Author: Jason Toney (page 4 of 22)

Red and blue fireworks over a night sky — Photo by Jingda Chen on Unsplash

May 20, 2025 / 2 Comments

Burn Bright

The night we learned of her passing in February, blue and red fireworks burst over Universal Studios. As I drove down Olive Avenue, I thought of Shannon Mahoney—her shockingly cerulean eyes and crimson locks blazed with the same fierce energy. She was a force of joy, righteousness, friendship, and fight. The sky would be streaked with light a few more times before I turned right on Alameda, and the Burbank skyline obscured my view. I smiled. I sighed. I let the tears dry on their own.

That day, we sat in shock, spun records, shared stories, and acknowledged that life can slip away at this age, not to a calamity or a villain, but simply because it is time. There’s nothing to rail against, be angry with, or blame. Our friend was gone—and that truth still takes my breath away.

Yesterday, we gathered again for her memorial service in Hayward, California. Person after person who spoke mentioned her fierceness. That was her way. Anna shared that Shannon once pushed her into the bushes because she was concerned about a suspicious white van parked further up their path. As her brother Dallon said, she lived her values.

All that was on display the last time I saw Shannon: in San Diego in May of last year for Anna’s surprise birthday. The whole event and weekend were great, but seeing Shannon was the highlight. I hadn’t seen my friend since before the pandemic, but being in her presence always felt like coming home. We hugged, laughed, and caught up like no time had passed.

Time does pass, however. I still can’t believe that someone so full of life, generous of spirit, and necessary in today’s fractured world is gone. Who picks up where she left off?

I’m reminded of some twenty years ago when I was then, just as now, lamenting the state of American politics. “Why is there no one willing to fight for what’s right? Who will speak up for the least of us?” I said.

With those piercing eyes and that well-defined clarity of purpose, Shannon didn’t miss a beat.

“It’s us.”

Her answer wasn’t just a rebuke but a call to action. We shouldn’t look for others to bring forth a just world full of radical empathy and fiery love for one another; we only need to be willing to pick up the torch.

It’s us—burn bright, spark joy, and be great by doing good, just like Shannon Sheila Mahoney.

The cast of the movie Sinners during the performance of "Magic What We Do" in the film.

May 1, 2025 / 2 Comments

‘Sinners’ Sings the Blues

They say the truth hurts, so I lie to you

Yes, I lied to you

I love the blues

—Miles Caton (as Sammie in the movie “Sinners”)

Sammie’s song for his father is called “I Lied to You”(Co-written by Ludwig Göransson and Raphael Saadiq). Sinners begins at the end with this preacher’s boy returning to his family’s makeshift church after surviving the harrowing night at the Juke. As Sammie holds onto the neck of his destroyed guitar for dear life, his father begs him to put the guitar down and embrace the pulpit. Isn’t all he’s seen enough to give up the devil’s playthings and stay safe with him and pray?

Sammie can’t do that. He loves the blues.

Sammie loves the blues because he loves life and all that comes with it. Born into poverty under Jim Crow, Sammie greets each day with gratitude, kindness, curiosity, and a desire to share his incredible gifts with the world.

I didn’t love the blues—maybe I never knew it. I have always associated blues with its maudlin themes, ignoring until now that joy stands right next to it. I have long preferred the rhythm of R&B—that boogie woogie—over the wobbly strings of a guitar or the warbles from a harmonica. Blues thrives in contradiction. It loves the saint and the sinner equally. It doesn’t seek to hide from grief, anger, frustration, weakness, or the devil. To do so would also deny the pleasure and possibility of being alive.

Ludwig Göransson’s score and the soundtrack album for this movie have me considering the blues with fresh ears. On the In Proximity Podcast, Göransson and Ryan Coogler discuss their love of the genre as they explain how the film’s music came together. Coogler finds a throughline between “Tha Crossroads” by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and the work of folks like Buddy Guy, who appears as the elder Sammie in the post-credits scene. Hip-hop artists Rod Wave, Young Dolph, and OG DAYV appear on the soundtrack.

