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. 169

If this first track isn’t the party rap anthem off the year, I don’t know what is. This song is amazing, and it’s got some rappers I love like Big K.R.I.T and Curren$y and a new one I’ve gotten into recently, Smoke DZA (who appears again on this mixtape with Joey Bada$$ in “The Mood”).

Really digging this new The Neighbourhood album. I will continue to put tracks from their album on upcoming mixtapes. Their sound shifts a bunch, so it’s hard to even tell it’s the same artist. See if you can spot it next week!

Shout out to Sean C. for letting me know Roosevelt released some new stuff. Hopefully, that means an album is around the corner!

If you haven’t heard of or heard IDLES before, be prepared. They are raucous. Their live shows are raucous. It’s a rowdy bunch, and their lead singer REALLY gives it his all in live shows, you should just check them out on YouTube if you’re digging what they’re spinning.

Fleet Foxes released their fourth album a week ago!! I have been digesting it constantly. On first blush, it is a really, really good album. It’s not as good as Helplessness Blues, my favorite of theirs, and it probably can’t overtake their debut album, but it’s still a really solid album. Robin Pecknold’s vocals are in the stratosphere, I think he’s such a talent, a dark soul trying to come to some light through his music. Couldn’t imagine any other voice of Fleet Foxes (though spoiler, he lets someone he met from his time at school in Oxford sing the beginning of the first track).

I’ll be putting much more from this album on future mixtapes.

Happy Monday. Go make something of yourself.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 127

This week’s mixtape is for all the lovers of singer/songwriters, the rambling poets exhaling smoke, folk, and lullabies in the wind.

Every one of these artists I’ve only recently discovered (and Townes Van Zandt has been making music since the 70s! Guess I got some work to do for him), and it’s like they all hit me in a slow motion hurricane. These are all beautiful songs in their own right, but the songs all move at a soft, steady pace. This is music to burn a fire to. Let the embers and colors float amongst the darkness and close your eyes. Escape to the sounds of the crackling fire, like a record player, play the night away.

And let yourself fall asleep…