the end. And so that was his idea. And so “Black Don’t Crack,” the way that we use those drums, the Billy Squier drums, that was the most old-schoolish joint. So I was like, “Alright, that’s going first.”

You mention it was Locust’s idea to sequence the album this way. How did your relationship with him develop, and how did you decide to do a single-producer record?

So Locust is really cool with small professor, and everybody knows small professors and Wrecking Crew, that’s my DNA. And so eventually through smalls, Locust had pitched me some beats. And at the time I was working on Little Robert Hutton and I had that as a multi-producer record. But I used three of his beats, the most beats of any producer. Every other producer has two beats, if not one. I used three of his beats and I was like, “OK, this is going to be my secret weapon. I’m going to keep this guy myself.” And he fit my sensibilities, he kind of knew what to send me. He wasn’t just necessarily sending me ShrapKnel-type beats or Castro-type beats. He was sending me some real fire. So I was like, “Alright, I’m going to keep this guy in the tuck.”

And then eventually that didn’t work because he produced for woods and Fielded, “Windbreaker,” he did a couple more joints for other people. So it was burgeoning. But any time I was working on something, I had to get Locust, get them four joints that nobody else gets because it’s me. And then he approached me and said he wanted to produce a whole project. He’s very malleable and he takes instruction well in the sense that I can co-produce—I can give him straight up ideas and he can manifest those. He’s very good at taking the little ideas out of my head and making them into a beat. And he’s really good at, if I have a beat idea in my head and I describe it to him, give him a couple of days, and it’ll be like he pulled it right out of my brain.

What’s an example of one of those beats on YAPHET?

Oh, so “Enemy-Minded” is literally three seconds of a Common interlude. I always had this beat in my head from this Common album and I always wanted to make it a song; it’s real, the beat is fading out. Or “Cheese N Bread Riddum”: If you’re familiar with reggae in any sense, sometimes it’s things called dubplates, and a beat gets really popular. And so what they’ll do is there’ll be 20, 30 versions of songs over one beat, one tape, one CD. And this is one of those classic beats. If you close your eyes and remember the ‘90s, you’ll always remember hearing this beat. It was killing for one year. I don’t know which Reggae Gold it was on, but I always wanted to do a song to it. So things like that that were ideas that I’ve always kind of held onto.

Obviously you’ve been writing raps for years and years, but recently the ShrapKnel records have gotten a lot of love and attention. How is the creative process different for you when you’re working on solo material?

I don’t think me nor [PremRock] really have to consciously do it because it is just inherently different. My solo songs are different than Prem solo songs, and then it’s different in the third angle, which is ShrapKnel stuff. Even on those records, we never approach the same topic the same way. And that’s why our songs work out. So we can have the same exact words, same exact destination, and we’re just going to get there differently. With our solo records, we have totally different identities. We just work differently. Most of Prem’s solos, he likes to be on there a lot—he doesn’t do a lot of features sometimes. And then my solos is always people all over the place, things of that nature. My heritage might be a little bit more Black Powery, a little bit more Barbados in there. I’ll sprinkle it in ShrapKnel too, but it’s definitely different blade work. It’s very definitely different pen work and different approaches.

What do you find yourself getting better at now?

Well, as far as working on this album—I want to shout out iAlive, that’s my engineer. And big up Willie Green who mastered it. But when I worked on solo records, I pretty much always do them at iAlive’s. I’ve been to three, four versions of his studio, so I just want to pick him up and for the great work he does. I think I’ve just come to a good plateau. It’s been a lot of years, but I can crystallize, like I mentioned before, my ideas, and I think my instincts are worth playing out. So whether that be an old-school sensibility that I’m going to pull to the future or something present that I think should be said, I think I worked out a nice poetic way to express it. So I’m settled in my style, which took a while. You know what I mean? I’ve tried many different ways. I’ve been in a lot of different outfits, taken on a lot of different masks on some faceless man, Game of Thrones shit. I’ve worn a lot of faces, but I’m really confident in my approach and I trust my instincts.

If you can take me back a little bit, the trying on different masks and whatnot, do you remember the moment when you first were like, “Oh, no, I’m writing as myself now”?

I think it was maybe in my mid-20s, because I also got into spoken word a lot. And doing that practice, I think you can be a little bit more barebones. You can be a little more vulnerable. You don’t have to be as structured to the rhythm and you can play a lot. You have a little more space to play around with what you’re trying to say. And again, it’s less structure, so I can just do different type of songs. I could do a haiku or whatever. And I think that allowed me to be like, “Alright, let me try out me.” I remember also around this time I did my first solo song. I never wanted to be a solo artist. I wanted to be a fucking hype man, wanted to be fucking Flavor Flav. I wanted to be Freaky Tah. I felt like I had the energy and good memorization where I could get on stage and just hype what you got. And that was really my goal. I love that position, the fucking Spliff Stars and shit. I love that.

But eventually I’m writing with my friends and I’m writing just as well as some of their stuff they were doing. I was like, “OK, I think I could be an MC now, full-fledged.” And so once I got into that, I always liked to play my position. I was a certain, sometimes a set it off guy or I was the—not off-beat, but off-kilter guy. “Castro will do something a little different in his verse than everybody else is doing.”

And I played my position, but it was also stifling because there was things I wanted to talk about. Let’s just use Little Robert Hutton: I couldn’t do that with the groups I was in. And so I would always have those things and just stash them and just hold onto them and never thinking about a solo song because I’m in groups of four or five. All you got to do is get your verse together, do your part and handle your business and hold up your part of the bargain. It’s very different than creating whole songs. And I think I made a song called “Frankenstein,” and that was my first song by myself with no influence, not writing with my boys or anything like that. And I was like, “OK, I could do this solo shit.”

On this album, you have this whole underground ecosystem, guys who are peers of yours all the way down to shemar and Fatboi Sharif—there are multiple generations of the rap underground on here. What does it feel like to slide into more of a mentor role, at least on occasion?

Oh, I didn’t even think about it that way. That’s dope. I mean, well, I can start with the second part first. When it came to shemar and blackchai and Sunmundi, I approached them like, “Hey, I have a different fan base than y’all. I don’t want to expose y’all to that. My platform might be a little larger than what I got going on. And so if it’s possible, can y’all all feature on this joint and we can get a crack?” And that’s why I called it “New Mutants.”

I’ve gotten older and been rapping forever, so being a mentor, I’m not against that. I like to see young cats with a good hip-hop head on their shoulders, and I don’t want people to have to go through the pitfalls I went through if I can help them out with a word of wisdom here or a little piece of advice there. Also, I’m really proud of the company I keep. I mean, I think when you have really good swordsmen around you, your blade has to be sharp.

Were there older figures in your early career who did set you right when you needed that?