Where “Tha Crossroads” lingers in grief and mourning, I find my hip-hop blues in De La Soul’s stripped-down reflections. Songs like “I Am I Be” and “Trying People” (see also The Grind Date & And The Anonymous Nobody…) remove artifice, mute the boom bap, and bare the soul of rappers taking stock of their lot in life at specific moments in time. These songs provide clarity and hope during challenging times, not by false bravado but through vulnerability and tenderness. Their mere existence as marvels of creativity let me know that whatever I’m going through, I will survive it. I may even thrive.

That is the motivation of all the film’s protagonists. They all buy into the Juke Joint dream of the Smokestack Twins because they can see the possibilities despite the dangers. They all gladly trade the doldrums of their everyday for just the chance to feel truly free away from the watchful eyes of their oppressors. By the end, most lose their lives but never give up their agency.

I’m starting to understand the blues.

In the film, Delta Slim tells the tragic tale of a friend who was a victim of the oppressive racism of 1930s Mississippi before turning his harmonica into a beautiful expression of all the trouble he’s seen and endured. My mind turns to Nina Simone and the unimaginable woe she conveys in her performance of “Mississippi Goddamn.” Simone doesn’t appear on the soundtrack or the official playlist that Coogler and Göransson put together, but Alice Smith does. She covered Simone’s “I Put A Spell on You” on a tribute album from a decade ago. In the weeks before the release of Sinners, I just so happened to be revisiting Smith’s debut album, For Lovers, Dreamers, and Me.

The surreal montage “Magic What We Do” awakens the lead vampire’s interest in Sammie in the movie and has stirred something deep in me. I’m weaving across genre, time, space, and race, as I reckon with my relationship with this powerful music.

Later in the podcast, Göransson refers to the silver-adorned instrument Sammie carries with him throughout the film as “The Hero Guitar.” Woody Guthrie—the American folk singer and songwriter inspired by the black blues artists of his time—often performed with a hero guitar of his own. Guthrie’s axe wasn’t meant to ward off vampires like those in Sinners. He wanted his audiences to know that “This Machine Kills Fascists.”

Woody Guthrie holding a guitar with the words 'This Machine Kills Fascists' written on it, promoting social justice through music.

Those were the monsters of his time. And ours.

I may not be well-versed in B.B. King, Albert King, Geeshie Wiley, Lightnin’ Hopkins, or Professor Longhair. Yet, I understand their willingness to acknowledge the trauma of the human condition while still delighting in the wonders of life.

I lied to you.

I love the blues.

A still from the film Sinners featuring several members of the cast at a pivotal moment in the film.

April 25, 2025 / 1 Comment

Sinners Won, Even If Some Folks Won’t Admit It

As Sinners enters its second weekend in theaters, you’d think this town would be overjoyed: a high-concept, Black-led, original studio film opens to over $55 million putting butts in seats at screens across the country and helping to reverse the dismal box office trends of early 2025. But if you’d only read the trade coverage from last weekend, you might think Ryan Coogler’s big swing had stumbled.

It’s an excellent opening for a period horror film, except it’s hard to call it completely successful because of its enormous budget.

If we, as a studio, give that to [Coogler], when somebody else we want to be in business says, ‘Hey, I want this deal too’ — and you say, ‘No, I only gave it to him’ — how can we expect them to work with us? It’s bad for the business. It’s bad for filmmaking relationships.

The film’s creators and cast are predominantly black, making all the muted praise seem tinged with bias, whether conscious or not. An anonymous defender of the deal terms gives us this clunker (from that same Vulture article):

Look, here’s the problem in Hollywood, okay? There’s no rationale or logic behind absolutely anything. So anytime there is a filmmaker who has a lot of heat and — I hate to say this — but when you have a diverse or a female filmmaker who has a lot of heat off a movie, it’s all about, What can I get? Hollywood will pay for what they have to pay for. If you control it, and you have a lot of bidders, you can make a different kind of market.

Matt Belloni refers to the sentiments of industry insiders he spoke with during the “How Did Sinners Really Do This Weekend?” episode of The Town as “conventional wisdom.”

“Conventional wisdom is more often convention and not wisdom,” replied Franklin Leonard, founder of The Black List and a relentless critic of Hollywood’s double standards. “It is a preconception that is not rooted in data. Let’s look at the numbers.”

