Monday Mixtape, Vol. 195

The star of this week’s mixtape is Falle Nioke, a man from Guinea now living in the UK. I stumbled across “Leywole” which stopped me in my tracks. What a sound! What a presence. What a beat.

There’s something going on that I can feel. Something hopeful and energizing. The success and future of bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) - a transparent and decentralized currency that can essentially be owned by anyone for any amount which no government can control, usurp, or overtake - is setting the stage for the emergence of sort of a global community no longer defined by borders and lines on maps.

Yes, there will still be wars and extremist religions and corruption and greed, but these things will be harder to finance (like US taxpayers paying $2T for a war in Afghanistan that cost 170,000 lives, 47,00 of which were Afghan civilians) because the world population will have control of the money, and that is where power lies.

There will still be borders separating countries, but those physical representations will fade as technological advances and “cloud communities” (as Balaji calls them) will become the norm. This is a decade or decades away, but it is happening.

Why the hell am I saying this? Falle Nioke may be singing in a different language, but I feel like I understand him. I feel connected to him in a way I haven’t felt before with a person singing in a different language. And I think it represents a connection I hope occurs globally with all sorts of people with different life experiences, upbringing, cultures, norms, and so much more humanity could benefit from understanding more.

A lot to come to mind by just one song, I suppose.

Happy listening.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 184

I feel very good about this week’s mixtape. Every single track gives me the feels in one way or another. We got some rock tracks by Angel Du$t and COIN, or at the least, songs featuring guitars with distortion! Yeah mid 90s!

Speaking of mid 90s, we got an old-school like beat from the Nintendo days, my favorite beat of the year, going on during “ON CHAIN” (which - speaking of mid 90s - ends with a sample from “C.R.E.A.M.” by the one and only Wu-Tang Clan) on Brockhampton’s new album, a rap album definitely worth a listen.

On the pop front, we have a crazy new talent, Remi Wolf with the ridiculously infectious “Disco Man.” All you need to hear is her melody and rhythm on her first line to know this girl has got some talent. Then you hear the chorus…damn!

Another budding pop artist, Claud, released her new album very recently. It reminds me very much of my favorite, BENEE, but doesn’t have nearly the “it” factor, but she’s still some good tracks like “Overnight” on this week’s mixtape.

I thought this track from Fred again, “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)” is a track of the culmination of COVID. It’s an inhale of the claustrophobia we’ve had for an exhausting year. We lost our space. We lost hugs and people we loved. We lost dancing! But more importantly, this song is also an exhale and a celebration. The light at the end of the tunnel is there. And I can see the silhouette of a crowd in unison, packed shoulder to shoulder, looking up to a stage, heads bobbing, dancing.