I Could say yes and no. I could have used a little bit more mentorship. In my era, there was a lot of feeling around in the dark. Some things were secret society type shit. Nobody knew how this worked or that worked. We were just kind of trial and error and shit. But then I’ve also had cats that would straight up look me in the eye at vital points coming up in this game and like, “Yo man, your shit kind of sucks right now. Shit.” I remember somebody, a good friend of mine looked at me said, “Yo, man, this shit sucks.” He wasn’t dissing me, that was his opinion. And I remember thinking, “Oh, I don’t want anybody to ever say that to me ever again.” And they haven’t.

Earlier you were talking about how sometimes when you have a big heavy thing, you’ll try to approach it in art and it just doesn’t hit right at first. But here, in the final version, you approach some very tragic events in a very direct way. What was the process like of getting there?

I mean, again, some of it was led by the sonics, and then I cross-pollinate that with ideas I’ve always had. So if we could take “I Couldn’t Breathe, If I Wanted To…,” the breathing part was inspired by this old poetry group I used to roll with. They were some cool cats, and they had this one poem about giving birth to a poem or whatever, and they would trade off doing Lamaze breaths. And we’re guys, so we don’t know if we’re doing accurate. One would do it while the other one was doing their poem, and then they would switch. And I always thought that was fascinating as a sonic element to hear that breathing in the background. And then I thought, “Oh, I always had crippling asthma, so there’s a way for me to bridge my problem with breathing coming up with my daughter’s problem—ultimately dying of breath, literally.” And so it was like, “OK, this might be the time to say that.” So it was very organic in terms of the raw elements, crisscrossing and coming up with the Venn diagram of the song. And then again, the last song, I tried not to write, tried to write something else, tried to write just whatever, just flexing and shit. And it just kept bringing me back to: This would be a time to let people know when my earthly possessions are going to go when my time’s up. Like I said, the album’s set up with a timeline, and that’s the period, you know what I’m saying?

Or like an ellipses.

Yeah, that could have been the name of the album.

Luniz, “I Got 5 on It” [1995]

Though I was born in 1992, I heard Club Nouveau’s “Why You Treat Me So Bad” long before Tone Capone’s mutation. In fact, “So Bad” is one of the first songs I remember that wasn’t punctuated by an Oscar the Grouch ad-lib; in Winnipeg, our neighbors would play it so loudly it reverberated through the floors. Because of this, the element of the song that dominated my young brain was not the Halloween melody that Yukmouth and Numskull would navigate later—it was the paroxysmal drums that appeared only under the chorus, high-‘80s controlled violence that seemed more dangerous than the pop music I’d been exposed to was allowed to be. But “I Got 5 on It” dispenses with those, opting for something nearly as heavy but more subterranean; the result is that melody foregrounded, burned into the brain of anyone who’s ever bought a rap record made west of the Red River. Two notes: Yes, Operation Stackola over The Chronic; the definitive ranking of the verses on the remix is:

Shock G
Richie Rich
E-40
Dru Down
Numskull
Spice 1
Yukmouth

Scarface, “Smile” f/ 2Pac [1997]

The musical exchange between California and Texas was first the story of The Great Migration; later, briefly, it was because everyone wanted to sound like 2Pac. The beat on “Smile” seems to lie directly at that point of late-‘90s convergence: the “Funky Worm”-adjacent whine, the Gothic stakes slowed to unhurried swagger. Of course the organs beg the funereal associations; of course it knocks too hard to worry about that for the next four minutes.

Mac Dre, “Not My Job” [2004]

Despite the fact that it doesn’t establish or subvert the sonic architecture of the Bay—something he would do several times over—this Blackbyrds-sampling cut from The Genie of the Lamp is the best Mac Dre song. At first he writes like an alien (“The biggest thing since the TV invention”; “Start a war for nothing like G.W. Bush”), then like the most mollyed out man ever (he uses a half-dozen different voices and warns the boyfriend of his lover to “watch thyself”). Tone Capone should have gotten the Pulitzer for luring Dre into this illusion of placidity.

Mob Figaz, “Drama I Been Through”

In a beat whose textured maximalism presages the blown-out R&B flips Doughboyz Cashout would soon start producing in Detroit, here Tone Capone gives gloss and sheen to harrowing stories, making the struggles of The Jacka, Husalah, et al. seem both impossible to overcome and like inevitable triumphs.

The Click, “It’s All the Same” f/ WC and Baby

And finally, that collision of the intricate and the bludgeoning carried to its extreme end. Tone Capone was born in Berkeley and died in Las Vegas, a true interpreter of the American West: unbound by convention and shot through with ambition.

^{Art by DJ Short}

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 also: Tech N9ne’s
”Anghellic,” Cannibal Ox’s “The Cold Vein,” and Jay-Z’s “The Blueprint.”

It was the day after Christmas 2001, and conservatives were angry. Not at their reluctant choice of president, who’d leapt to mobilize our troops against the Taliban; not at the usual suspects among the liberal intelligentsia, as they, too, were now given to flag-humping and calls for Ay-rab scalps; not even at the Battle for Seattle veterans, whose movement had been neutered by a patriotic public ready to stick it to the terrorists by hoarding sweatshop-produced sneakers. No—that December the right-wing commentariat was furious, incredulous, incontrovertibly incensed at the Washington Post’s pop critic.

You see, David Segal had just ranked his favorite albums of the year, and at No. 1—above The Shins, The Strokes, and The White Stripes—sat The Coup, a little-known, stridently leftist rapper-and-DJ pair from the Bay Area whose record Party Music, Segal so observed, “makes a Marxist revolution seem like a gas.” The best in pop, rock, indie, electronic, what have you, came courtesy of MC Boots Riley, the son of Californian activist-scholars who’d raised their fists in the ’60s, in partnership with DJ Pam the Funkstress, another Bay Area linchpin who’d rocked the release party for the 2Pac album that earned Dan Quayle’s opprobrium.

In post–Cold War America, to lavish such prestige upon anti-capitalists required plenty of obligatory throat clearing. The group’s “politics and conspiracy theories” were “ridiculous,” the Post’s expert admitted, and Riley’s “anti-capitalist tirades” would “seem loopy if they weren’t so daggone funky.” This mighty newspaper, whose editorial pages were already awash in calls to war, would never seriously commend the ramblings of a self-identified capital-C Communist, but it could enjoy some daggone funky frivolity with the kids. Still, even getting that close was too close for the warmongers. Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin immediately registered her shock that such a “loathsome record,” led by a single titled “5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO,” could be celebrated by the “elite media.” Christian fundamentalist Texe Marrs mused that the Illuminati was behind the ranking. Even William F. Buckley Jr.’s nephew (who, these days, serves as our ambassador to South Africa) decried Segal’s reluctant affection for the “politically noxious” Coup. The Post then felt obliged to share some of the letters from readers who thought its critic not just a poor judge of taste, but an execrable person: “Why would you have someone on your staff who even endorses something like this?”