Last weekend’s discourse may be moot as the movie outperforms the tracking and usual trends this week. Gitesh Pandya now thinks it may end with over $200M in box office receipts. The film has also generated a buzz and critical acclaim that may make it franchise-worthy and a rewatchable horror classic, given the repeat business it is enjoying.

But, I was curious, what are the numbers telling us?

Bar chart comparing all-time Easter weekend domestic box office receipts for various films, with the highest grossing film on the left featuring a character from a Ryan Coogler movie.

Sinners had the best Easter Weekend gross for any film not based on existing intellectual property, such as a sequel, reboot, book adaptation, or true story.

Sinners also compares admirably with similar releases from other auteur directors.

Release Date	Title	Director	Opening Weekend	Budget
Mar 22, 2019	Us	Jordan Peele	$71M	$20M
Jul 16, 2010	Inception	Christopher Nolan	$63M	$160M
Aug 2, 2002	Signs	M. Night Shyamalan	$60M	$71M
Jul 30, 2004	The Village	M. Night Shyamalan	$51M	$72M
Apr 18, 2025	Sinners	Ryan Coogler	$48M	$90M
Nov 5, 2014	Interstellar	Christopher Nolan	$48M	$165M
Jul 22, 2022	Nope	Jordan Peele	$44M	$68M
Jul 26, 2019	Once Upon A Time in Hollywood	Quentin Tarantino	$41M	$90M

(source: The-Numbers.com // Non-IP Originals, domestic opening weekend box office)

Outside of Jordan Peele’s Us, which had a massive opening on a minimal budget, Ryan Coogler’s project aligns with other directors known for singular vision and a high hit rate for Originals. Sinners sits comfortably with well-regarded hits from Christopher Nolan, M. Night Shyamalan, Peele, and Quentin Tarantino.

It feels too early to discuss the Global Box Office for this film, though that is one of the major talking points in the articles questioning its path to profitability. In that episode of The Town, Leonard frequently refers to a 2021 study from McKinsey & Company that notes the smaller production and marketing budgets for movies by black filmmakers to counter this narrative.

Bar graph illustrating the production and advertising budgets for US films from 2015 to 2019, highlighting how films with Black off-screen talent have smaller budgets despite higher earnings per dollar.

The study notes,

There is also a widespread misperception in the industry that content starring Black actors will not perform well with international audiences. In 2019, the top films with Black leads were distributed in 30 percent fewer international markets on average—yet they earned nearly the same global box-office sales as films with White leads and earned more than those on a per-market basis.

Coogler received a budget commensurate with similar directors, and the cast and crew did international press tour dates in London and Mexico City. By comparison, Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and had local premieres featuring the on- and off-screen talent in London, Berlin, and Tokyo.

As the McKinsey study suggests, the black-led film appears to have received a smaller global rollout than one by a white director with an equivalent budget and similar deal terms.

So why was …Hollywood framed as a hit while Sinners was met with skepticism despite their similarities?

Studio execs, agents, and consultants might debate deal structures (and defend their decisions to pass on this project now that it is a hit) as we all worry about Hollywood’s future. Some might roll their eyes at Ryan Coogler’s desire to have ownership terms that align with the premise of his magnum opus. Still, creatives should applaud him for taking advantage of the unique opportunity this project and his commercial and critical track record offered him at this point in his career.

Audiences already know what’s up. Franklin Leonard encouraged us to see Sinners again at this week’s live taping of Nobody Knows Anything. “Make an entertainment journalist mad,” he joked. The crowd’s response suggested they didn’t need much convincing. Their second or third screening tickets were already burning holes in their pockets like sunlight to a vampire.

A hip hop concert with dancer CeSee center stage as DJ House Shoes spins records to her right and other performers mill about behind her.

April 19, 2025 / 1 Comment

Shades of madlib

The floor of The Echoplex pulses as bass pumps through the speakers. CeSee, in her black tank top and tutu, is center stage, freestyling her flowing dance moves in perfect harmony with every scratch, jab, and trick that each DJ delivers. Stacy Epps, Wildchild, and Sway Calloway hype the crowd, urging us to make noise for the performers, Los Angeles, and hip-hop.

But no one lets us forget why we’re here: to raise funds and honor the residents of Altadena, who were devastated by January’s wildfires. This Tribute and Benefit concert centers around one resident in particular: Otis Jackson Jr., the DJ, composer, producer, and rapper Madlib.

A promotional graphic for Madlib, featuring bold text that reads 'MADLIB' against a starry background. In the bottom section, there are logos for various sponsors and a QR code with the instruction to 'SCAN HERE TO DONATE.'

The last time I was at The Echoplex might have been more than a decade ago—in 2014, for a show called Ultimate Breaks and Beats. I don’t want to believe that much time has passed, but so much of these past ten years has been a blur. Even these months since the fires in January have been lost in a haze of the near-daily disasters that have defined 2025. Here I am, though, among heads of all generations, seeking fellowship through breaks and beats.

From 7 p.m. until the wee hours, a roster of beloved DJs, beatmakers, and Rhymesayers rotate through 20-30 minute sets, crafting soundscapes from Madlib’s vast catalog, including unreleased joints, deep cuts, and rare grooves. Linafornia and DJ Benji B deftly open the show. Then comes House Shoes, whose presence yanks me back to the 2000s when I was chasing turntablists across every venue in town, trying to sustain the high achieved through deft blends and scratch mastery. Shoes mixes Madlib with Dilla in an “LA to Detroit” set that awakens something long dormant in me. The Gaslamp Killer follows with his signature chaos, spinning a hard-hitting electric fusion ending with an inspired blend of Kendrick Lamar’s “Squabble Up” and its sample, Debbie Deb’s “When I Hear Music” that is our return flight to the City of Angels.

Rhythms of the Village takes the stage at the show’s midway point. The cultural hub and store are among the event’s beneficiaries. Their performance is the night’s only non-hip-hop set. Before the djembe drums and singing begin, Onochie Chukwurah—a Nigerian elder and co-founder of the Altadena center for African heritage—addresses the crowd. “Even though the fires took our business, they didn’t take our lives,” he says. The din of the crowd quiets as he commands our attention—his words and the soulful performance root us. What could have been a bathroom break becomes a balm for the soul.

A group of performers on stage at a live event, singing and engaging with the audience, with a backdrop of colorful lights. The atmosphere is lively and celebratory.

It’s 10:30, and unexpected guests are flooding the stage. Taboo and will.i.am are dapping up Miles Brown and others as Monalisa navigates her set, her laptop threatened by flying elbows and sloshing drinks. The man of the hour, though, was nowhere to be found. Wildchild tells us it’s no surprise: Madlib rarely wants the spotlight. The Beat Konducta doesn’t even own a cell phone. The show is being live-streamed on DJ Spinna’s Twitch, and we’re told he’s watching.

He’s not physically here, but his presence fills the building.

After all, he’s always performed partly in silhouette, rhyming through his animated alter ego Quasimoto. And as we move through his sonic legacy—beat by beat, sample by sample—you sense how impactful his unique point of view has been. It’s a retrospective 25 years deep. You don’t need to see him. You hear him. You feel him.

I look around and notice the gray in performers’ beards, the wrinkles on their foreheads, the stories about kids turning eighteen, and events from the previous century. I should feel my age, but that’s not the dominant emotion. Instead, I think of one of Madlib’s most transcendent projects: Shades of Blue, the 2003 album where he was granted access to the Blue Note archives and created something timeless. New recordings built from classics, made fresh for young ears.

That’s the magic Madlib and his peers have gifted us. It is timeless, communal, and everlasting.

I’m not, though. So we left The Echoplex before last call. That livestream Madlib was watching? I joined him there—from the comfort of my couch—as Nu-Mark, The Alchemist, J Rocc and others continued to guide us through sound.

As Mr. Chukwurah reminded us, coming together like this makes us better. In these layered frequencies, these echoes of jazz, hip-hop, and fellowship, we find ourselves and each other.

These are the shades of Madlib: fractured, funky, reverent, rebellious.

And Lord Quas willing, I’ll be back in the crowd again soon.