Yes, all these folks were mad about that cover, which we’ll get to later. But they might have been more upset that David Segal had accomplished what every great critic hopes to do: convince his audience to sample a work of art for themselves and evaluate it on the substance. Sure, other members of the “elite media” may have also visited some praise upon Party Music, but to have the capital city’s press organ actually persuading Americans to take a minute of their shopping excursions to duck into Borders and pick up a CD? This immoral, hippity-hop garbage? There were so many other things to panic about, like the Muslims.

To the conservatives’ relief, market economics could accomplish the desired sabotage that their printed indignation couldn’t. The Coup released Party Music under 75 Ark, a Bay Area imprint co-founded by Dan the Automator and owned by an Internet Business called NicheMusic.com, whose business took a budgetary wallop after Silicon Valley’s dot-com bubble bust. (The domain, once valued at $5.75 million, today leads nowhere.) Too few discs were made and shipped. Not enough listeners knew about the album to seek it out on Napster (a NicheMusic.com investor). The record only moved 15,000 units, eventually losing the attention it had earned from a true triple-double media hit: praise in the arts section, controversy in the news section, denunciation in the letters section. The new millennium’s most promising bards of anti-capitalism were being done in, naturally, by the system they so vociferously opposed.

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The kids aren’t alright, at least based on how they’ve been engaging with popular music. In the frenzy to prove themselves the most devout stan, listeners have assisted millionaires in winning increasingly obtuse games on the streaming charts, doxxed their idol’s perceived rivals, and even sacrificed their bodies’ physiological needs to be front row at the altar of their live shows. It would be one thing if this was all happening solely for once-in-a-generation talents, but somehow people are defecating themselves for Noah Kahan.

As beautiful as the relationship between listener and artist can be, that adoration can clearly go too far. Should folks be going into debt for concert tickets, or purchasing multiple copies of digital albums as lottery tickets for admission to future “activations”? Social media has increasingly swallowed legacy media, stoking parasocial practices that generate as much content about artist’s personal lives as op-eds about how we should respect their privacy. To paraphrase the primary victim of our corrosive attention, the times are toxic and we’re slipping under.

No fan base has taken as much pride in their rabid devotion as the Brazilians, who popularized the phrase “Come to Brasil” by bombarding their favorite artists’ comments sections with the requests since as early as 2008. The phrase came to saturate MySpace, Twitter, and Instagram to such a degree that it became difficult to discern when it was employed with sincerity versus simply committing to the bit. For those with a genuine stake in the request, it’s a prayer rarely answered, yet still no less believed in—a tension explored with surprising grace and nuance in a recent short film documentary by Lina Abascal for Rolling Stone Films.

If you think fandom can be intense in America, international devotion to pop’s star players is even more fanatic. Abascal’s documentary follows four residents of Rio de Janeiro, showcasing how their relationship with their respective faves informs their sense of self and civic pride. “Brazillians wear their heart on their sleeves,” a member of a “Bloconce,” a small Beyonce-themed bloco (the musician-led street parties you see during Carnival), says early on. “We go after it. We follow our idols. We camp outside their hotel.”

Take Bruno, who for the Rio stop of the Eras Tour in November 2023 spent the equivalent of $1,800 and slept outside the stadium for two months, weathering storms and a heat index of 140 degrees to get the best possible spot. For the 60,000 fans in attendance, paying their respects became a literal matter of life and death when a 23-year-old woman passed away from heat exhaustion. This led the country last month to pass the “Taylor Swift Law,” requiring organizers to guarantee free drinking water at large events.

The prostration of some Brazilians, however, is simply an exaggerated reflection of broader fan trends worldwide. “My friend was at the L.A. show for Audrey Hobert, an emerging, newer pop star having a moment,” Abascal recounted to me over Zoom. “And every young girl in the pit was horrified that she wasn’t coming back the next day for the second date.” While Deadheads and other jam band aficionados are no stranger to following bands on the road, this is a new normal for artists like Hobert who have one album and an exactingly choreographed stage show. Attending multiple nights is a dubious flex akin to telling someone you went to see The Lion King on Broadway for a week straight.

Yet Abascal’s documentary is ultimately sympathetic to its subjects, reminding the viewer of what makes music such a personally and socially fulfilling exchange. Part of the film’s power comes from its focus on representatives of pop music fandom who aren’t the archetypal, affluent children from the West with the means for copious, conspicuous consumption. There are abundant opportunities in America to see your favorite artist, pay them, stalk them. That has amped up these unhealthy expectations, as though shitting yourself in the front row is a badge of honor.

But for Brazilians, you are lucky to get a single show from an international artist in a decade, making the commitment to “getting barricade” at all costs a justifiable suspension of sanity. It’s not like I didn’t used to camp out before doors opened for my favorite artist, even if that was for five hours instead of five weeks. Come to Brasil honors how music can transform lives across borders, and the actual sacrifice required of Brazilian fans endowed their dedication with a significance that stood out to me from much of the cynical artist engagement I’ve seen stateside.

See Netto, a Little Monster, whose personal expression was informed by the confidence Lady Gaga inspired within them: “[She] was someone I could observe and see possibilities for what I could be, what I could desire, what I could build.” I was reminded of waiting in line after shows in college to get Mitski or Torres to sign a guitar pick, coming home hyped up to use it to write songs of my own. “We aren’t gawking at the subjects with a cheapened, campy extreme perspective of, Oh my God, can you believe these people do this?,” Abascal explained. “I am inspired by their efforts, not shocked and horrified. Fandom is a display of faith and resilience, and I wanted the purity of their intentions to be clear throughout the film.”

While the documentary focuses primarily on fandom, there is another story implicit in Come to Brasil: the global dispersion of cultural capital and economic power. Politicians from around the world one-up one another to court mega pop tours, pulling stunts like renaming their cities (Glendale became for a day “Swift City, ERAzona”) and changing legislation (New South Wales lifted a 57-year-old ban on hosting more than four annual concerts at the Allianz Stadium so Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour could come to town). Wherever they land, those superstars generate massive windfalls for local restaurants, hotels, and transportation, as well as city tax revenue. These shows can shift economies, meaning far more than fan incentives are at stake.

So why aren’t artists coming to Brazil? Until 1985, it was because the country was run by a dictatorship that closed its participation in global pop culture. Once those walls came down, the limitation seemingly became the capability of cities. “Typically an artist cites that they can’t crate down all the equipment for their stage build-out because it’s so far,” Abascal said. “What it really comes down to is artists aren’t building mass South American tours. It’s maybe three cities—Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Brazil maybe. ‘Come to Brasil’ is the meme, but the need really comes from the whole region—people are just not going.”

Yet the elephant in the room is that those same excuses don’t prohibit artists from making their way to equally far off locales, like Australia or Japan. “What’s the unspoken thing with that?” Abascal probed. “Once I really started looking into the artists that are discussed in the film—like how has Adele never been? And what does the ‘logistical issues’ excuse actually mean when there is infrastructure here for the World Cup and the Olympics?”

Yet in recent years Brazilians have begun to assert their power in the commercial equation. The documentary shows that with Rock in Rio and Todo Mundo no Rio, some of the biggest concerts of all time are now happening in the country. So there is a duality, in which few shows make their way to the Global South, but the ones that do are these enormous events. That’s progress, but it still frustrates fans who see a condensed festival set, without an artist’s intentional production, taking place outside their album cycle, as an insufficient concession.

“There is this lack of access, and then once in a while you get thrown this huge bone, but also only if you live in Rio,” Abascal said. “And traveling there, even from within Brazil, is expensive.” When these shows happen, it’s because of brand sponsorship and government support, rather than promoters being willing to invest in the long term infrastructure to make Brazil a real touring market. This happens in other developing countries as well; India is increasingly getting more big ticket artists like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran to play their festivals and arenas, but the country still has a deficit of mid-size clubs. You can visit as a rising artist at Lollapalooza Mumbai, but you probably won’t be able to route a proper tour.

It’s ultimately not just about seeing these artists for the Brazilian fans in the film, but getting to do so on their own terms. When Netto had the opportunity to leave the country to see Lady Gaga for the first time, he ultimately decided to turn it down. He hopes that when he does finally experience her concert, he is able to do so surrounded by his own community. As they put it, “I’m not going to make the effort for someone who is not going to make the effort for me.”

At a time when musicians are increasingly opting for residencies in New York or L.A. instead of taking their show on the road, it’s an even more potent creed to adhere to. But for artists and fans alike, why would you want to limit the diversity of the crowd to just various shades of Brooklynites and rich tourists? Local flavors add depth to the songs we love, and the audience a show cultivates is as essential to the experience as anything that happens on stage. In comparing his time at a Madonna show in Miami to one in his home country, Junnior in the film diplomatically described the American attendees as disappointingly “well-behaved.” As Netto put it: “I’ve been waiting 15 years to see her live, and I want to feel that energy together with everyone. This will only be possible in Brazil.”

The documentary ends with Netto finally getting to don their best attire to see Lady Gaga at Copacabana alongside a record-breaking 2.5 million people. “You waited for me,” Gaga gratefully tells the crowd. But the point isn’t that her arrival is a happy ending. Instead, it’s a validation of the journey they took to get to the show.

“If it was really only about her coming, now their life would feel kind of empty,” Abascal said. “But it’s actually about the process: what’s learned about myself, how I see the world, my perspective, my community, my identity.” On the surface, “Come to Brazil” can seem to be about the artist it’s directed at, but it’s really about affirming that the fans who express it matter.

Pozer, “Dulux Trade”

Imagine touching down in London and seeing Pozer out in Los Angeles. This is why “Chicken Shop Date” got cancelled. I’m going to let it slide because Croydon’s chosen one has a hit here. His flow wraps perfectly around a sealed AAAA scheme. The beat, produced by Bg!, KDj and Ra Tha Gawd, splices hallway saxophone wails between the ketamine club up top and the kickboxing gym in the basement. All three levels get blasted with carmine.

I thought that “tryna lick down one of these dunces” was the hardest line. That was until he says “my grandma told me I’m a tough head” two bars later.

My Guardian op-ed: I used to laugh at lads that love Dulux. Then I drank a pint of it myself.

163Margs, “Serena Williams”

While my countrymen mourn the U.S. Open’s degradation, 163Margs has the Nottingham baddies smashing overheads from his trap house. The full “Serena Williams” video drops next week, but the studio single is already laced up.

While Pozer throws jabs on the last entry, Margs counters on this one with hooks from the semi-crouch. He’s steely without stiffness, insulated by Kosfinger’s tight snare. This is the rare arrangement that demands face covers and high knees at the same time, with a Nico O’Reilly salute for Manchester Derby weekend.

My Guardian op-ed: Not all mums are the same. Just ask Serena Williams.

JayaHadADream, “How Come?”

I don’t care about rap’s grammar conventions—all that went out the window when my teenage self heard Common say “her head was gooder than the music.” Still, it’s awesome that Cambridge’s JayaHadaDream uses slew in closing out this verse.

Other goodness abounds in the 59-second loosie. The shot from Canopy Visuals has sedative, seductive color grading. The beat by Crafty893 is frozen velvet. Jaya sneers at “the dirty buggers, the stupid pricks” with S-tier intransigence. She calls out to Gaza, connecting with both her Irish-Jamaican lineage and her decision to quit teaching criminology. But yeah, she slew this one. The full context of that line won’t be printed here, but for those tuned in, it’s impossible not to hear.

My Guardian op-ed: I once stole ham-and-ketchup crisps from a Cambridge youth. Little Callum learned a valuable lesson.

Harry Powell and N3RD, Dizzee Rascal’s We Want Bass

[Full playlist here]

The Boy in da Corner has traveled a long and complicated path. More than two decades ago, Dylan Mills broke through as the youngest Mercury prize winner to date. By the end of the aughts, he became a lead critic of the Tony Blair administration and a two-time UGK collaborator. He was honored with an order of chivalry in 2020. He was convicted for domestic assault in 2022.

Without public remorse and reparation on his end, I cannot endorse Dizzee Rascal as the emcee or protagonist of We Want Bass. I just want to acknowledge the album’s dual producers, who deserve better work in the years to come. N3RD and Powell push liquid chrome through a neon maze on “C U Dance.” They find overdrive with jungle breaks and wholesale bass on “The Baddest.” The “Foxtrot Oscar” beat might be an ergonomic miracle. I’m manifesting these two alongside JayaHadADream next.

My Guardian op-ed: Drum and bass? There’s only room for one in 10 Downing Street.

Tiny Boost, “Ready”

Now we come together, for this is our invitation to imagine Cockney Dipset. Would they wear Union Jack jumpers with matching bandanas? Maybe the British Cam says stuff like, “I keep the crumpets bumpin’, got the musket dumpin’.” While that one gets focus-grouped, let’s go to Tiny Boost somewhere out in Peckham.

He honors the Heatmakerz flip with double-barbell delivery and a recursive scheme worthy of Santana Man himself—“more ready, more ready than ever,” which I have no interest in proving otherwise. It might be novel to me right now, but hopping out of the Rolls Royce from the right-side driver’s seat just looks so much cleaner. Nary a “dirty bugger” in sight.