April 7, 2025 / 0 Comments

Your Event Has Ended

The South Carolina Gamecocks had just defeated the Texas Longhorns in the first Women’s Final Four game on Friday night. After Holly Rowe completed her post-game interviews, Ryan Ruocco announced that we would be sent to the post-game show with Elle Duncan, Andraya Carter, and Chiney Ogwumike for about 30 minutes while the UCONN Huskies and UCLA Bruins warmed up for the day’s closing semifinal. Instead of smoothly transitioning to that broadcast, which was delivered via the same linear feed, the ESPN app displayed a static image:

There was no on-screen promo pushing me to the next best program, no transition to the next game, and no reduction of the viewing window to show the homepage or a tile pack of suggested titles. As a long-time subscriber of ESPN+ and a user of the ESPN app, I found this experience frustrating. One can only imagine how a new subscriber, attracted to the platform for the first time by the NCAAW tournament, might feel.

I’m not picking on the Worldwide Leader, however. Every Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) service struggles with transitioning from live events to on-demand content.

In recent weeks, I’ve pondered the new sports subscriber experience. I’ve had discussions about a project to understand how to engage new customers of a premium streaming service who signed up during a major sporting event. I proposed a study exploring viewer appetite, interests, and behavioral patterns. This research could inform programming, promotional tactics, and merchandising. My goal was to identify and establish optimal routines for exploration, content diversity, and frequency that could be introduced before these likely single-purpose users canceled or became inactive.

 We weren’t on the same page.

“I want to know what they’ll want to watch three months later,” the potential client said.

“You won’t have the opportunity,” I replied.

Netflix might have the “champagne problem” of considering future viewing patterns for new subscribers gained from live events. According to Antenna, although they are relatively new to the live sports arena, its one-month retention for new subscribers from the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul fight night was better than the industry standard. Most of their competition, however, isn’t as fortunate. If your service has not encouraged sports subscribers to sample anything beyond the games or leagues they initially signed up for by the time that event concludes, your chances of re-engaging them later are slim.

These subscribers will likely cancel or disengage from your platform until the next season or event. You might win them back when the event returns, but trying to predict their consumption habits three months later without laying the groundwork during the initial onboarding is unrealistic.

Back to March Madness. ESPN provides at least four different ways to watch the Final Four games. You would only discover this by exploring the app. There was promotion for the Taurasi & Bird alt-cast during event programming and on socials, but not for the other options. I noticed fans on Threads wishing they could watch the game without commentary, just statistics. There was a feed for that, but they didn’t know where to find it, even while watching the game in one of the Disney-owned apps. ESPN never promoted their ongoing shoulder content on other channels after the games ended. ESPN frequently failed to recommend their women’s basketball programming library throughout the season.

No, most frequently, I get “Your Event Has Ended” or “Your Event Will Return Shortly” (and by shortly, they mean 10-15 minutes).

Linear live events pose challenges, but doing nothing shouldn’t be an option.

Do you have an “always-on” channel to transition viewers? What hinders smart switching from one live event to another relevant program in progress? Can you tease clickable alternate programming during events, especially during downtime? Would running house ads instead of the end card be feasible? Could you limit the time of end cards and eventually close the video window, redirecting viewers back to the homepage or displaying recommendations?

A static image or, worse, a complete blackout at the end of the program will not entice most users to continue watching.

You must train your audience to navigate your app and discover its complementary content.

Sports subscribers intentionally come for their favorite sport, team, or a specific game/match/event they find significant. Once that need is satisfied, it’s easy for them to unsubscribe. This is why every broadcast network uses sports to promote its other programming, and the Super Bowl often transitions directly into a show that is expected to appeal to the largest audience.

SVODs continue to neglect this issue at their own risk.

“Your Event Has Ended.”

Yup, and so could my subscription.

Juju Watkins using a white towel to wipe sweat from her brow.

March 25, 2025 / 0 Comments

What it takes

Gatorade’s 2025 March Madness campaign is called “The Take.” It begins with Juju Watkins sharing her thoughts on what she has given to the game and contemplating what she has taken from it.

I was at Galen Center when a player suffered a season-ending knee injury. In early September 2023, the Los Angeles Sparks were displaced from Crypto.com Arena due to a scheduling conflict and played against the Washington Mystics. Both teams were fighting to secure a playoff spot after disappointing seasons plagued by injuries. On that night, there would be one more. We sat courtside when Kristi Toliver went down right in front of us. She writhed in pain, screaming and crying, while the arena fell silent.