My Guardian op-ed: I thought that I understood Dipset. I’m still paying for my arrogance.

It’s early in Greg Tate’s Flyboy in the Buttermilk that you realize Tate had assumed the responsibility of helping Black folks recognize what was possible for them in this world. In the hands of another, a tonal overture like this would veer, inevitably, into the realm of arrogance. But with Tate, that thorny assuredness was powered by a love for the Black person scanning the words on the other side of the page. Three paragraphs into the seventh essay in the 1992 collection Stagolee versus the Proper Negro (a brilliant exploration on the crossover appeal of Eddie Murphy, Wynton Marsalis, and Prince), he muses on the fully assimilated status of Black people in America. Tate pulls the curtain up on symbolic victories and the pyrrhic equality boasted when the “best of us” get accepted into white society, no matter what was lost to earn that embrace. “Which is to say, we really ain’t come much farther than those days when a black man had to have a PhD to get a job in the Post Office. (Leading me to say that equality will arrive the day brothers and sisters can get over by being as mediocre as their white counterparts.)” he wrote in the Village Voice in 1984.

In the years since Tate’s passing in December 2021, the legacy of his fearless criticism—both in explaining his dissatisfaction and showing his admiration for Black music and culture—had crystallized. The way that it seemed he had no choice but to grab you by the shoulders and shake you awake, spitting game like he was the coolest rapper alive in order to break through the buildup in your ears. There was a beauty to the unabashed ways Tate would try to learn you about the ways Black music and its acolytes fit into the world. And as a version of the saying goes, curiosity begets curiosity, with Tate’s visions for the heights we could reach propelling you to follow him to those outer limits.

Hanif Abdurraqib feels particularly rooted in Tate’s lineage of generous, genuine curiosity. The poet and writer was asked by Tate’s family to write the introduction for the 2026 re-publishing of Flyboy in the Buttermilk, which had long been out of print and could run you $100 on the used book market if you weren’t careful. “I think Tate was someone who was very invested and involved in my work early on, and remained so,” Abdurraqib tells me over Zoom. “And I was someone who thought of him and looked at him as kind of a mentor, a north star.” For Abdurraqib, it was the easiest yes he’s uttered in a long time. Our talk about Tate and his legacy has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Flyboy has been out for decades now, but how did the opportunity to be a part of the re-release and write the new introduction come about?

The family asked me. I think Tate is someone who was very invested and involved in my work early on, and remained so. And I was someone who thought of him and looked at him as kind of a mentor, a north star. In the years since after his passing, I had been involved in a couple things: I had written to the Pulitzer Committee to get him the posthumous Pulitzer that he got in the press, and the family reached out and asked if I would write an intro to the book. And it was the easiest yes possible.

What type of honor is it to be part of a legacy piece of his writing and cultural existence?

Well, I mean, it’s an honor, but it’s also I think it charges us with a real responsibility. I say us because I think anyone who sits at the feet of this monumental work, not just the whole of Flyboy, but anything he’s created, anyone who sits at the feet of that and aspires to the clarity and rigor and actual love. You know, I talk a lot about how Tate’s deep affection for black people sometimes rubbed up against his dissatisfaction, which is somewhere some of his best writing came from. I think about like that Public Enemy piece. But anyone who kind of sits at the feet of this work and attempts to reach for it, you’re charging yourself with a real responsibility. Lineage is something that I believe none of us have to ask permission to place ourselves in an existing lineage. However, once we do that as writers or artists or anyone who creates things, I think it’s worth taking that responsibility seriously and operating as though you are no longer writing alone. You are writing alongside someone else who, if you’re lucky, is looking over your shoulder and guiding you in ways that you otherwise would not be guided. And so, I mean, it’s an honor, of course. But what I think about it as is something that is entirely less about me, the individual, and more about the responsibility that it charges with my work. That I hope continues to contribute to a broader collective.

And is there any way to overrate the amount of strength that comes from being part of that type of lineage? Like, once you buy in and do it wholeheartedly, is there any way to think about the impact on how you write or go about the work?

Well, you’re right. I mean, there’s no way to overrate it for me, and I will say, of course, it impacts how I go about the work. But when I think about Tate and I think about what I take from being in lineage with him, is it actually impacts how I go about the world. I think Tate was so good to writers who were not perhaps in the position that he was in, writers who were less revered or less decorated. Even though Tate was not very materially decorated in his life, he was still decorated through way of just like a deep respect within the community, and he treated those writers as equals, and that to me is a requirement. That’s a requirement of my approach. Because like when I had like one poetry book out, the first book was a poetry book. I had one poetry book out, and like a few essays scattered about the internet, it was a lot of older writers who were OGs to me who treated me like I was someone who was a direct peer of theirs. And so, I think another part of being in that lineage that can’t be overstated is that if we’re lucky, and if we’re like actually selfless about this work and doing it for the right reasons, if we’re not doing it for accolades, and we’re not doing it for, you know, whatever material success might wait for us. And if we’re not doing it for any kind of attempt at superiority in lieu of curiosity, then I think we can build upon and expand a lineage that includes our living ancestors, as well as the ones who have passed.

And thinking about that, do you feel that responsibility in the same way that Tate and other people you consider mentors to continue that, “hey, I’m looking over your shoulder,” for younger creators? How much does an ideal like that build into how you move throughout the world as a public intellectual?

Yeah, yeah, it’s funny because I just got off another interview like yesterday where I was like,”Man, the term public intellectual always makes me shrink a bit because I don’t understand it.” ... I think I’ve always said that it’s important for me to remain more curious about others than I can ever be about myself. And that is not just good for the work on the page; it’s good for the work in the world, individual and community work and collective work. And that means that I’m generally so open to and interested in what someone else is doing. Not even on some shit where it’s like I feel like I am in competition, and so I got to clock every movement. It’s because I am aware of the fact that what I know well and understand well, is a fraction of what exists. You know what I mean? Like I think about someone, you know, a writer. There are many writers I love, and I don’t mean to single out just one. But you know, I love a writer like Lawrence Burney, for example. You know his stuff?

Yeah! He’s from Baltimore, my family’s from Baltimore, and I talked to him for his book, which was very lovely to do. Lawrence is the best.