I reflected on that moment as I watched a similar incident happen to Juju Watkins during the USC Trojans’ second-round game of this year’s NCAA tournament under those same lights. Despite having tickets, we weren’t in Galen last night. I’m glad we chose not to go. I’d rather not have the shrieks of another beloved player etched into my mind.

Injuries suck.

Throughout the season, I have admired Juju’s resilience. She frequently absorbs contact during games, showcasing a remarkable ability to stay balanced, square to the basket, and focused even after being bumped. It is part of the special sauce that makes her an elite scorer. However, these attributes also make her a high-usage player, rarely leaving the court and with the ball often in her hands. This combination proved problematic in the early minutes of a physical game against Mississippi State. Sadly, what she gave last night was her knee.

Paige Bueckers is also featured in that Gatorade ad. She understands what Juju is going through right now. Having endured the surgery, the long recovery, the return to play, the bouts of self-doubt, the adjustments, the heartache, and frustration, she is now once again playing at an elite level.

What does it take to return to a sport you love, especially when it has also caused you immense suffering? The physical demands are one aspect; the mental challenges are another. How tough must you be to return to a court and trust your body again?

This is one of many reasons I’m not an elite athlete.

We all face challenges, though, and these moments in sports remind us that, even if it requires everything we have, we must rise again.

That’s what it takes.

See you soon, Ms. Watkins.

Kevin Toney smiles and laughs as he pays a piano

March 18, 2025 / 0 Comments

A Morning with Kevin Toney and Friends

Lush Life, the first song on my father’s final album, runs eight minutes and eight seconds long. The live recording is billed as Kevin Toney and Friends, but this opening salvo is about him. Besides his adept command of the ivories, you only hear laughter as he improvises playfully in parts. Then, at the end, he speaks, his voice as confident and bright as his performance, like rays of morning sunlight. I’m listening to the whole album as I type this.

It’s the first anniversary of his death today. As clouds, cold, wind, and rain arrived in Los Angeles last week, so did melancholy. It has been nearly a week since I wrote in my journal, avoiding whatever emotion might escape from my fingers on the keyboard I’m most comfortable playing. I have been replaying last year’s events, imagining them as giant dominoes tumbling and unable to escape their path. I hear each block fall, the sound echoing in my ears, the shadow and threat growing ever larger. As it happened, I worried about the weight of it all. I worried so much that my body expressed it as ailments, first shingles and then appendicitis. However, when my mother called to tell me the news, I wasn’t crushed under those tumbling blocks; I was uplifted by the relief that his suffering was over.

Grief is a never-ending journey, however, and that weight has returned. There is so much uncertainty in the world, and it is the terrible realization that one of the things I am sure of is that Kevin Toney isn’t here to experience it with us. While he brought joy to so many through his music, I am mourning his absence in our family’s everyday lives. His exuberance for youthful delights and overt expressions of love are absent. We have our memories, and we may seek to substitute what he did and how he did it with our versions, but my dad’s way was his way, and there’s no replacing that, no matter how much we might want it.

My sister has entered the recording and is performing a jazzy rendition of her song I Can’t Take That. The song is about the end of a romance with the lyrics, “Hurt doesn’t go away, the memories will never fade.” Later, she vamps and riffs around the refrain, “It left me distraught.”

Tears aren’t easy for me, but this sadness is worth crying over. Yesterday evening, as the sun set and I sat in my car in a scene reminiscent of Monday, March 18th, 2024, when that fateful call came, I accepted my feelings and allowed them in. There was nothing to do but to be with that hurt and submit to its heft. I was neither crushed by the weight of that pain nor comforted.

I was, and grief was. I am, and grief is.

This morning, though, with light coming through my windows, there was something else: a desire to hear his voice and his gifts. Kevin Toney and his friends are performing Duke Ellington’s In A Sentimental Mood. There is one more song left on this live recording. My father is acknowledging Azar Lawrence on saxophone as the crowd cheers.

That’s it.

While I may be in a sentimental mood at this moment, I’m no longer distraught. Those giant dominoes have been replaced with the black and white patterns of piano keys, and with my dad at the helm, what emanates is never a threat.

Kevin Toney’s legacy is a sound of love.