Lawrence is one of the ones, you know? What I love about Lawrence is he’s someone who has such a hyper-specific depth of knowledge that I just am not gonna have access to. I don’t have it, and it doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in it. It’s that when I read Lawrence’s work or when I talk to him, I’m like, “Man, you’ve got a very specific point of view, and you kind of got it on lock.” You know what I mean? What I’m saying is that kind of lineage making and community building that doesn’t center competition means that I look at someone like Lawrence, and I don’t feel threatened by the knowledge that he has. I feel eager to read him for years and years and years to come, and if I could help in any way to further and prolong that career, I’m gonna do it. Because it’s not just good for him; it’s good for me as someone who wants to continue to immerse myself in this very specific depth of knowledge that he has. That I also feel like he articulates better than anyone else. And there are a lot of writers like that. There are a lot of writers younger than me, or by younger, I don’t even mean in terms of age. I mean in terms of perhaps the amount of publications, or younger in career. To build a world where we all can thrive equitably means that I get to immerse myself in whatever work you have to come, and I get to keep learning from you. And to me, that’s a great benefit, and I think that’s an important thing that Tate was reaching for. It wasn’t just like, “I want my people to come up.” It was like, if you come up alongside me and we all come up together, we can keep pushing each other to get collectively better.”

And what was that fraction of the art form, writing, criticism that kept bringing you back to Tate? The thing that you thought he did that really grabbed you and made you keep coming back?

Well, I mean, there’s two answers because you’re talking about keep coming back. But I will say the piece that first grabbed me and pulled me in was this piece called “Tear the Roof off Jungleland,” which is about Bruce Springsteen. And I love Bruce Springsteen, like Bruce Springsteen’s one of the most important artists in my life, and I read this piece when I was young. I mean, like 15-16. At that point it was like 15 years old. You know, the piece came out in the 80s, and what was fascinating to me about that piece, especially if you’re talking about. Lineage is that he was placing Springsteen in a lineage with James Brown, and I had never seen anyone do that. Even though spiritually and inherently, I knew that was true because if you watch videos of Springsteen, particularly in the late 70s and early 80s, he’s just kind of mimicking the James Brown stage performance, the cape on the shoulders, and you know all the whole thing. I was like, “Oh, this person maybe understands something that I had inherently known but never seen spoken,” and to see it spoken by a black critic. I was like, you know, “This is what I need.”

But what kept me coming back is the way that he was so fearless, and I know I keep talking about this thing, but he was so fearless in his expressions of dissatisfaction. If he didn’t fuck with something, he was plain about it, and he would look directly, or the writing would look directly, at a source of dissatisfaction, be it an artist, an album, a film, and say, I wanted more out of this, and I’m not giving up. I hope I can get it. I hope I can get them more. And I think that is sometimes how I formed my entire base of criticism. My entire base of criticism was saying: I want to hold the things I love to a strict account. I want to hold the things I love to account with real rigor and care and curiosity, not because I believe in a pass-fail binary, but because I would like the things I love to remain the things I love. And when they falter, when those things falter off that path. I’m going to be there to say, “What can we do to nudge you back? How can we nudge you back?” This is a long answer, but you know what’s been heartbreaking for me, and maybe for you, and a lot of people who grew up with Hip-hop, is that we’re seeing all some of our OGs. I mean, Dr. Dre was kind of trash before this, but like, let’s think about like Dre and Timbo and Rick Rubin. All these OGs are being like, you know what? Everyone should use AI because AI is so great. And that the reason that’s been disheartening for me, I think, is not because I love these dudes. I mean, of course, I’m 40. I’m in my early 40s. So, like, I grew up on the ‘Chronic,’ and I grew up during the Golden Era of Timbaland production, and I love some Rick Rubin beats or whatever, and I love some of those albums he’s done. I love the Johnny Cash records, but these aren’t like my favorite producers of all time. However, what it’s saying is, we have made our money, and now we’re selling a shortcut to a younger generation to convince them to be less creative and less rigorous, and that is devastating to me. The AI of it all is too, sure, but what is actually devastating is you have people saying, “I’m going to sell you a way to be less creative instead of selling you a way to challenge yourself.” And what I’m saying, I guess, about the work of Tate is that it challenged me because of how I saw it challenge other people, and that was worthwhile.

What can you say about the importance of the clarity for whom Tate was writing for? He believed Black music, life, and criticism could be one thing, but that also meant trusting the audience with that same weight.

Well, you know the reason I was so drawn to that Springsteen piece when I first read it, is the first line is “Where all my Negroes at?” Because he was watching a Springsteen show at I think MSG, and he was like, “Why ain’t there no black folks here?” And really one of the early pieces in my career that got a lot of attention is kind of cribbing, it’s borrowing from from that. It’s this piece I wrote about seeing Springsteen in having the same kind of, “Where all the black folks at”—though my conclusion was different than Tate’s. But what I loved about his work was that it was so dependent on an attempt to seek out the black people who are not in the room and to bring them closer. You have to think about it. I came up writing zines, writing for zines, right? I came up. I’m gonna maybe date myself, even though zines are popping again. You know that’s a blessing. But when I came up, I came up on these on punk scenes and hardcore scenes in the Midwest that in my time, because I was rolling with like black punks, so like those scenes were black:, Detroit especially, Indiana, Dayton. and I was writing in zines, and. My job essentially was to deliver the word of what I had been seeing to people who were not there, and I used Tate as a framework for that. In my early days—this had to be like pre-blog era for me, so 2008, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, Before I got real heavy in the blogs and shit, and I was using Tate as a framework, because so much of what he was saying is, I know there are some black people in the world who might love this and just are missing it for whatever reason.

They may be missing it, and I don’t want to judge them for missing it. I would like instead to tell them, “Where y’all at? You’re missing something you might love.” And that’s kind of been a guiding light for me too. And so, he was playing about the audience, but he also saw, heard, and felt black music everywhere. Not to go back to that Springsteen piece, but like, I can’t overstate how revolutionary it was for my thinking. There was something inherent. And again, I grew up loving Springsteen and watching Springsteen. And I remember thinking, even as a young consumer of enjoying his music, like there’s something inherently black about this, the performance of the that’s happening on stage, and to see it articulated by another black person was to afford me to offer me back a level of sanity—and that’s a gift too. To see black music everywhere and hear it everywhere and feel it everywhere because it is everywhere, is to also and to write about it as such. I think it is to return some sense of sanity to the black people who also see and hear and feel black music everywhere, because it is.

One of the pieces that immediately came to mind even as you’re saying that is the Sunny Ade profile. Where he’s following the band, and you can see him almost being a conduit for the audience having his own doubts on African music and its relation to African Americans, then deconstructing that.

Yeah, I think he was maybe the second best writer I’ve ever, or one of the two best, because Lester Bangs was so good at that. And it felt like he was an extension of [the idea that] our lineage comes from many places, and I don’t actually know. I know Tate read Lester Bangs and knew, you know, and all that, but you know, I think about him and Lester Bangs when I think of that level of the skepticism of a new audience member, but the clarity of a critic.