The 2025 UCLA Women's basketball team on an airplane reading a USA Today promotional newspaper celebrating their BIG10 tournament win

March 10, 2025 / 1 Comment

Bleed blue

After completing our first year with season tickets for the USC and UCLA women’s basketball teams, I have learned the truth: I bleed blue and gold. The signs were there last year when I was broken-hearted for the Bruins in their double-overtime loss to the Trojans during the semifinals of the Pac-12 Women’s basketball tournament. It was cemented this year as I couldn’t stop myself from rooting on Betts and Rice in their loss at Galen Center and left early to avoid the Trojans’ celebration when they won again at Pauley.

I root for most Los Angeles teams including USC, but my heart is in Westwood when it comes to this head-to-head matchup. Fandom is illogical. I am more impressed by Juju Watkins and Kiki Iriafen of USC. Lindsay Gottlieb is a cooler coach than Cori Close (though I like them both). There are far more LA Sparks fans rooting for USC than UCLA; yet, I know the UCLA fight song by heart and cheer along with pride. You rarely catch me raising my two fingers in a V for victory.

I figured the two teams would meet again in Indianapolis for the BIG10 tournament championship and the game didn’t disappoint. UCLA had their first good start to a game against the Trojans before Juju and the Trojan bigs imposed their will and pushed out to a ten point lead at the half. The Bruins didn’t crumble as they had in the previous two games and fought back. It helped that they had a much easier semifinal game than their opponents, who had to fight with the Michigan Wolverines until late in the fourth quarter the previous day. As the game closed with the Bruins up by five and Betts throwing a “V” down at the Trojans bench—USC did a whole lot of “Fours” down when they won the regular season title on the Bruins home floor just a week prior—I teared up with pride.

I don’t know what to tell you. Most of my friends who went to school locally went to UCLA. I have never attended, but I was once a regular guest/co-host of a late-night radio program on campus when a friend was in graduate school. I have a relationship with one of the graduate analytics programs. I love the Hammer Museum and the CAP UCLA programming. During the Pac-12 tourney last year, I would say to other attendees in Vegas that my allegiance lied with whichever California team playing in a game was closest to my house.

That’s UCLA.

Sorry, Trojans, I can’t help it. I’m rooting for y’all to get to the Natty. I’m rooting for the banner to get raised in Pauley.

U-C-L-A, fight, fight, fight!

a comic book panel from "March" by John Lewis. While young activists sit on the floor listening to Hosea Williams, a woman stands up to sing, "They say that freedom is a constant struggle"

February 26, 2025 / 0 Comments

Fortunate

“They say that freedom is a constant struggle. They say that freedom is a constant struggle. They say that freedom is a constant struggle, O Lord, we’ve struggled so long we must be free.”—a freedom song

Almost exactly ten years before I was born, a young John Lewis and thousands of others who grew weary of waiting for their freedom crossed the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. With unparalleled discipline, unwavering resolve, and profound love, they refused to be denied. Months later, the Voting Rights Act was passed in direct response to their courageous actions. It chokes me up to think about those sacrifices that allowed me to live half a century without enduring those harrowing battles. No one has ever attempted to suppress my right to vote. Bigotry holds so little power over my ability to succeed that I have largely forgotten its sting.

I can count on one hand how many times I felt someone else’s racism had negatively impacted my life. I have achieved everything I have set out to do with my skin color rarely being used against me.

I’m fortunate.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve immersed myself in the three-volume graphic novel collection “March” by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. This autobiographical narrative reminds us of our nation’s history and the relentless pursuit required to bend it toward the ideals we profess to hold dear. Illustrated in stark black and white, the story unflinchingly recounts how a boy from Troy, Alabama, became one of the architects of the civil rights movement and what it took to even glimpse equality.

“By and large, American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation.”—John Lewis

I’m fortunate.

This leaves me with an important question: What do I do with this good fortune? How can I repay the sacrifices made by those who had so little and gave so much?

How can I help foster a society where love reigns as the highest virtue?

The answer is simple: ultimately, you stand up.

In her acceptance speech at the NAACP Image Awards, Kamala Harris declared:

“This organization came into being when our country struggled with greed, bitterness, and hatred. Those who forged the NAACP knew the forces they faced and how stony the road would be. Many see the flames on our horizons, the rising waters in our cities, and the shadows over our democracy, asking, ‘What do we do now?’ We know exactly what to do because we have done it before and will do it again.”

Despite the suffering, chaos, and anxiety that permeate our world, I still choose joy. I commit to the resolute ideals championed by those who paved the way before me. You can take many things from us, but you cannot take away our dignity.

Those who seek to deny us genuine justice and equality cannot steal my sunshine.

“However difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long… because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’” —Martin Luther King, Jr.

The fortunate may lament going through this administration’s nonsense, but making good trouble in service of those in its crosshairs is how I pay forward what was done for me long before my birth. I would consider myself fortunate to lead a life that echoes just a fraction of the good accomplished by John Lewis and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.

Fortune favors the brave.

March.

A young man on a busy city street with headphones on and a backpack. Only the back of his head is visible but he appears to be enjoying what he is listening to.

February 8, 2025 / 1 Comment

Escaping Spotify: My Month of Intentional Listening with TIDAL

On the day Spotify announced its first fiscal year of profitability, I canceled my paid subscription. My action was not in response to that news but in recognition that after a month of using TIDAL as my primary music streaming service, I didn’t miss the world’s most popular audio app enough to continue paying for it.

I switched to TIDAL at the beginning of 2025. I’m trying to live a more intentional digital life, and the question of the most ethical way to listen to music online led me to the service. It has been a fantastic replacement for the things on Spotify I had become too dependent on and less enamored with over time.

The music on TIDAL sounds great! I can hear the difference in audio quality, especially when using my high-quality speakers and headphones. TIDAL has fewer algorithmic bells and whistles than Spotify. However, the service still values human curation by music aficionados. It is obsessed with the people who make music rather than celebrities or hyper-personalization. Those subtle shifts mean I am not overwhelmed by their homepage when I select my next listen. TIDAL forces me to be a more active music selector, which has led to an increase in complete album spins and artist-centric radio stations. It has also led to me listening to more music overall.

Spotify Wrapped and Last FM’s Yearly Listening Reports tell me I am a high-volume digital music listener annually. I’m generally amongst the top 5% of all users on those services in spins. I listen to about 80 songs a day every day. My consistency is a crazy outlier.

In January, I pressed play 3900 times from over 960 different artists across nearly 1400 different albums and over 2400 unique songs. From what I saw in other people’s music listening wrap-ups for 2024, that might eclipse their digital streaming totals for the year. I’m a terrible customer of an audio streaming service. All that streaming means they likely are paying out all my monthly subscription payments in royalty distribution. I’m the kind of power user that subscription services have to mitigate in some way if their costs are variable by consumption, and I’m sure they do. Based on what I know about the digital subscription business, there’s a significant portion of dormant or extremely low-consumption users whose subscription fees have little to no royalty implications most months.

One of the reasons I switched to TIDAL was to get music artists and publishing rights owners the highest royalty payment I could. My spins in January could account for about $50 in royalty payouts or five times the value of a monthly TIDAL subscription. By comparison, those same listens on Spotify would equal $12, or about the total cost of their monthly premium tier. That’s what I intended to do!

My top five artists of the month should all earn at least a dollar from my listening, with Kendrick Lamar nearly making $2. On Spotify, that would be about 45 cents. Over time, I will likely generate the cost-equivalent royalties for my most loved albums as a digital or physical media purchase.

This is the way.

There are other benefits to this switch. My New Arrivals playlist isn’t overrun with bedroom producers (or fake artists) gaming the algorithm like Release Radar had become on Spotify. Social sharing from TIDAL is service-agnostic. I’ve returned to Pocketcasts as my podcast-listening solution—a service for which I have a lifetime, no-cost membership. I had already given up on Spotify’s audiobook offering, having found the limitation of listening by time rather than by the number of titles nonsensical.

I do miss some of the more serendipitous discovery features that Spotify offers. And I’m spending much more time updating metadata on Last.fm. I’m not sure this is a negative, though. Maybe I’m a weirdo, but I enjoy data cleanup. It also is a better time suck than doomscrolling.

TIDAL’s lack of intelligent app switching is annoying. Not being able to have my current listening jump from device to device was a bit of magic on Spotify. So was Smart Shuffle.

But I can feel confident that the creators are getting their rightful share in exchange for these missing features. At the same time, I listen to their work at the highest quality available and support music curators who have taste. It’s a more than fair trade-off.