And I think you know Lester Bangs has this massive profile on the Clash, when the Clash first came to America, or I think he went overseas with them, and then they came to America. But nonetheless, it’s this long thing. It’s maybe his greatest profile, and why that profile works is because halfway through he’s like, “I actually don’t know if I believe this shit at all.” Like, I actually don’t know if I believe what they’re selling me at all. And that’s on the page. You know what I mean? He’s like, “but I’m willing to be compelled by what they’re offering. I need to see more,” and I think that Tate has that in him too. This idea of the skepticism does not come from a place of not wanting to believe. Skepticism comes from a place of perhaps wanting to believe so much that you actually cannot believe what’s already in front of you, and so I love that. I love that about his work.

It’s interesting because it feels as though his criticism is taking a different shape—where he’ll abandon straight formal aesthetic criticism, and bring in personal context and bring in emotional heft. As though he’s got his foot on the gas pedal.

Yeah.

In your mind, is it still pure criticism, or is it something else?

It’s still criticism because it’s still following the tenets of what I think criticism is, which is looking at something in translating and transforming.

Which I think still has the same effect, in my mind.

Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, at least one would hope. You know what I mean? I think I think on the page it definitely still has the same effect. I think to the reader they might be taking in something different, but I do think on the page it is summoning the same effect with a question.

I think about the idea about Tate being cool, because I read a lot of interviews and a lot of others’ essays about it feeling like he was rapping to you. Not in a disingenuous way, it was just who he was.

Have you ever heard him speak?

I haven’t heard him speak in a long time. I listened to a couple interviews when he passed, but it’s been a little.

His voice on the page was his voice as he spoke, which I think is the cool thing. That also was a massive influence in me. I was like, “oh, I don’t have to [change].” I don’t know how much folks like reading this or whatever will know about my background, but I don’t have any quote, unquote formal training in writing. I’m like a dropout. You know what I mean? And I came up in the hood, and I came up around people who spoke a certain way and utilized language a certain way. And to me, those were the poets, the guys outside the corner store, and the barbers who talked with certain kind of slang were the poets. And so, it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t write a very certain way. It never occurred to me that the language on the page should stray far from the way I was speaking, because as you know, eventually I was like, “I might have to read this shit out loud.” I came up in performance poetry, so I was like, “Anything I put on the page, I’m gonna have to read out loud.” So the fuck I look like writing some shit that does not actually represent the the sonic language and material language that I came up around? So what was massively admirable to me about Tate was that he also had the exuberance that shows up on the page. I always talk about how it feels like his language leaps off the page with a tone of deep care, but also indictment. That is how he spoke in real life. He felt delightfully indicted and also thrilled. As if he held the keys to something that he just could not wait to show you. And I think to me that is a beautiful starting point of what a critic can be, right? Someone who cannot wait to show you something.

Something I’m often in awe of is the depth that he would get into on a topic, like the Electric Miles piece. I’m just thinking about him launching into quantum theory and then weaving in Ornette Coleman, which leads you to almost think, “How did we get here?” But it feels abundantly natural, somehow.

I remember when I first started writing … criticism in the style I was writing, which again, really took shape because of Tate. There were people who were like, “You’re asking a lot of a reader. You’re asking a lot for us to follow you, to this place and this place and this place.” And I always thought: well, yeah. …

Yeah.

What’s the alternative? And what I loved about Tate is that was his approach. Like, yeah, man. Like, what the fuck is y’all [wanting]? What’s the other alternative that you would prefer? You want me to ask little of you? You want me to ask less of you? Because in asking more of you, I’m also asking more of myself. Because I’m asking, in order for me to get to a place on the page where I’m saying, I’m asking you to keep track of many different places that I’m taking you and see how and where those places coalescing. That’s asking a lot out of me. It’s asking a lot out of my ability to be clear enough and precise enough and rigorous enough to make that happen. And so, of course, I’m asking a lot of you, the reader, because I’m asking a lot of myself, the writer. And Tate was so shameless in that approach. And I actually think, I don’t know. I don’t think a lot about awards and material decoration. However, I would imagine that there were a few reasons why Tate was not in his lifetime as materially decorated. And I think it’s because he was so unflinching about demanding a lot out of himself, and therefore out of his readers. And there are people who would prefer ease or comfort, and there are people who would prefer a critic simply tell them what to like and then get out of the way. Tell them what to love and then keep it moving, or tell them what to not love and keep it moving. That’s not criticism. That’s you know that’s an algorithm, and I think we have to at least demand that we’re more thoughtful than algorithms.

When you come across critics that seem to be strictly within that same family tree as Tate, what sort of values or tenets in their writing do you see as something that’s been passed down through different prisms.

I think fearlessness to challenge a status quo is a big one. I think an ability to have that skepticism, I love skepticism. I love when, gosh, I mean we’re in such a time where praise comes very quickly, and then praise arrives very quickly but doesn’t sustain. And because of the volume and velocity with which praise arrives, dissent gets buried. And so, if you think about the performance of praise, because sometimes I’m thinking about albums specifically. The performance of praise is sometimes what is the loudest? Because praise itself, there’s not a lot of space for rigorous and decisive critical praise. But nonetheless, the dissent gets buried, and so I love seeing someone push back against the status quo, and I think that’s important. And I see that a lot in the stuff I’m reading, at least. And I think that’s important.

This came out months ago, but just having Flyboy copies re-released in a wider capacity—how does it feel seeing it out and about?

It feels great. I guess for me, it’s just like an honor to be a part of it. Ultimately, like I’m kind of just a fan, like everybody else. I know that there’s maybe a little bit more to that for me than it is for someone who grew up in a different time, in a different way, different place, or whatever. But ultimately, at the core, this dude was a hero to me and remains a hero to me, and so to get to be a part of this. ... You know, I’d be happy if the book was out, even if my name wasn’t on it at all. You know, I mean, I’d just be happy that it’s back in the world. But to be a part of it ... I recently recorded it. I recorded the intro for the audio book. They asked me to record the intro for the audio book, and I was like, “Of course.” So I did that, and it was emotional. I was like, I’ll do it in one take. I had to get to the airport, so I was like, I got it. I’ll hit it in one. I’m gonna hit it in one take and get it over you. It took like a lot of takes because I was emotional reading it.

Not even because I wrote anything exceptionally beautiful to be clear. But I was emotional reading it because I was like, you know, I wish more people would have written this beautifully and warmly about him when he was alive. When I’m talking about lineage and collective building, I just hope we can all, particularly when I think about Black writers, be more generous and vocal to the ones who move us while they’re still here, even if we don’t agree with or love every single thing they write. If there’s someone who’s at any stage of a writing life who has written something that moved me, I desperately need them to know. And so Tate’s legacy lives on in that way for me too.

“Our memory does funny things, right?” Lauren Napier, the musician and multidisciplinary artist, is in a unique position to know. Napier, who has written and performed under the moniker Punk Rock Doll and variations of her given name, recently published Tattooed, Pierced, & Fucked-Up: A Scene Memoir 2004–2008, a book that—despite the seemingly straightforward subtitle—is a sophisticated excavation and examination of memory. The text is split into two sections, the first being a collection of journal entries, poems, and reportage that Napier self-published in 2008. These entries are prefaced and annotated by Napier in the present. The second half is unreleased interviews and diary entries. Strewn throughout are pieces of ephemera that paint a cryptic, then panoramic portrait of a person and a scene.

“I love the structure because I feel like it puts it a little more into context,” Napier says over the phone while on tour to promote the book. “Not that 17-year-old Lauren needed to be justified in whatever she was feeling or thinking, but it allows me to have a little more of a conversation without putting it out there fully bare.”

In conversation, Napier mourns the things we all do: the closed venues, the records disappearing from the digital archives, the once-colossal cultural markers turned ephemeral by capital, or chance, or simply by time. Her rendering of the musical ecosystem in which she came of age counters that not through grasps at comprehensivity, but by starting in the subjective. “I’m glad that I had backup copies of hard-copy things to reference,” she says. “But at the same time, I think that the important piece of being in a scene like this is that even if we’re all living different experiences, they’re paralleling one another. So by speaking for myself, it didn’t feel terribly presumptuous to also speak for a piece of the whole because I am a piece of that whole.”

And still, some of the book’s most arresting passages are sketches of others. Excerpted below is her remembrance of Stefan Pruett, the Arizona-born artist who fronted Peachcake and later released music under the name The Guidance. In 2020, Pruett, who was born with a congenital heart condition, died. He was 35 years old.

Pink Bunny Hat

Peachcake is an anomaly. My friends were repulsed by Stefan: hisTourette’s-like utterance of “yeah”; his refusal to give in to tacit fashion codes and insistence on wearing only pajamas and bunny hats; his aggressive denouncement of social mores. Once, at the end of tour, when tempers were tried and candles were ignited at both ends, he dipped his fingers into his buffalo sauce at Denny’s and said, “Imagine if this was your menstruation.” Stefan was often crude, but unapologetically himself. Like the Germs of GG Allin with a trailer full of stuffed animals. I was the opposite of repulsed: I wanted to know how a person achieved this level of social indifference; something which I thought must be comprised of equal parts bravery and indifference.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend in LA. Want to be my girlfriend?” were the first words he uttered to me when we met at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood.Stefan was always sincere. I would learn this later, but then I did not know how to respond. Taken aback by the forwardness of his inquiry but also intrigued by his lack of tact, I didn’t become his girlfriend but I did hop in the van for a tour adventure. Peachcake often had a need for a merch person and they didn’t have one on retainer. I was happy to fill the role.

The first time he asked me join Peachcake on the road, we were in a parking lot in LA. I had plans to return to Arizona to spend time with my mother.Before following the last minute impulse, I realized I had no clothes for the following days. Stefan, determined I was coming with to fulfill the empty position as merch girl, said we would buy clothes the next day; that it wasn’t a worry. And it wasn’t. It also wasn’t difficult to convince me; all I wanted to do was tour with a band. Plus, for a Peachcake show, one just had to don a sequined onesie or a tutu and a military jacket. Some of the most treasured pieces in my wardrobe come from those Peachcake moments. Anything went, sartorially speaking. I have never again found a hat that felt like that lagomorphic lid. Wearing Stefan’s bunny hat became a staple of the daily routine. Forgotten for a moment on the merch table or sitting on the dashboard, waiting for a head to bless. No cowboy hat claiming etiquette, just its unraveling, Pepto-Bismol pink fibers, woven together with Stefan’s smell and hair. Atop the head it felt like a world of its own: cloth ears flopping, feeling like an extension of scalp and self.Maybe that is how Stefan could jive and hop like he did: the power of the bunny hat.

The Peachcake realm was a little chaotic, filled with moments of indulging one’s inner child. Milling about with fans after a show at Chain Reaction was like a tailgating party if you took away the alcohol and added plushies and confetti. The trailer attached to the tour van wasn’t filled with instruments—though there was a keytar that John took on stage every night—but, instead, contained a tour-sized version of Toys “R” Us.

We jumped on beds. We exploded a confetti cannon. We led dance circles, but the band wasn’t without its darkness: Stefan’s sickness,John’s mental issues, Mike’s screaming normalcy. Michael Kraft joined us on some tours—a welcome respite from the rising tensions between Stefan and John. We spent many a pause reading Berenstain Bears books in bookstore aisles. On the Peachcake tours, I had need to find moments of solace, moments of allowing myself to stew in emotions and not be“on” for the Peachcake reality. When searching for diary entries from this time, I had to find the book I was reading: 12 Days on the Road. The antics of Peachcake paled in comparison to the those of Sid Vicious; John would never knowingly spread crabs to the band.

But against the backdrop of mainstage music festivals and bills, Peachcake was lost. Their pop sound and dance aesthetic was more suited to an erudite punk crowd—more for Talking Heads fans than Skrillex and the throngs of Bamboozle Left. It was painful watching them slip through the fingers of the scene. A sign that the attention span for punk—as a philosophy, as an artform—was waning. Talking Heads would play at a punk club—nowadays they’d be shunned for not being hard enough.

Two memories shine brightest for me of my time with Peachcake—aside from the fitting detail that Stefan was from a town called Carefree, AZ. An apt place of residence for a creature of his habits.

One was the moment we stopped in Gig Harbor, WA to visit my mother. Somewhere on tour betwixt one concert and the next. Not only did my mother offer us potatoes and then refer to us as “potato people”—a joke that joined the vernacular of the van for at least a touring cycle, but also because of the blood Stefan left behind on the curtains. The sun streamed through their white fabric in the sunshine, ethereally highlighting the permanent mark that Stefan was leaving behind. He could never fully contain himself in any capacity. Even his body rebelled against the notion.

I saw Stefan one last time in Berlin, a bunny hat still upon his head. The staff at YAAM took a polaroid picture of us. That visit showed my friend in a different light. He was touring as The Guidance. He was drinking. He had label money behind him. The music was noticeably more palatable, but he seemed so alone. Alcohol tempering his outbursts and his “yeah” tic: muting him, making him suitable for his more mainstream audience. He still dove into the sold-out crowd that night. Arms were poised to catch him instead of barely enough tickets sold to keep the tour rolling.

Punk ethos doesn’t sell, but a catchy melody does. Stefan’s unfiltered self didn’t earn him his name in lights—even if his name and unbridled philosophy was a beacon.